Logo
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.
 

Family Focus

September 2, 2014

The year I graduated from college (1970), 40 percent of U.S. households consisted of a married couple and their children. According to research summarized in AARP The Magazine’s June-July issue, the percentage was only 19 percent in 2013.
Even more startling is this: In 1960, five percent of U.S. births were to unmarried women. In 2012, it was 41 percent.
Very far from the most important impact these trends have on life in America today is the slice of American society we serve: competitive school sports.
In the 1960s and 1970s, schools would expect two parents in attendance for each child’s games or meets. In 2014, it is not unusual that one or infrequent that both parents are absent when their son or daughter competes.
Of course, school programs today have more boys sports and an almost entirely new slate of girls sports for parents to observe than two generations ago; and many times multiple events are scheduled simultaneously and force attentive parents to miss one child’s game while another child competes elsewhere.
It’s not my purpose here to point to specific strategies needed to keep parents constructively engaged in school sports. The limit of my commentary now is to offer a reminder, even to myself, that the manner in which we did things when the family unit looked one way is very likely in need of an overhaul, or at least a tweak, when the family unit looks very different.
The challenge, of course, is finding new avenues for old messages – fresh ways to deliver lasting core values. If we continue to proclaim that our brand is family friendly, we will meet this challenge.