U.S. Soccer Gets a Red Card
March 9, 2012
My previous posting paid compliments to a non-school lacrosse organization which appears to share some of the same perspectives we have for young athletes. Today I express an opposite opinion about U.S. Soccer which has created a “Development Academy” that has announced it is moving to a 10-month season beginning in the fall of 2012.
U.S. Soccer has declared that participants in the Development Academy are prohibited from playing on their local high school teams. This has prompted criticism from high school coaches who in many parts of the country, including Michigan, will lose some of the more accomplished players to the Development Academy.
The academy’s design follows that of powerhouse soccer nations where, however, high school sports do not exist like they do in the United States, where high school students play on high school soccer teams during defined seasons of the year.
The design of the Development Academy and the exclusive participation that U.S. Soccer is promulgating violates the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, which requires national sport governing bodies to minimize conflicts with school and college programs. I was involved in the preparation and passage of that law by the United States Congress; I know what it says and what it stands for. U.S. Soccer is violating the spirit and specific language of the law.
The desire and drive of U.S. Soccer to have U.S. teams excel in international competition is admirable; but its violation of U.S. statutes in the process is deplorable.
Seal of Approval
February 12, 2016
“Sanction” is an interesting word. Sometimes it is used in a negative way, as in penalties, like the U.S. trade embargoes recently lifted on Iran and Cuba. Other times, to sanction something is to endorse it or at least approve its existence.
It is in this second, more positive sense that school sports uses the word “sanction” with respect to athletic events. And with respect to interstate meets and contests, the MHSAA adheres to the Sanctioning Bylaws of the national organization to which it belongs, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).
Without getting into the policies and procedures, here is what the NFHS says about the philosophy of sanctioning interstate athletic events:
Interscholastic programs should serve educational goals. To this end, schools have an obligation to conduct certain threshold inquiries about events in which their students may participate. On occasion, additional inquiries and oversight may be appropriate at the conference, district, state or national levels. In order to perform their “inquiry and oversight” functions fairly and efficiently, decision-makers at various levels have developed sanctioning procedures. The specific purposes served by event-sanctioning procedures include the following:
1) Sanctioning enhances the likelihood that events will adhere to sound and detailed criteria which meet the specific requirements of a school or a group of schools based upon experience and tradition.
2) Sanctioning serves to promote sound regulation of the conditions under which students and teams may compete.
3) Sanctioning is a means of encouraging well-managed competition.
4) Sanctioning adds an element of “due diligence” that encourages compliance with state association rules and regulations.
5) Sanctioning protects the welfare of student-athletes.
6) Sanctioning protects the existing programs sponsored by member schools and thereby promotes the opportunity for larger numbers of student-athletes to gain the benefits of interscholastic competition.
7) Sanctioning helps reduce the abuses of excessive competition.
8) Sanctioning promotes uniformity in obtaining approval for events.
9) Sanctioning helps protect students from exploitation.
Interstate event sanctioning at the NFHS level promotes financial transparency and equivalency of treatment of participating high schools. NFHS sanctioning forms are available on the NFHS website (www.nfhs.org).