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Travel Bug

November 2, 2012

International trips for U.S. youth sports teams is a big business.  Sometimes the target is school sports teams; and sometimes those schools and communities get foreign travel fever.

While I have nothing against international travel – in fact, it’s a hobby my wife and I enthusiastically share – I caution against international trips for teams or individual athletes.

Sometimes the competition is badly matched.  Sometimes our teams encounter and are routed by another country’s “national team.”  More often, our teams encounter poorly organized events and weak, thrown-together opposing teams and substandard venues.  But that’s not the major concern here.

Several years ago, a Michigan community spent $23,000 to help send 20 baseball players from three of its high schools to participate overseas.  That’s nice, but the school district didn’t have a junior high baseball program; and I wondered if the community fundraising might not have been used to provide new opportunities for more student-athletes.

About the same time, there was an effort to fund one basketball player from each of a league’s schools to compete in an international basketball tournament.  The cost was $2,200 for each student; and again I wondered if those communities might not have uses for the money that could provide benefit to more student-athletes.

Why do we spend thousands on a few when the same amounts of money could restore or expand opportunities for many?  Why do we focus on the fortunate few while the foundations of our programs rot through eliminated junior high programs and pay-for-play senior high programs?

No one can argue that some of these trips do some of our students some good.  But do they offer enough good for the few at a time when many students aren’t being offered even the basic opportunities of interscholastic athletics?

Local leadership should say “No” to requests to support expensive international trips.  There’s need for them to put more into the foundation of our programs and less into foreign travel.

Inclusion Then and Now

October 24, 2017

It is accurate to say, and we can be proud that it is true, that there was no more inclusive state high school athletic association in the country at its inception than the Michigan High School Athletic Association.

In Michigan from the official beginning of the MHSAA, ours was one single athletic association. Not separate associations for schools with black students and white students, like some states then. Not separate associations for public schools and private schools, like some states. Not separate associations for big city schools and other schools, like some associations.

This association is unique in the U.S.: From its creation in 1924, by state law, open to urban and rural schools, black and white schools, public and private schools, and both high schools and junior highs. The MHSAA may be the only state interscholastic athletic association that can say all four of those statements were true at its inception.

We have in Michigan a legacy of inclusion that is second to none.

In recent years, we have added to this tradition through the inclusion of 6th-graders who, as a result of a change in the MHSAA’s Constitution in 2015, are now benefiting from MHSAA services, support and rules-making.

But, to be honest, the MHSAA has slipped some in comparison to the expanded inclusiveness of other state interscholastic athletic associations:

  • Compared to Illinois, Ohio and Tennessee, for examples, we do not sponsor and conduct events for junior high/middle school students, even when those students seek to compete under the MHSAA brand and banner.

  • Compared to many states, we are slower to add new sports for high school tournaments, even when students clamor for the opportunity to represent their schools in competition.

  • Compared to many states, we are slower to add programming for students with disabilities.

The MHSAA and its members cannot be all things to all people – that could obscure our mission and it would exceed our resources. But we should consider programming for more people.

The future of our society is in full-service schools developing the whole child in mind, body and spirit; and an essential ingredient of full-service schools is interscholastic athletics and activities. The ideal must be to serve the whole child and, as much as possible, the whole community of children.

That secures the future of schools and school sports as well as communities and their children.