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Permission to Disagree

February 17, 2015

An organization leader who is doing a good job works hard to provide the organization’s board of directors all the history and detail necessary to make good decisions. Questions and concerns are anticipated, and addressed in advance.
As a result of this good leadership, meetings usually run with efficiency, decisions are made without long discussions, and debate is infrequent and never contentious. Votes usually reflect unanimous agreement.
While these are traits of good organizational leadership, a tradition of great organizational dynamics is disagreement.
If the board is always in total agreement, then management is not bringing the board tough enough topics. The subjects are not serious enough. They are operational more than strategic; they are transactional, not transformational.
Among the current topics of school sports in Michigan are two upon which there is certain to be disagreement: (1) the role of 6th-graders in school sports and the MHSAA; and (2) out-of-season coaching rules. We see the lack of consensus at the local level and the league level and between different coaches associations. And we expect the Representative Council will lack unanimity if these topics ever arrive for the Council’s action.
These are large topics, worthy of our time because of the disagreement, not in spite of it.

No Place They Would Rather Be

April 24, 2018

Seven years ago, the Michigan High School Athletic Association and its Student Advisory Council began the MHSAA’s trademarked “Battle of the Fans.” That was 2012.

Buchanan High School has been a contestant five times, a finalist four times and the winner twice ... in 2013 and again this year.

Many of us complain of all that competes for attention of students and spectators. But at Buchanan, the culture is different. And it’s not an accident. Being involved in school and attending school events is the thing to do. By design.

Starting with a few individuals with vision and energy, student engagement has become the norm. Middle school students saw this in 2013. They were invited to be a part of it then; and now they are leading the effort at Buchanan High School.

At Buchanan, attending athletic events is the thing to do – and not just boys sports or winter sports. To attend events, to cheer loudly and to actually think and talk about what good sportsmanship looks like has become a year-round thing.

Buchanan High School and the other two finalists for 2018, Boyne City High School and Petoskey High School – and all the BOTF applicants, are helping to define and defend educational athletics.

View Buchanan’s application video for the 2018 Battle of the Fans