Valuable Volunteers
July 18, 2017
One of the most encouraging aspects of the job I have enjoyed for more than 30 years is what I see on display whenever I attend regular-season contests and Michigan High School Athletic Association tournaments. It's the many volunteers who make the events run smoothly.
From parking lot supervisors, to ticket sellers and ticket takers, to concession stand cooks and servers, to program sellers, to the dozens of people needed to time and measure and otherwise administer large meets in individual sports ... volunteers are the blood pulsing through the veins of school-sponsored sports events.
They work in numbers that amaze me; they work with consistency and longevity that humbles me. They show up years after their own children were participants. I can attend the same event several years in a row and see most of the same volunteers serving year after year. Serving with enthusiasm and with joy, and with no more compensation than a T-shirt, sandwich and soft drinks.
Appropriately, our trophies and medals go to the top-performing student-athletes. But my gratitude goes to these many behind-the-scenes adults.
Thanks for another great year.
Counterpoint
February 13, 2018
There is a segment of those who are interested in public education who believe it is their privilege and responsibility to educate their children however and wherever they wish. Some parents believe they should be able to enroll their children anywhere, subsidized by taxpayers, and have immediate and full access to all the school’s programs and services.
This is a factor that helps to fuel transfers in school sports. But for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Watching on the sidelines and wringing their hands are the parents of those students who are displaced from positions and playing time on school sports teams by those who have dropped into their programs after moves from other schools ... moves necessitated not by changes in parents’ employment or other imperatives, but by parents’ changing attitudes about their local school sports team.
Transfer rules are designed in part to protect those who are not unhappy, who are not dissatisfied with a coach or playing time or the offensive system the team is using, or are willing to work through issues and learn from them. Transfer rules are designed for those who have put in their time within a program and are anticipating their opportunity to play.
Within every chorus singing “Let him or her play,” there are many others humming a different tune.