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Second Half by MHSAA

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.
 

Rocket Science

January 5, 2015

I have always been fascinated by space exploration and in awe of all that is required and must go right to send a space vehicle atop a multi-stage booster rocket from a moving object like Earth, and land it softly on another moving object like the moon or Mars or most recently a massive rock, after a journey of many months and millions of miles. How can people figure that stuff out?
There cannot be a problem of school sports that is more complicated than those of space exploration, except for one feature – which is that our problems deal with people, who are far less predictable and dependable than the laws of physics.
Making matters worse is that we are working with people in a competitive arena, and in an emotional setting, where the objectivity which characterizes the scientific method of rocket scientists is generally if not universally absent.
As long as potential problem-solvers view potential solutions through the lens of what does or does not benefit them in terms of competitive edge, our efforts to make good changes will never launch or, if launched, will miss the target.