NEED FOR BRIGHTER LINES
March 2002

For 15 years I have identified sportsmanship atop the lists of both the major problems confronting school sports and the significant projects we would be undertaking in future years.

I'm moving a new topic to the top of these lists.

I now believe the major problem confronting school sports and the most significant project we must undertake has to do with the blurring of the line between school sports and community sports.

There's nothing wrong with most community sports programs – they're usually good, healthy recreation for youth, with positive skill and life lessons, and some of these programs do a better job than school sports with officials' training, safety and sportsmanship. However, for the most part, community sports are not – and must not be – school sports.

There is a place for sports in schools because the interscholastic athletic program is different than what is available outside of schools. The differences justify the time, money and sponsorship of schools. Without the differences, schools have no business wasting educators' time and taxpayers' money.
The differences should be seen in what school sports seek to do and how they seek to do it.

In school sports, the emphasis is on local participation, not regional and national tournaments. The schedule respects the academic day and school year. It respects the desire and need for students to participate in more than one sport and in more than sports. It leaves time for other school activities and for studies.

The program is not intended to promote a single elite or travel team or one particular high-profile sport. It has a place for subvarsity as well as varsity teams, junior high school as well as high school teams, and non-revenue producing sports as well as those with substantial gate receipts.
The program is intended to be governed by school boards, managed by school administrators and coached by school employees, or those directly responsible to school employees.

The travel is short, the awards are modest, the officials are registered, and proper attention is given to sportsmanship and safety.

Some of these hallmark characteristics of educational athletics are not as common as they once were. For example, program expansion and resource contraction have caused many local schools to seek funding sources outside the school's operating budget and to hire coaches from outside the school faculty. Gradually, this blurs the line between school and community programs.

A generation ago, sports started in the schools and community programs followed. Today, more often the opposite is true: community programs gain popularity and then those citizens ask schools to have programs as well. That's the common model for introducing to school such sports as soccer, ice hockey and skiing. Those programs begin with blurred lines.

As I contemplated what the MHSAA might do to slow the blurring of lines and perhaps reestablish brighter lines, I realized that the local pressures have also led schools to modify the policies and procedures of their state organization. So today, even the MHSAA Handbook adds to the blurred lines. For example:

1. Certified Teachers When athletic programs expanded after World War II to accommodate new and different sports and more levels of teams, and then expanded in the 1960's and 1970's to provide opportunities for girls, schools were forced to relax and then eliminate the requirement that only certified teachers serve as coaches.

2. Cooperative Programs This initiative began in 1988 to allow students at our very smallest schools, which lack the participants and resources to sponsor certain sports, to join with other schools to jointly sponsor teams.

3. Eligibility Lists. Required to be sent to the MHSAA until 1990, and relaxed in 1997 to be exchanged between opponents, Master Eligibility Lists must now only to be kept on file at each school and produced upon request.

4. Non-School Opponents. In the earliest years of school sports, competition by school teams against non-school teams was common until regulated out of existence. Since 1994, school competition against non-school teams has been allowed again, in all sports except football.

5. Continuing Eligibility. This provision was adopted in 1996 to permit students to remain eligible at one school after they transfer to another MHSAA member school which has a specialized curriculum but no interscholastic athletic teams.

The MHSAA has participated in the blurring of lines because it has listened to and responded to its member schools' needs. But I submit, what is needed most now is a loud and steady voice to resist any more blurring of lines and to reestablish some brighter lines.

School sports' future depends on bright lines, on distinct contrasts with all other sports programs.

--MHSAA Executive Director Jack Roberts