Logo

The Best Is Yet To Come

June 17, 2014

My last posting was built on six words from the novel, No Small Mischief, a fictional memoir of life in Nova Scotia’s northernmost region. Today’s posting is launched from an 11-word passage from the same work: “Living in the past is not living up to our potential.”

How horrible it is to peak in high school. 

To remember high school as the best days of life is not such a problem, unless it is true. If, in fact, we were at our best during our high school years, then we have failed to fully develop as human beings.

I heard an athletic director close a senior student-athlete awards program recently by saying, wisely, “I hope you will visit us, but not too long or too often. You need to get on with your lives.”

The high school experience – including competitive athletics – is not the end, not the fulfillment of anything. It is, at its best, the launching pad for life.

That it can be the best days of one’s youth should not make school sports the best years of one’s life.

The Goldilocks Solution

December 2, 2014

Somewhere I read that there’s little to gain by trying to bring simplicity to what’s complex or sanity to what’s crazy. But we keep trying.

Last month we compiled results of a survey through which 513 MHSAA member high school athletic directors provided information about the out-of-season activities of their students and coaches and offered opinions regarding ideas to modify the rules that control those who want to do so much that it would force others to do more than they believe is sane for school-sponsored, student-centered competitive athletic programs.

A nearly equal number of schools from each classification were included in the 513 schools that responded to this opportunity to add more information and insight to this year-long look at MHSAA out-of-season coaching rules.

Some preliminary number crunching reveals (without surprise) that there are differences between large schools vs. small and more populated areas vs. less – differences both in the amount of organized out-of-season sports activity in which students engage and in the openness of their athletic directors to new ideas for regulating out-of-season activities by students with their school coaches. Generally, larger schools and/or schools in more populous areas see students participating in more organized out-of-season athletic activities, and they are more open to changing how those activities are regulated.

And so it continues ... finding that sweet spot that fits the perspectives and problems of a very diverse membership that supervises a wide variety of sports. The “Goldilocks” solution that doesn’t do too much, or too little.

The results that I’ll be looking for as we continue to gather information and facilitate discussions is no specific set of rule changes, but rather, to move MHSAA policies and procedures toward these two goals:

  • Rules simpler to understand, follow and enforce. Even good rules are bad if they are too cumbersome.
  • Rules that do not add pressure on students or coaches to focus on a single sport year-round. There is plenty of data that informs us that parents do too much of that already.