Another Way to Learn
October 30, 2012
In 2000, I had the pleasure of listening to a speech by Ken Dryden, who had been goalkeeper for Cornell University when it was the NCAA Ice Hockey Champion in the 1960s. Ken Dryden then was a goalkeeper in the National Hockey League for eight years. Then president of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and he’s a lawyer.
Ken Dryden said that the greatest lesson of sport is that most things go wrong; in fact, that they almost always go wrong. He said he’s seen dozens of coaches on hundreds of occasions diagram plays in the locker room where every defender is blocked just so and every pattern is executed perfectly.
But what you learn in competition, said Dryden, is that the plans almost always go awry, that the patterns almost always break down. What you learn in competition is to not get upset, but to improvise and find another way to get the puck in the goal or the ball in the net.
What happens to the high school student, asked Dryden, who doesn’t play sports in high school and who gets all A’s, a 4.3 grade point average on a 4 point scale, 100 percent on test scores all the time, who never has anything go wrong? What happens to that student in college when he or she gets 90 percent, or 80 percent, or worse. What happens to that student when something goes wrong in life?
Dryden concluded that sport is not frivolous, it’s another way to learn.
Tournament Scheduling
May 3, 2016
Scheduling of MHSAA tournaments in ways that minimize conflicts is a difficult task, made easier by following several principles, yet certain to be upsetting to some people.
Spring tournaments pose potential for more conflicts than fall or winter tournaments because of many school-year-ending activities that are important to students and parents – like graduations, proms, baccalaureates, honors banquets, open houses, etc.
The Michigan High School Athletic Association publishes a seven-year calendar of MHSAA tournament dates, first rounds through Finals, that provides schools and their constituents an early alert; and within most sports is a range of dates on which early round contests may be played so that hosts and participating schools can work out the best scheduling for the teams assigned to each site.
Those are two of the scheduling principles that guide the MHSAA – flexibility for the early rounds and firm dates set many years in advance for Finals.
Not only do these principles assist with avoiding all variety of local conflicts, they also assist with avoiding conflicts for students who participate in more than one sport during a single season. Schools can, and do, choose days and times that allow students to participate in the Districts of one sport tournament as well as the Finals of another. Not all conflicts are avoided, but most are.
Another principle that guides MHSAA scheduling is to minimize conflicts with the academic classroom day. While schools, students and parents often make choices that seem contrary to this principle, the MHSAA works harder to avoid academic conflicts than any other conflicts, including social or religious or ceremonial. This is, after all, educational athletics; and one of our core values is to support – not conflict with – the academic mission of member schools.
Not only does the MHSAA publicize its tournament dates seven years in advance, the MHSAA also identifies six to nine months in advance potential conflicts between MHSAA tournament dates and anticipated standardized testing dates, and publicizes the alternative dates for students to complete those tests.
The MHSAA is sponsoring nearly 2,000 tournaments during the 2015-16 school year. Some tournaments will conflict with other activities for some of the nearly 300,000 participants in those events – regretfully, but unavoidably and understandably.