Cooperative Spirit
May 13, 2016
The 2016-17 school year will be the 29th since “cooperative programs” were first approved for MHSAA member high schools; and in that first year, it was but a modest step: two or more MHSAA member high schools whose combined enrollment did not exceed the maximum for a Class D school (then 297) could jointly sponsor a team. The intent, of course, was to help our very smallest member schools generate enough participants to have a viable program in one or more sports that was of interest to some of their students.
Over the years, the cooperative program concept has expanded to member schools of larger enrollment and to member junior high/middle schools. As of April 7, 2016, there were 260 cooperative programs at the high school level involving 450 teams, as well as 88 cooperative programs at the junior high/middle school level for 331 teams.
During the 2016-17 school year, there will be two new opportunities for MHSAA member schools to consider with respect to cooperative programs.
First, cooperative programs will be an explicitly stated option at the subvarsity level in any sport.
Second, maximum enrollments have been eliminated to help public multi-high-school districts start and complete competitive seasons in communities that have struggled to sustain programs in baseball, bowling, girls competitive cheer, cross country, golf, soccer, girls softball, tennis and wrestling. This is a three-year experiment.
It is declining enrollment more than a desire to save money that the MHSAA Executive Committee looks for when approving cooperative programs. Combining enrollments to create new or preserve existing programs is the intent; co-oping to reduce expenditures is not.
Attending to Football
November 29, 2013
The interscholastic football season comes to an end this weekend with the MHSAA Finals at Ford Field, but the most talked about sport in high schools today will continue to make headlines for many months into the future.
Some of the headlines will introduce topics that are merely footnotes compared to what is really most important, that being the efforts to keep school-sponsored football the safest and sanest brand of football in America.
At the center of these efforts has been a task force appointed by the MHSAA to work throughout 2013 to advance these two objectives: “To promote the value of interscholastic football and to probe for ways to make the sport safer in Michigan.”
The tangible results of the task force’s four meetings are these:
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- A proposal to the MHSAA Representative Council to revise football practice policies to improve acclimatization of players and to reduce head trauma. The proposal goes to the Representative Council Dec. 6 for discussion, then to the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association and MHSAA Football Committee in January and to the MHSAA League/Conference meeting in February, before returning to the Representative Council for action on March 22.
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Three proposals to the NFHS Football Rules Committee to modify playing rules to promote player safety.
- A variety of print, online and broadcast promotions on behalf of the value of interscholastic football and its safety record and to encourage healthier out-of-season activities by students in all sports.
MHSAA research informs us that participation in 11- or 8-player football in member high schools this fall was down 3.0 percent compared to 2012, and down 7.63 percent since the 2008 season. The biggest reasons cited by those surveyed are, in declining order, safety issues, declining enrollment, athletes playing other school or non-school sports, cultural changes and pay-to-participate.
It is important to note that participation is not declining everywhere, not even everywhere where enrollments are down and participation fees are up. It is important to note also that some other sports are in much greater decline than football in terms of high school participation.
It is difficult for me to imagine my life without football as a part of it. It’s difficult to imagine schools and communities without football. I very much doubt that the absence of football would have improved my life or the schools and communities I’ve been a part of. It’s a sport that needs our attention, not its extinction.