Concluding Remarks by MHSAA Executive Director Jack Roberts, March 19, 2000, at the Annual Convention of the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association.

While driving this morning, my wife and I heard an author talk about his new book, A Hundred Things to do Before you Die. Very thought-provoking, especially for one who turned a milestone age 19 months ago and whose wife who does so this week.

These chronological milestones cause one to begin to think about his/her mortality and retirement, and cause one to reflect upon his/her career and legacy. Perhaps this is happening to you.

Whether you are near the end of your career, in the first year of your career or somewhere in between, I have two questions to pose to you today, and two illustrations to suggest for answers.

First, what is it we do in high school sports? And second, how do you want to be remembered for what you do?

What is it that we do in high school sports, what we call educational athletics? There is a lot that we can say, but for today I use just one illustration.

Two months ago I had the pleasure of listening to a speech by Ken Dryden who was the goalkeeper for Cornell University's NCAA Ice

Hockey Champions in the 1960's, then was goalkeeper for the Montreal Canadians for eight years, became a lawyer and is now President of the Montreal Canadians.

Dryden said that one of the greatest lessons of sport is that most things go wrong. They almost always go wrong.

Dryden described the hundreds of times that he has watched coaches diagram plays where every defender is blocked and every pattern executed perfectly.

What you learn in competition, said Dryden, is that the plans almost always go awry, the patterns almost always break down.

What you learn in sport, said Dryden, is to not get upset, but to improvise and find another way to get the puck to the goal or the ball in the net.

Dryden asked, what happens to the high school student who doesn't play sports, who gets all A's, who always gets 100 percent on examinations, for whom nothing ever goes wrong? What does this person do in college when he or she gets 80 percent or 60 percent on an assignment or test? What does this person do in life when something goes wrong, as it most assuredly will?

Dryden concluded, Sport is not frivolous: it's another way to learn.

And ladies and gentlemen, it's a way to learn other things.

That's part of the story of what we do in educational athletics. We need to remind ourselves, and those we work for and those we work with, of what it is we do in educational athletics.

Now second, how do we want to be remembered for what we do? Again, I answer with a single illustration.

Last summer, commenting on the so-called untimely death of professional golfer Payne Stewart, ESPN Commentator Jimmy Roberts (no relation of mine) noted that this was Mr. Stewart's best year. His best year professionally, his best year personally, his best year spiritually. Said Roberts: "His final days were his finest days."

When I heard that, I swallowed hard and whispered: "What about me?" What about us?

If you are like me, you don't want to know when the final days may be coming. Which means we have to live each day so it may be counted among our finest days. So it can be said about us as well, the final days were the finest days. Professionally. Personally. Spiritually.

Thank you, and make the final one-third of this school year the very finest ever.