Rep Council Wrap-Up: Spring 2016
May 13, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
The Representative Council of the Michigan High School Athletic Association continued to create opportunities for participation in high school athletics during its annual Spring Meeting, May 1-2, in Glen Arbor, with a pair of actions designed to assist more schools in forming cooperative programs.
The Spring Meeting of the 19-member legislative body of the Association’s more than 1,400 member schools is generally the busiest of its three sessions each year. The Council considered 18 committee proposals and also dealt with a variety of eligibility rule, postseason tournament and operational issues.
Among proposals approved was a recommendation by the MHSAA Classification Committee designed to promote opportunities for schools demonstrating a long-standing lack of participation in baseball, bowling, competitive cheer, cross country, golf, soccer, softball, tennis and wrestling – provided those schools are part of the same public school district or fall under the same governing body. The new exception will allow, by Executive Committee approval, eligible schools to form cooperative programs regardless of enrollment limits placed on other schools and in other sports – currently, schools forming a co-op program in these sports must have an enrollment of fewer than 1,000 students.
The Council also voted to add opportunities for cooperative programs in all sports at the subvarsity level for schools showing a history of lack of participation. Again with Executive Committee approval, two or more member high schools may form a cooperative at the subvarsity level only regardless of student enrollment restrictions that would prevent the same cooperative at the varsity level. Students on these subvarsity cooperative teams would have varsity eligibility only with their school of actual enrollment should they be brought up to a varsity team.
The Council continued its work on health and safety that has been emphasized during the past seven years of an eight-year campaign focused on “4 H’s” – Health Histories, Heads, Heat and Hearts.
The Council approved enhancements to the MHSAA Physical Exam/Clearance/Consent Forms that in part include an annual requirement that students and parents acknowledge reading concussion education information. This enhancement is consistent with requirements of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
A number of changes regarding rules meeting requirements for coaches beginning in 2017-18 also were authorized. Concussion education will be the focus of the meetings’ health and safety section every other year, with other health and safety topics (including overuse injuries, sudden cardiac arrest and heat illness) alternating in off years. High school assistant and subvarsity coaches will be required to complete the same rules/risk management meeting as high school varsity head coaches after previously having additional options by which to satisfy the requirement. At all levels, coaches will not be allowed to coach in the MHSAA tournament for that sport in that season if they do not comply with the rules meeting requirement.
For football, the Council approved a Football Committee recommendation stating that teams, after their first game, should partake in no more than 90 minutes of collision practice per week. Currently, teams are allowed two days of collision practice after their first game, but this new recommendation suggests a minute limit as well. During other days of practice, players still may wear helmets and other protective pads (although neither is mandatory) and practice blocking and tackling technique against pads, shields, sleds or dummies.
The Council also heard plans for the second year of the MHSAA’s sideline concussion testing pilot program and received a summary of the first meeting of the MHSAA Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation.
Here is a summary of other actions taken by the Representative Council at the Spring Meeting, which will take effect during the 2016-17 school year unless noted:
Handbook/Administrative Matters
• Out-of-season coaching rules were adjusted to allow teams of both genders playing the same sport to both host four-player skill group sessions with different coaches but at the same facility at the same time. Currently, only one four-player group in each sport, per school, can train at a facility at one time.
• Additional language regulating competition against out-of-state opponents prohibits MHSAA schools from participating in events involving teams from other states unless all of those teams at the event are bona fide school teams (not sports academy, club or community teams) and are members of their respective National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) member high school associations, if eligible.
Sport Matters
• In bowling, the number of athletes allowed on an MHSAA Regionals and Finals roster was reduced from eight to seven after past seasons showed the eighth bowler rarely was involved in competition. Teams may bowl up to five during competition and may still have up to two substitutes, but the roster reduction should reduce congestion in the competition area of bowling centers during events.
• In competitive cheer, the Council approved two committee recommendations intended to make uniforms more consistent for all teams: Beginning during the 2017-18 season, all hair bows must be one solid color and not include adornments; and beginning in 2019-20, all uniforms must be free from cutouts and adornments including sequins, rhinestones, studs, glitter, etc.
• For football, in addition to the collision practice recommendation, the Council voted to allow MHSAA staff to request permission from the National Federation to experiment with using a 40-second play clock for the 2016 season. If granted, individual schools, with agreement of opponents and/or their leagues, may request MHSAA permission to conduct a contest using this timing option. Teams automatically would have 40 seconds to snap the ball from the end of the previous play, rather than the current 25 seconds after the official sets the ball and signals for the play clock to begin. (If play has been stopped by a timeout or penalty, the offense still will have 25 seconds to snap from the time the referee sets the ball and starts the play clock.)
• In golf, the Council approved a committee recommendation to add a sixth Regional tournament for the Lower Peninsula for both girls and boys, allowing for three more teams and three more individual players to qualify for the Lower Peninsula Finals. In adding the sixth Regional, the Council also voted to eliminate Lower Peninsula Districts from the boys tournament, pursuant to the Golf Committee’s recommendation. However, while eliminating one round of play for the boys, the addition of another Regional for both boys and girls will bring the field to 108 players for each gender for the MHSAA championship rounds.
• In ice hockey, an additional option to MHSAA overtime procedures was approved that will allow teams playing a two-game total-goal series to proceed to an overtime shootout after the second game to determine a series winner if the total goals are tied at the end of the two games. Schools must receive MHSAA approval prior to the series start.
• In boys lacrosse, a tournament with eight Regionals advancing champions to four Quarterfinals was approved; the current bracket includes only four Regionals and advances those champions to Semifinals in each division.
• In volleyball, the Council approved an adjustment that standardizes where Class C and D Quarterfinals will be played when including one Upper Peninsula and one Lower Peninsula team. In even years, the Quarterfinal will be played in the Lower Peninsula for Class C and the Upper Peninsula for Class D. In odd years, Class C will be played in the Upper Peninsula and Class D in the Lower Peninsula.
The Council also reviewed reports on membership, with 755 senior high schools and 705 junior high/middle schools in 2015-16; eligibility advancement applications, which totaled five for the year; the use of Educational Transfer Forms, which again held steady this year; school violations, attendance at athletic director in-service workshops and Coaches Advancement Program sessions, officials’ registrations, rules meetings attendance and officials reports submitted for the past three sports seasons. The Association’s $10.7 million budget for the 2016-17 school year also was approved.
The Representative Council is the 19-member legislative body of the MHSAA. All but five are elected by member schools. Four members are appointed by the Council to facilitate representation of females and minorities, and the 19th position is occupied by the Superintendent of Public Instruction or designee.
The MHSAA is a private, not-for-profit corporation of voluntary membership by more than 1,400 public and private senior high schools and junior high/middle schools which exists to develop common rules for athletic eligibility and competition. No government funds or tax dollars support the MHSAA, which was the first such association nationally to not accept membership dues or tournament entry fees from schools. Member schools which enforce these rules are permitted to participate in MHSAA tournaments, which attract more than 1.4 million spectators each year.
MHSAA Announces 2016-17 Concussion Data
August 7, 2017
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
The Michigan High School Athletic Association has completed its second year of collecting head injury reports from member schools as it continues to build data that will assist in identifying trends and progress being made to reduce the incidence of head injuries in school sports.
Following a first mandate to do so in 2015-16, member schools again were required to report head injuries to the MHSAA identifying the sport that each student-athlete was participating in and whether the injury was sustained during practice or competition. As reporting for the 2017-18 school year is now underway, schools again are required to designate if potential concussions occur during competition or practice and at which level – varsity, junior varsity or freshman.
The full report of all head injuries experienced during 2016-17 by student-athletes at MHSAA member high schools – including percentages by sport (per 1,000 participants), gender and team level, as well as data tracking when athletes returned to play – is available on the Health & Safety page of the MHSAA Website.
As with the first year of reporting, the MHSAA received data from more than 99 percent of its member high schools after the fall, winter and spring seasons and continued to track each injury report through its conclusion this summer. Member junior high and middle schools also were allowed, although not mandated, to report their potential head injuries; and those findings are not part of the published report.
The 2016-17 concussion report found an 11-percent decrease in the number of confirmed concussions from the previous year. Student-athletes at MHSAA member high schools encountered during 2016-17 a total of 3,958 head injuries – or 5.2 per member school, similar but lower than the 2015-16 average of 5.9. Total participation in MHSAA sports for 2016-17 was 283,625 – with students counted once for each sport he or she played – and only 1.4 percent of participants experienced a head injury; that percentage in 2015-16 was 1.6.
However, MHSAA Executive Director John E. “Jack” Roberts said that while it’s significant to note the similarity in those statistics over the first two years of injury report collection, the lower percentages in 2016-17 don’t necessarily represent a trend – that conclusion can only be made after more data is collected in years to come. Some differences in data from the first year to the second could be the result of schools’ increased familiarity with the reporting system, the refinement of the follow-up reporting procedure and other survey error that is expected to decrease with future surveys.
“Our first survey in 2015-16 raised some initial themes, and the data we collected this past year and will continue to collect will help us identify the trends that will guide our next steps in reducing head injuries in interscholastic athletics,” Roberts said. “However, the necessity for more data to determine these trends should not delay our efforts to experiment with more head protection and modified play and practice rules in contact sports like ice hockey, soccer, wrestling and lacrosse – which all ranked among the top 10 sports for numbers of head injuries per thousand participants.
“We will continue to look for ways to make our good games better and our healthy games safer, and the collection of this data will continue to prove key as we work toward those goals.”
Although the total number of confirmed concussions was significantly lower in 2016-17, a number of findings detailing those injuries fell in line with results of the 2015-16 survey.
Boys experienced 2,607 – or 66 percent – of those injuries, nearly the same ratio as 2015-16 and as boys participation in sports, especially contact sports, remained higher than girls. More than half of head injuries – 55 percent – were experienced by varsity athletes, which also fell within a percent difference of last year’s findings.
A total of 2,973 head injuries – or 65 percent – came in competition as opposed to practice. More than half took place during either the middle of practice or middle of competition as opposed to the start or end, and 52 percent of injuries were a result of person-to-person contact. The largest percentage of athletes – 27 percent – returned to activity after 6 to 10 days, while 23 percent of those who suffered head injuries returned after 11-15 days of rest. All of these findings were within 1-4 percent of those discovered from the 2015-16 data.
Contact sports again revealed the most head injuries. Ranking first was football, 11 and 8-player combined, with 44 head injuries per 1,000 participants – a decrease of five head injuries per 1,000 participants from 2015-16. Ice hockey repeated with the second-most injuries per 1,000, with 36 (down two injuries per 1,000 from 2015-16), and girls soccer was again third with 28 head injuries per 1,000 participants (also down two from the previous year).
In fact, after football and hockey, four of the next five sports to show the highest incidences of head injuries were girls sports – girls soccer followed by girls basketball (23 per 1,000), girls competitive cheer (22) and girls lacrosse (20). Although girls basketball again showed the fifth-highest ratio, it did see a decline of six injuries per 1,000 participants from 2015-16.
Startling indications of another potential trend were seen again in the number of reported head injuries suffered by girls and boys playing the same sports. Soccer, basketball and baseball/softball are played under identical or nearly identical rules. Just as in 2015-16, females in those sports reported significantly more concussions than males playing the same or similar sport.
Female soccer players reported double the concussions per 1,000 participants as male soccer players, while female basketball players reported nearly triple the number of concussions per 1,000 participants (23 to 8). Softball players reported 11 concussions per 1,000 participants, and baseball players reported four per 1,000. The numbers from all three comparisons remained consistent from what the survey found in 2015-16.
It is the hope that Michigan’s universities, health care systems and the National Federation of State High School Associations will take part in analyzing the data and questions that have arisen during the past two years. Michigan State University’s Institute for the Study of Youth Sports submitted a paper titled “Gender Differences in Youth Sports Concussion” based on the 2015-16 results, and that subject will remain closely monitored in 2017-18 and beyond.
“The Institute’s research concluded that there is merit for believing females may be more susceptible than males to having concussions because of structural differences to the neck and head, and also due to neurological differences in the brains of females and males. But the findings also show merit for believing females may be more honest in reporting concussions,” Roberts said.
“We need to find out why. Are girls just more willing to report the injury? Are boys hiding it? These are some of our most important questions moving forward, and they will be critical in our efforts to educate athletes, their parents and coaches on the importance of reporting and receiving care for these injuries immediately.”
Schools report possible concussions online via the MHSAA Website. Reports are then examined by members of the MHSAA staff, who follow up with school administrators as those student-athletes continue to receive care and eventually return to play. Student privacy is protected.
The reporting of possible concussions is part of a three-pronged advance by the MHSAA in concussion care begun during the 2015-16 school year. The MHSAA completed this past spring (2017) the largest-ever state high school association sideline concussion testing pilot program, with a sample of schools from across the state over the last two years using one of two screening tests designed to detect concussions. The second year of the pilot program (2016-17) allowed participating schools to use the sideline detection tests in all sports but mandated they be used in sports (11 total over three seasons) showing the highest prevalence of concussions.
The MHSAA also was the first state association to provide all participants at every member high school and junior high/middle school with insurance intended to pay accident medical expense benefits – covering deductibles and co-pays left unpaid by other policies – resulting from head injuries sustained during school practices or competitions and at no cost to either schools or families. During 2016-17, a total of 139 claims were made – 20 fewer than in 2015-16 – with football (44) and girls basketball (27) the sports most cited in those claims for the second straight year.
Previously, the MHSAA also was among the first state associations to adopt a return-to-play protocol that keeps an athlete out of activity until at least the next day after a suspected concussion, and allows that athlete to return to play only after he or she has been cleared unconditionally for activity by a doctor (M.D. or D.O.), physician’s assistant or nurse practitioner.
In addition, the MHSAA’s Coaches Advancement Program – which includes courses that must be completed by all varsity head coaches hired for the first time at a member school – has augmented for this fall its already substantial instruction on concussion care. Separately, rules meetings that are required viewing for all varsity and subvarsity head and assistant coaches at the start of each season include detailed training on caring for athletes with possible head injuries.
The MHSAA is a private, not-for-profit corporation of voluntary membership by more than 1,400 public and private senior high schools and junior high/middle schools which exists to develop common rules for athletic eligibility and competition. No government funds or tax dollars support the MHSAA, which was the first such association nationally to not accept membership dues or tournament entry fees from schools. Member schools which enforce these rules are permitted to participate in MHSAA tournaments, which attract more than 1.4 million spectators each year.