We Get It
November 4, 2011
Participation in high school sports, both nationally and in Michigan, increased in 2010-11 versus the year before. It was the 22nd consecutive year of increases nationally, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
The National Federation also conducted a first-of-its-kind attendance survey that tells us in 2009-10 that there were more than a half billion spectators at high school sporting events across the country. There were more than two and a half times as many fans attending high school basketball and football contests as attended college and professional contests combined in those sports.
We should be excited about our programs and encouraged by their historical popularity and continuing growth. But clearly, we are not. In fact, we are a discouraged bunch.
We are discouraged because, behind the good numbers that are reported, we see serious erosion – a subtle “slip-sliding away” of the principles and the popularity of school-based sports. In spite of the good numbers, we sense that all is not well in educational athletics.
In many places athletic directors are losing their full-time dedicated positions, which are essential to oversee a program of high participation, large crowds, great emotion and some risk of injury. In many places students are losing participation opportunities, which are essential components of a complete education necessary to prepare young people for the increasingly complicated and competitive world which they are about to enter.
We get it at the MHSAA. We know what’s happening. Not only do we get it, we also get the hundreds of calls from coaches who don’t have an athletic director available to answer their questions. And we get the hundreds and hundreds of calls from parents and others who can find neither a coach nor an athletic director available to address their concerns or answer their questions. Almost every time a school district dials down its oversight of the interscholastic athletic program, its constituents dial up the MHSAA to answer their questions and address their concerns.
Less money for and less oversight of school sports is a combination tailor-made for problems – for ineligible students and forfeits, for crowd control and sportsmanship problems, and for injuries; and in all cases, for the controversies that follow. There are smarter places to make cuts in our schools and still turn out smart kids.
Inside Information
September 25, 2015
The source you choose selects your news.
If your source is Fox News, you will get different stories than from ABC, CBS and NBC, and different slants on the same stories.
If your source is publicly supported radio, the news stories will be different than on commercial radio stations; and if you choose Public Radio International, you will hear some topics that are much more frequently and deeply covered than by National Public Radio.
PRI is, for example, where I was following the crisis of refugees fleeing from Northern Africa to Europe long before that story became headlines for other news sources. Did you know, for example, that there are more displaced people in the world today than at any time except World War II?
Similarly, if I were to listen only to coaches of one sport or another, I’m likely to learn about issues that affect that sport, but not much about issues that affect other sports, or affect schools as a whole. Our sources must include input from all sports.
Our sources must also include the perspective of principals who deal with academics more than athletics and who are as attentive to the essential needs of harassed, homeless, displaced and disabled students as they are to the athletic desires of gifted and talented students.
And our sources must include the even broader perspective of superintendents who are fighting for the financial life of their districts. Sometimes that means they are throwing open the doors of their schools and recruiting students from far and wide to replace the dwindling school age children of their local population.
Ours is an association of schools. Not an association of football coaches, or of all coaches. Ours is an association of schools whose directions are determined by blending top-down with in-the-trenches views.
From our vantage point at the Michigan High School Athletic Association we do not learn about everything happening in our state’s secondary schools. But from the myriad calls, emails and letters we receive and the many meetings we have with administrators, coaches, officials and students, we know much more than those who are on the outside looking in.