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Youth Should be Served
December 26, 2013
A half-century ago, youth sports were not well organized. Children directed most of their own games, playing each sport in its season, moving from touch football in the side yard to basketball in the driveway to baseball in the vacant lot where an apartment building now stands. They walked or rode their bikes to the venues, they brought their own equipment, they chose up sides and they agreed upon the playing rules and ground rules.
Even if young people played on a community team, they spent more time in pickup games on makeshift fields, courts and diamonds than they did in uniforms at the groomed settings of the formal youth league games.
Gradually, the leagues multiplied and the ability groupings stratified. Elite teams were created consisting of the more talented kids, who were really just more mature for their age; and they were provided with the most games, the longest trips and the largest trophies. It didn’t take long for the other players to feel second class and to drop out of one sport or all sports. In time, even some of the “good” players succumbed to overuse injuries and emotional burnout.
By the time most students reached the earliest grades for school sports, many had already found different ways to spend their time. It is often cited and well-documented that, today, 80 to 90 percent of all youth who ever started playing organized sports have stopped doing so by age 13. Before high school.
So it occurs to me that school districts should have both altruistic and selfish reasons to rethink their approach to junior high/middle school sports, which is now to engage students too late and offer them too little. Schools might be able to provide a better experience for the youngsters and create an earlier and stronger relationship with the philosophies of educational athletics at the junior high/middle school level, and that ultimately will strengthen high school athletic programs.
This pursuit will take great care in order to assure that schools themselves do not make the same mistakes we have seen in overzealous youth sports programs. We will have to find the balance where multi-sport experiences are encouraged so middle school students can experiment with new sports and discover what they might really like and be good at, while at the same time provide enough additional contests that interscholastic programs are a more attractive option than non-school programs that may always allow more contests than school people will allow within an educational setting.
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Grabbing Game-Changers
October 6, 2017
The Michigan High School Athletic Association has not been standing still while the athletic transfer situation has devolved into an eyesore for educational athletics.
Twenty years ago (1997), the association adopted a rule that extended from one semester to 180 scheduled school days the period of ineligibility in all sports for a student whose primary reason for changing schools is alleged and confirmed to be athletics.
In 2014, dissatisfied with the infrequency of that rule’s use and the difficulties it created between schools, the association adopted the “links” rule – the athletic-related transfer rule. This extended ineligibility from one semester to 180 scheduled school days in a particular sport when a non-school experience in that sport links the student to the school team to which he or she is transferring.
The newer rule has been easier to use. It doesn’t require that an allegation be made by the administration of the school from which the student is transferring. It has been less likely to pit one school against another, but more likely to pit parents against the MHSAA.
The new rule has been best used as a deterrent before a student transfers ... a warning. But the rule is of no use if one of the 15 exceptions that provides for immediate eligibility applies – for example, if there was a full and complete change of residence.
That is a gap that gnaws at those who want to nab the “game changers” – those transfers who add to the status of one team while dashing the dreams of another.