Minding Our Business: Focus on Mental Health
December 30, 2019
By Mark Uyl
MHSAA Executive Director
For as long as I can remember, rules have played an important role in my life.
My father officiated high school and youth sports. So my brother and I did the same, and were fortunate enough to earn the right to work contests at the collegiate level. Today, my sons are officiating high school and youth sports.
I was hired by the MHSAA as an assistant director in large part due to my officiating background. Rules and regulations remain the backbone of athletics specifically, and society in general, as I learned more acutely when I entered the working world as a teacher and coach, then school administrator.
What also became abundantly clear to me within that framework was that it is our responsibility to provide our students not only the opportunity for competition, but also for our games and practices to take place under the safest conditions possible. From preseason physicals to equipment inventory and facility maintenance, a premium was placed on the well-being of participants and spectators.
Throughout my time at the MHSAA, various initiatives continued to target the growing list of health and safety concerns. My predecessor, Jack Roberts, often pointed to the “4 Hs” of the MHSAA’s health and safety campaign: Health Histories (Physicals), Heat and Hydration, Heads, and Hearts. Those pillars still hold the bulk of the content and resources on the Health & Safety resource pages of MHSAA.com. A few years ago, an extensive section promoting multi-sport participation was developed as an increasing amount of overuse injuries among single-sport athletes was being reported.
This fall, another section has been added as a sub-category to “Heads.” While attending an NCAA meeting in the summer of 2017, the topic of concussions came up, which I assumed to be the No. 1 issue concerning health and safety of student-athletes. It was quickly pointed out that student mental health – not concussions – had become the top health concern among our young people. That knocked me back.
Medical personnel have determined that depression, anxiety and other issues related to mental health are the No. 1 concern among adolescent-age children. There’s a real opportunity to provide some leadership and guidance in this area.
We need to offer resources on the subject, and also be prepared to provide guidance for our membership. The MHSAA has developed a Mental Health Speakers Bureau (please visit our Health & Safety page online). The first statewide Student Mental Health Summit scheduled for Lansing in October provided an opportunity for school principals, counselors, student leadership advisers and student leaders to convene on the topic.
The gathering was quickly sold out, indicating not only the growing nature of concern for this issue, but once again displaying the willingness of our educational leaders to recognize and react to another challenge.
This week, Second Half will publish the latest benchmarks report on the MHSAA’s mental health initiatives and those being undertaken by other states as well.
Century of School Sports: Why Does the MHSAA Have These Rules?
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
September 18, 2024
MHSAA administrators are two trips into their annual seven-stop fall tour that has become a tradition during nearly half of the Association’s “Century of School Sports” – and this year, a focus has been on answering a key question at the heart of educational athletics since long before the MHSAA was formed during the 1924-25 school year.
The MHSAA’s Update meeting series is in its 47th year and includes half-day conferences in seven locations – generally in the Kalamazoo, Metro Detroit, Grand Rapids, Saginaw, northern Lower Peninsula and mid-Michigan areas, and at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. The six Lower Peninsula sessions begin with an athletic director in-service during which MHSAA assistant directors explain recent rules changes and discuss challenges our administrators face on a daily basis (with Upper Peninsula athletic directors participating in a similar in-service during the spring).
Those in-services are followed by a session with executive director Mark Uyl, who speaks to athletic directors, superintendents, principals and school board members on a variety of topics including the MHSAA’s current objectives and ideas for the future, while also reinforcing the longstanding values that remain the bedrock of our daily work.
And that leads to the question he’s presenting across the state this fall:
Why does the MHSAA have these rules?
Frankly, the answer goes back to the beginning of school sports in Michigan – all the way back to 1895, when the first MHSAA predecessor organization was formed.
The first MHSAA Representative Council president Lewis L. Forsythe explained in his book “Athletics in Michigan High Schools – The First Hundred Years” how regulations always have been necessary:
“Eligibility rules are a necessity in interscholastic competition. It was common acknowledgement of this fact that led to the first State inter-school organization in 1895. The rules at first were few, simple and liberal. But with the passing of the years they came to be more numerous, more complex, and more restrictive, again through common acknowledgment of desirability if not of necessity.”
That necessity – and the reasoning behind it – has not changed.
Two main points explain why rules are absolutely imperative for educational athletics to thrive.
► 1. Participation – through providing as many opportunities as possible for students to play – has been the mission of school sports since their start. Rules contribute to the value of participation.
If there are requirements for children to participate in athletics – for example, an academic standard or rules that dissuade students from switching schools every year – then school sports programs mean more to all involved.
If we raise the bar, raise the standards of eligibility and conduct, we raise the value of our school sports programs. If we lower the bar, we lower the value of being part of school sports – because without rules, contest results are meaningless, and the value of participating is diminished.
► 2. We have rules where the stakes are higher, and agreement is lower – because where the stakes are highest, there is the greatest tendency for some people to try to gain an unfair advantage, and the greatest need for rules to curb possible dishonest activity.
This statement goes to the heart of the history, rationale and application of MHSAA rules. Obviously and simply put, school sports mean a lot to those who take part, and that significance is high enough to stoke disagreement – and we need rules to govern those disagreements. We have the most rules for high school sports, where championships are at stake and the possibility of disagreement is greatest.
***
Finally – and perhaps providing the strongest reinforcement of the two points above – is this:
Schools choose to make MHSAA rules their own.
Quite literally, school districts vote annually to be part of the MHSAA – and confirming this voluntary membership comes with the requirement to follow all MHSAA rules.
When schools challenge our rules, they literally are seeking to break the rules they already have committed to uphold.
These rules, and this commitment, are the strength of our organization across 752 member high schools and several hundred more middle schools and junior high schools. They have been constructed on a century of precedents and after considerations by representatives of those same member schools – representatives those schools have voted to elect every school year during the MHSAA’s history.
Previous "Century of School Sports" Spotlights
Sept. 10: Special Medals, Patches to Commemorate Special Year - Read
Sept. 4: Fall to Finish with 50th Football Championships - Read
Aug. 28: Let the Celebration Begin - Read