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Committee Work

January 6, 2015

The winter months are the busiest for MHSAA committees, especially for those that must review or prepare recommendations for changes for the following school year.

Each year, up to 20 MHSAA committees consider proposals for Representative Council action relative to MHSAA tournament policies or procedures or Handbook regulations or interpretations.

During school year 2014-15, wherever applicable, the committees are being asked to address health and safety issues as well as policies and procedures relative to subvarsity and junior high/middle school students; and as a result of positive 2014 Update Meeting Opinion Poll responses, each sport committee is being asked to respond during calendar year 2015 and beyond to several concepts for MHSAA tournament seeding.

MHSAA committees are dominated by coaches, but they are not a rubber stamp for proposals that proceed from that sport’s high school coaches association. The difference of opinion often results from the committee seeing things differently than a coaches association leadership that the committee believes is not representative of schools of diverse size, location and demographics.

It is appropriate for committees to ask: Who was not in the room when this recommendation was drafted? Who will not be served well by this change?

When committees go through this process, they tend to reduce the quantity but improve the quality of recommendations to the Representative Council, which increases the percentage of recommendations the Council adopts.

Glue and Grace

October 9, 2012

Recent events, obvious to you, caused me to return to an article the MHSAA published in August of 1999.  Here it is again:

Three days after the tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, a retired athletic administrator whom I respect greatly and listened to intently, called me to say this: 

“You have an opportunity to speak to student-athletes in this state and across the country.  Talk to them about Littleton.”

This administrator wanted me to convey to athletes that they were not a part of the many and complex causes of the Columbine carnage, but they play a small part of the solution to help assure such craziness doesn’t occur closer to home.

The administrator was referencing some of the media reports that suggested the youthful killers took offense to the “jocks.”  Valid or not, these suggestions provide another wake-up call for those who claim that school-sponsored sports are healthy for the participants, school and community.

As a result, part of my conversations with student-athletes this year and the heart of my message to team captains in 1999-00, will be this:

    • Break down the walls, real or perceived, between the athletes of your schools and other students.  Avoid cliques limited to team members or even athletes in general.
    • When you walk the school halls and shopping malls, greet fellow students warmly, regardless of their involvement in school sports or other activities.  Let them know that you know they exist.
    • Become more sensitive to the needs of others, especially those who are different than you.  Appreciate that while you may be more gifted in some things, other students are more gifted in other things.  Show a genuine interest in those things. 
    • Understand that you are not the center of the universe.  Accept that it is your role to serve others, and not the other way around.
    • Don’t condescend, but concentrate on the rich worth of other people.  Seek them out.  Involve them.  Enter into their worlds and invite them into yours until such time as it is difficult to recognize different worlds in your school and community.

I believe this goal for the interscholastic athletic program, embraced by every administrator, participant and parent, would help us:  That  every participant be involved in academic and non-academic matters, athletic and non-athletic activities, be a star in one thing and a substitute in another, be on stage and backstage, in solo and ensemble, experiencing both winning and losing.

A student involved in such an experience as this could not help but provide glue and grace to a student body.

No student-athlete anywhere is remotely responsible for the massacre in Littleton, Colorado.  But student-athletes everywhere have an opportunity to be a small part of an environment that assures such a tragedy is not repeated where they live, study and play.  Talk to them.