Logo

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. 

Competitive Classes

May 7, 2013

After the classifications and divisions for MHSAA tournaments in 2013-14 were posted on mhsaa.com last month, there were more questions and comments than in previous years.

Some of this results from electronic media – how quickly our information gets distributed far and wide, and how easy it is for people to email their opinions.  This isn’t bad.

But we were able to discern in the feedback that there is poor public understanding of school enrollment trends in Michigan.  For example, many people objected that the spread between the largest and smallest schools in the classifications and divisions has grown too large.

In fact, taking the long view, the difference between the largest and smallest schools has been shrinking:

  • In Class D, the difference between the largest and smallest school has trended downward over the past 25 years, and will be approximately 20 percent smaller for 2013-14 than in 1989 (to 189 from 247).
  • The same is true in Class C, although less dramatically (to 221 from 259).
  • The same is true in Classes B and A, although less consistently (from 496 to 464 in Class B; and from 2,111 to 1,888 in Class A).

If there is need for more than four classes in basketball or girls volleyball, or for more than four “equal divisions” in most other sports, it is not because of the reason most often cited.  That reason – that the enrollment spread is growing too large – is not supported by the facts.