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One Community at a Time

July 24, 2012

In the northwest corner of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula there is a group of volunteers who are focusing on the character-building potential of youth and high school sports.  They are teaching the principles and recognizing the people that make character education happen frequently and by design, rather than only rarely and by accident.

The group is known as Beyond The Scoreboard. It draws on resources from Character Counts, Positive Coaching Alliance and others; and it delivers character education through inexpensive workshops for athletes, coaches, officials, sports leaders and spectators. 

Beyond The Scoreboard also conducts a Champions of Character Awards Dinner, the 8th Annual held June 11, 2012 in Petoskey.  I’ve attended most and was the speaker in 2011.  This year’s speaker was my counterpart with the Arizona Interscholastic Association, Commissioner Harold Slemmer.

At an event like this there are many moments that uplift the best of youth and school sports.  Here are two from this year’s banquet:

  • When East Jordan High School runner Luke Hawley was thanking those who helped him be the kind of person who would be honored as the high school male athlete, he thanked many people, including the maintenance person who prepared the high school track.  I had never before heard a high school student-athlete include a groundskeeper in his support group.  And it told me a lot about this young man.  He’s likely to be a good employee, spouse and parent someday.
  • When a member of the Petoskey High School football team was introducing his coach, Kerry VanOrman, who was being honored as the high school coach, he said the first thing Coach VanOrman would say to every player he greeted was a question about something other than sports; and he would be the same way to every player, no matter how skilled.  He’s coaching more than a sport; he’s coaching kids.  Helping them become better people.

After a single banquet, an attentive person could develop a game plan for character building for an entire season.  Imagine all that’s been shared to improve youth and school sports after eight years!  Congratulations to founder Jack Taylor, Executive Director Ron Goodman and all board members and volunteers.

Transfer Culture

March 14, 2017

It is rare when a problem of major college athletics doesn’t eventually become a pollutant of high school athletics. A current issue demonstrates the point.

In 2015, NCAA research reported that about 40 percent of Division I men’s basketball players who had entered an NCAA institution directly from high school as freshmen had departed that institution by the end of their sophomore year.

Approximately 44 percent of the transfers were to other Division I programs, 33 percent to Division II programs, one percent to Division III, and 23 percent to non-NCAA colleges. Nearly 90 percent of all transfers said they changed schools for athletic reasons.

At the 2016 Men’s Final Four, NCAA President Mark Emmert stated that the issue of transfers is one of the most hotly debated in NCAA men’s basketball and football.

The culture that contributes to this is created in youth programs, starting even before students reach high school. There are no rules that govern players’ change from one non-school team to another, year after year. Players, parents and handlers talk with each other about where players can find the coach or team that will give them the best shot for a college scholarship or to fulfill their dreams of a professional career; and they will drive any distance from their homes to connect with that non-school team or coach.

This culture has infected high school sports, as witnessed by what appears to be increasing numbers of students who change schools for reasons more related to their non-school contacts and their college dreams than their high school experience, either athletic or academic.

These pressures will only increase under the current model of major college sports that treats superior athletes as if they were superior human beings and lavishes publicity and perks upon them. Until the major college sports experience is disincentivised, those colleges will have transfer troubles. And so will we.