NFHS Voice: We Must Act on Vaping
September 13, 2019
By Karissa Niehoff
NFHS Executive Director
The issue of vaping has reached a crisis stage across the United States, and leaders in our nation’s schools must take immediate steps to stop the use of these electronic cigarette products by our nation’s youth – particularly the more than 12 million participants in high school athletics and performing arts programs.
On Tuesday, CBS News reported that Kansas health officials confirmed the first death in that state linked to vaping. The CBS News release stated that last week, officials in Indiana, California and Minnesota reported deaths in their states linked to vaping. Previous deaths had been reported in Illinois and Oregon.
Also this week, The Associated Press reported that public health officials confirmed two people in Idaho had developed a serious lung disease linked to vaping. The outbreak of vaping-related lung disease has sickened about 450 people in at least 33 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), causing the CDC to urge people to consider stopping vaping as the number of cases of severe lung illnesses continues to rise.
In February 2019, the CDC reported a 78-percent increase in high school students vaping from 2017 to 2018. Youth e-cigarette use has been called an epidemic by major public health officials.
Students in our nation’s schools have been sold a false bill of goods that vaping is a safe alternative to cigarette smoking – particularly by industry giant JUUL, which held a 76-percent share of the e-cigarette market at the end of 2018 and has wooed the youth market with its products that contain flavors such as cotton candy, chocolate, gummy bear, strawberry and many others.
While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is giving e-cigarette companies until sometime next year to demonstrate that their products can help people stop smoking cigarettes, leaders in our nation’s school activities programs must do everything possible to stop the use of these products by our nation’s youth now – not in 2020.
One educational tool that schools can use immediately is the online course “Understanding Vaping and E-Cigarettes” created by the NFHS with support from the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General. The free course is available on the NFHS Learning Center at www.NFHSLearn.com.
Several articles related to vaping will appear in the September issue of High School Today, which will be posted on the NFHS website.
Dr. Karissa L. Niehoff is beginning her second year as executive director of the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is the first female to head the national leadership organization for high school athletics and performing arts activities and the sixth full-time executive director of the NFHS, which celebrated its 100th year of service during the 2018-19 school year. She previously was executive director of the Connecticut Association of Schools-Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference for seven years.
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