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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.

One More Call

November 23, 2011

This blog continues with lessons learned on my highly motivating but sometimes hot seat at the MHSAA.  It’s Lesson No. 4:  Make one more call.

Not 100 percent of the time, but well over 50 percent of the time, if I had made one more call before making or communicating a tough decision, either the decision would have been different or, more often, the decision would have been received better.

Obviously there are limits to this. There always could be one more call.  But it has become a “Roberts Rule of Order” anyway to make one more call. For I can trace an inordinate percentage of wrong decisions, or bad reactions to correct decisions, to not making one more call.

More often than not on difficult decisions, I work in tandem with other MHSAA staff and especially Associate Director Tom Rashid who now routinely makes that one more call. It has improved both our decisions and communications.