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Butterflies and Helicopters

July 9, 2014

I’m doing as much as I know how to attract butterflies to my garden. For example, I’ve planted a butterfly bush and milkweed plants. I do this because these plants are supposed to attract butterflies and bees, and I know butterflies and bees are essential to producing vegetables.

One of the greatest miracles any person can observe is to watch a butterfly emerge from a cocoon. It was as wondrous to me last summer as the first time I saw it occur when I was a young child, when I first saw a butterfly emerge with damp, shriveled wings. 

I was told then that we shouldn’t interfere, that we shouldn’t help the butterfly escape the cocoon and shouldn’t help spread the wings. We had to let the butterfly struggle. We were instructed that the struggle would give strength to the wings, and that would be essential to the butterfly’s survival.

Childhood is much like this, but too often helicopter parents intervene and interfere with the growth process and, ultimately, weaken their children’s ability to fend for themselves, to overcome adversity and to take flight.

Helicopter parents endanger our butterfly children.

Official Feedback

June 10, 2014

We receive much unsolicited comment about the performances of officials and the conduct of spectators. Here’s some of what the MHSAA does to actively solicit input from its key constituents.

Since 1956, the MHSAA has required member schools to provide numerical ratings of officials who work their contests. Since 1998, the system has also allowed schools to cite particular areas of perceived weakness; and doing so is required whenever a school provides a rating of “5” (worst) on the 1-to-5 scale.

There are many deficiencies in a system like this, including that it sometimes means that coaches or administrators are doing the rating, and some of them have never officiated and may not know the rules and mechanics as well as the officials. The rating can also be affected by whether the school won or lost.

Nevertheless, the system has value, not as a true evaluation of an official’s performance for any particular contest, but – when the ratings of all schools are combined over a three-year average – as a number that the official can use to understand his or her abilities relative to all other officials. And it’s a number the MHSAA can use, along with recommendations of local officials associations and assigners, when considering assignments to various levels of MHSAA tournaments.

It is also noteworthy that for 25 years, the MHSAA has used a reporting form allowed in some cases and required in others, whereby officials report unusual events to the MHSAA office immediately after contests. During a typical fall season, about 300 such reports will be filed; about 250 each winter season; about 200 each spring season. Any school which receives three or more negative reports over three seasons receives a letter of concern from the MHSAA and the school’s name is published in benchmarks; and any school that receives no such reports over three seasons receives a letter of praise.

In 2008-09, the MHSAA also began a program whereby officials could rate school sportsmanship. During the winter season of 2013-14, there were approximately 4,000 reports filed, including 2,400 in basketball. The Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan honors the best 100 schools where BCAM members are coaching.