Valuing Variety
January 2, 2018
Editor's Note: This blog originally was posted March 28, 2014, and the topic continues to be of prime concern today.
Some people see the declining number of multiple-sport athletes in our high schools as a sign that students don’t want the multiple-sport experience anymore and would prefer to specialize in a single sport.
Maybe that’s not what students want at all. Maybe, if we actually asked them, they would tell us so.
In fact, I hear that students dislike and resent the pressure their high school volleyball coach puts on them in the winter, or their basketball coach puts on them in the spring, or their baseball or softball coach puts on them in the fall and the pressure that coaches of other sports, both team and individual, place them under year-round.
What I hear when I listen to students – and admittedly, I often get to talk to the cream of the crop (e.g., our Student Advisory Council and Scholar-Athlete Award recipients) – is that they want to play multiple sports and that they need us to hear that and to help them.
I remember that when we began bowling as an MHSAA tournament sport a dozen years ago, we thought we would be appealing to and involving students who play no other school sport. We are. But we are also engaging multiple-sport athletes.
At the MHSAA Bowling Finals four weeks ago I observed many students in school letter jackets sporting letters for soccer and bowling, cross country and bowling, track and bowling, and other combinations.
It proved again to me that very many students really do want to participate in a variety of sports and that one of our core operating principles should be that we continue to facilitate and validate that experience for as many students as possible.
My Privilege
June 29, 2018
The National Federation of State High School Associations is at this moment conducting its 99th Annual Summer Meeting in Chicago, the city where the organization was born almost a century ago.
For all but seven months of the past 62 of these 99 years, there has been a John Roberts as one of the NFHS member state association executives – my dad in Wisconsin for nearly 30 years, and I in Michigan for 32.
I attended my first NFHS Summer Meeting when I was eight years old. Five of us in an un-air-conditioned family sedan drove nearly the full length of US Highway 41 from Wisconsin to Miami Beach at the southern tip of Florida.
My younger sister learned to swim there. My older sister found a boyfriend there. And I guess I discovered my life’s work there.
A life’s work from which I will retire this summer.
Including those on the job today, there have been just 324 individuals who have ever served as full-time chief executives of the NFHS member high school associations. Just 324 who appreciate the pressures and the opportunities of this work the way my dad and I have.
These jobs are precious gifts and a rich blessing ... unusually rare opportunities to serve and influence students, schools and society.
For years I’ve concluded most of my correspondence with the phrase, “It’s a privilege to serve you.” I’ve meant it.