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A Can-Do Response

January 5, 2015

Michigan has a tradition of some of the nation’s most lenient out-of-season coaching rules, especially in the summer; and yet, the few rules we have are sometimes blamed for driving students to non-school programs.

Nevertheless, there is some validity to the criticism. It is observably true that non-school programs seem to fill every void in the interscholastic calendar. The day after high school seasons end, many non-school programs begin. The day a school coach can no longer work with more than three or four students, a non-school coach begins to do so.

The challenge is to balance the negative effects of an “arms war” in high school sports against driving students toward non-school programs. It’s the balance of too few vs. too many rules out of season.

The out-of-the-box compromise for this dilemma could be to not regulate the off season as much as to conduct school-sponsored off-season programs in a healthier way than they normally occur, i.e., to move schools back in control of and in the center of the non-school season. To not merely regulate what schools and coaches can’t do, but actually run the programs they can do and want to do.

Of course, this would require more of what schools have less of – resources. School administrators who may be in agreement that schools should operate off-season programs to keep kids attached to in-season programs still balk because they lack resources. At a time when resources are being cut for basic support of in-season programs, how could they justify spending more for out-of-season outreach?

Ultimately, in discovering the sweet spot for out-of-season interaction between school coaches with student-athletes, we need to give at least as much attention to providing more opportunity for what they can do together as for what they can’t do.

Transforming Coaches

October 12, 2012

Forty-two years ago this past August, I showed up at a high school near Milwaukee for my first teaching and coaching job.  I remember being introduced to the football team just before the first practice, and then just 60 minutes later, on the field, I heard a player call me “coach.”

The next day I overheard one player say to another, “Coach Roberts said . . .”

In 24 hours, I had been transformed from Jack Roberts to Coach Roberts.  And it gave me a very special feeling.

After parents (and sometimes before them), the coach is the most important person in the educational process of school sports.  Good coaches can redeem the bad decisions that administrators or parents sometimes make; and bad coaches can ruin the best decisions of administrators and parents.

Coaches have enormous influence over how kids think, how they act and what they value.

There is no time or money better spent in school sports than the time and money spent on coaches education.  Every coach, every year in continuing education regarding the best practices of supervision, instruction and sports safety, as well as in ethics, values, sportsmanship and leadership.

The MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program should be the centerpiece of every school district’s ongoing, multi-faceted training program for coaches.  We expect continuing education for classroom teachers.  Why would we ever consider less for those who work with large numbers of students in settings of high emotion and with some risk of injury attended by hundreds or even thousands of spectators?