A Backhanded Compliment
April 17, 2012
A year ago this month I listened to the attorney for another statewide high school athletic association pose this question: “Why is it that people quite readily accept inflexible age limitations over a broad spectrum of American life, including sports, but presuppose it is wrong for school sports?”
This attorney was in the middle of a controversy that more recently has visited the MHSAA: an overage student seeking relief from a universally applied maximum age rule. The speaker was perplexed and frustrated by the double standard.
Part of the reason for the double standard rests in the reality that people value the school sports experience so much more than other parts of life, including other sports experiences. Because they want the opportunity to play, they resort to litigation in an attempt to create the right to play.
Another part of the reason school sports is challenged on an issue on which other programs get a free pass is that school sports has a centralized authority, close to home. State high school associations are readily accessible targets, easier both to find and to fight with than most other entities with age restrictions.
And, of course, part of the reason for the double standard is the proximity of interscholastic athletics to academics – the former extracurricular, the latter curricular – the former a privilege for most teenagers, the latter a right of all citizens to age 26.
The reasons school sports are attacked on this issue while other entities are not are reasons really complimentary to school sports: the program is popular, accessible and connected to education. None of these features of school sports, or its age limitation, should change.
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.