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Well-Roundedness

January 5, 2018

Editor's Note: This blog originally was posted November 22, 2013, and the topic rings true today.


As high school seniors are scrambling to complete their college applications, I’ve reflected on how what is valued is changing.

I was accepted to both of the Ivy League schools to which I applied. This was at a time when evidence of being well-balanced, middle class and Midwestern were seen as strengths on an application. I don’t think I would be admitted to those institutions on the basis of those strengths today.

It appears that our so-called “elite” institutions are now looking for the outlier:

  • Not participation in three different sports, each in its own season; but participation in one sport, year-around; and the more non-traditional the sport, the better.

  • Not committed involvement in activities of the local school; but involvement away from school; maybe the invention of a product or electronic program or the founding of some nonprofit organization that improves the human condition of people in other places.

When we list all the factors that entice high school students to specialize in a single sport, we need to include that society today has made “well-roundedness” less worthy of praise than being “one-of-a-kind,” and that’s diminishing the value of being a team member unless one is the star on that team.

It is highly doubtful that either high schools or colleges are strengthened by these trends. More importantly, it is equally doubtful that single-focus childhood is the strongest way for young people to become good neighbors and community citizens.

What I continue to encourage for most students is that they sample the broad buffet of opportunities that a full-service school offers. To participate in both athletic and non-athletic activities. In both individual and team sports. To be a starter in one sport and a substitute in another. To participate in solo and ensemble. To be onstage and backstage. To taste winning and losing, and both in ample proportion.

A Healthy Future

April 24, 2015

As stated in this space a week ago, the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years complete an eight-year period during which we have addressed for two years each Health Histories, Heads, Heat and Hearts.
What will the following two years – 2017-18 and 2018-19 – bring? Here are some aspirations – some predictions, but not quite promises – of where we will be.
First, we will have circled back to the first “H” – Health Histories – and will be well on our way to universal use of paperless pre-participation physical examination forms and records.
Second, we will have made the immediate reporting and permanent recordkeeping of all head injury events routine business in Michigan school sports, for both practices and contests, in all sports and at all levels..
Third, we will have promoted more objectivity and backbone to removal from play decisions for suspected concussions at both practices and events where medical personnel are not present.
Fourth, we will have provided a safety net for families who are unable to afford no-deductible, no exclusion concussion care insurance that insists upon and pays for complete recovery from head injury symptoms before return to activity is permitted.
All of this is for all sports on all levels, both genders.
We should be able to do this, and more, without judicial threat or legislative mandate. We won’t wait for others to set the standards or appropriate the funds, but be there to welcome the requirements and resources when they finally arrive.