Championship Comments
April 23, 2013
Tom Lang wrote for the Lansing State Journal on April 5, 2013, about our most recent four-time MHSAA wrestling champion who, in keeping with our policy of not naming students in blogs, is not named here.
What really makes me want to name the Fowlerville senior heavyweight is that, in Lang’s article, the four-time champ freely names his practice partners over the years and credits them for his success.
With maturity and humility uncharacteristic of athletes twice his age, our newest of 17 four-time champs said: “I definitely had some great practice partners who were beating me up;” and he named five of them who he said “were all great practice partners for me. They were quicker so I had to make sure I stayed in good position and worked a lot on speed and more fluid technique.”
This senior, who pinned every opponent he faced this past season continued: “A lot of people might have been four-time state champs but they get one injury and that ruins it. Four years can be looked at as a very short time, but that’s a long time with wrestling and how you can face injury. There seems to be a lot of knee torqueing and shoulder injuries, the joints – and it really wears at you going four years in high school. It can be brutal on the body. So just staying healthy four years so you get a chance, is just the start.”
Giving credit to good partners and good luck. I’m thinking this young man already knows much more about life than wrestling.
Double Win Practice Policies
February 22, 2013
The MHSAA’s third health and safety thrust for the next four years focuses on practice rules, especially early in the fall season.
Here we will be especially interested in finding “double wins,” that is, policies that simultaneously enhance acclimatization and reduce head contact.
In football, for example, this could mean increasing the number of days without protective pads before the first practice in full pads. Michigan requires three days, but there’s a trend toward four or five days in other states.
Football might also limit any day to a single practice in pads, following the lead of colleges and a growing number of state high school associations that are restricting two-a-day practices in pads on the same day or on consecutive days.
Both of these changes could make acclimatization more gradual and healthy, and reduce the occurrences for contact to the head: two priorities as practice policies are reviewed and revised.
The MHSAA’s sport committees, sometimes with their work augmented by that of special task forces, are being charged with these responsibilities.