Challenging Change
January 2, 2014
Everywhere we turn, we hear or read that things ought to change because, well . . . “The times are changing.”
How we raise children, how we educate students, how we work and worship . . . everything is subject to change, we’re told, because “times change.”
I suppose if we had evidence that the changes made in previous decades, because “It’s the 80s” or “It’s the New Millennium,” had really improved our world, I might be more taken with change for change’s sake today. But I see little evidence of stronger families, better schools, more fulfilling work or more faithful congregations today than in previous decades. Rather, I see a world in worse shape in many ways, even in the only part of that world where I have any expertise: sports.
One of the problems of youth sports today is the over-programming of our kids. A superficial comparison with youth sports of 2014 vs. 1964 reveals that today we have many more well-organized leagues in many more sports for many more kids than 50 years ago. They have better facilities, equipment and uniforms. They have coaches and officials and even boards of directors to hear the complaints and protests.
By contrast, in the 1960s there were just a few organized leagues in a few sports for a few kids; but even those kids spent most of their playing time in pickup games where they chose up sides, set the ground rules, and made the calls themselves. They settled arguments on the spot. They had to bring their own equipment, and take care of it. And if the ball went out of play, they had to hunt for it until they found it; because a lost ball meant not only that the game was over, it might also have meant the entire season was over.
When did kids learn more from youth sports: in the 1960s world of pickup games they managed for themselves, or in the more recent world of adult-directed travel teams and tournaments and trophies? Just because “times are changing,” should we program out all that was good about youth sports 50 years ago?
Of course not. Which is why those in our schools who want more and more contests for younger and younger grade levels must be cautious. It is possible to get too much of a good thing, and to get a good thing too soon.
Controlling Authority
September 22, 2017
On occasion, someone who does not like a rule of sports applied to his or her child’s situation will suggest that the Michigan High School Athletic Association has misunderstood or misapplied the rule ... and then proceeds to tell us (or a court of law) what the rule really says or means.
At such times, we are tempted to quote from the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook’s Foreword to Reading Law by Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner. Judge Easterbrook, who retired in 2013 from the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, wrote: “The text’s author, not the interpreter, gets to choose how language will be understood and applied.”
The true and intended meaning and application of MHSAA rules and regulations are determined at the time they are adopted by their authors – MHSAA Representative Council and staff – not at the time they are challenged by those who find the meaning and application inconvenient.
For this reason, courts customarily, and correctly, do not intervene ... do not substitute their judgment for that of the authors and administrators of the rules.
The controlling case in Michigan, by the Michigan Court of Appeals in 1986, held that courts are not the proper forum for making or reviewing decisions concerning the eligibility of students in interscholastic athletics.