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When Seasons Matter
April 6, 2018
There are people who want to fuss with Michigan High School Athletic Association tournament structures because, they say, they “want the regular season to mean something.” We need to guard against that thinking and such talk.
In school sports done right, the regular season always means something, even for a team which loses every game.
In school sports done right, practice means even more, because coaches and athletes interact in practice far more than games.
People who want to provide tournament postseason perks to teams which win more games than others are likely to reward the wrong things, like the teams that gathered transfers from other schools.
They are likely to miss the right things, like the teams that started slowly but improved over a truly meaningful season of practices and contests.
They are likely to miss the fact that some teams lost key players due to ineligibility or injury or gained them late in a season and where, in either case, team records are not a meaningful measure of the season.
Let’s not be fooled. Let’s not be trapped in the mindset of sport models that are more about business than education.
Gerrymandering postseason tournaments does more to undermine the integrity of the postseason than honor the regular season.
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Momentum
August 4, 2017
The 2017-18 school year holds great potential for the Michigan High School Athletic Association and for school sports in Michigan. Only time will tell us if the potential is greater for good than for bad.
There is positive momentum in promoting participant health and safety as the last of three advances in the health and safety preparation of coaches is implemented, as high schools’ mandatory concussion reporting and MHSAA-purchased concussion care “gap” insurance for 6th- through 12th-graders enter year three, and as higher limits of accident medical insurance is purchased by the MHSAA for all member junior high/middle schools and high schools, effective this month.
There is positive momentum in serving and supporting junior high/middle school programs where membership was up five percent last year over the year before. The MHSAA had an enjoyable, brand-broadening experience as “presenting sponsor” at a half-dozen junior high/middle school league track & field meets this past spring; and the MHSAA will be doing so during fall, winter and spring junior high/middle school tournaments during the 2017-18 school year.
The MHSAA’s Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation continues to develop strategies that focus on junior high/middle school students and their parents and to address the greatest health threat in youth sports – overuse injuries as the result of year-round sports specialization; and the Task Force is developing tools that help define and defend educational athletics.
Beneath these three over-arching themes, the MHSAA is addressing some pressing new problems – like what to do about venues that are no longer available to us for MHSAA tournaments in girls and boys basketball and individual wrestling – as well as some chronic concerns – like recruiting and retaining contest officials and athletic-related transfers. The loss of officials and the rise of athletic-related transfers are problems of nearly epidemic proportions.
The amount of resources the MHSAA will be able to bring to all these topics will be affected by the number of controversies that arise during the normal course of essential business in administering programs, policies and penalties. Such controversies can knock us off message, and rob us of resources that could allow us to be doing more of the positive things we know need to be done.
There is also the potential that we get distracted by the National Federation of State High School Associations, some of whose member state association CEOs want to talk more about NFHS sponsorship of national tournaments, even after decades of opposition to such events from both state and national educational associations, as well as clear and convincing evidence that no organization – from Little League to the NCAA – has been able to conduct national tournaments without adding to their existing problems and creating new pressures and new problems.
Excesses and abuses in school sports have their own momentum. We should not create more by NFHS sponsorship of the very events it was created to end.