Corporate Care
March 10, 2015
One of the MHSAA’s newest corporate sponsors is arguably one of its most important ever because it will assist the MHSAA’s aspirations to go further beyond the ordinary in promoting student-athlete health and safety.
That new sponsor is Sparrow Health System, and you can read about our new relationship by clicking here.
During the many discussions with Sparrow’s leadership leading up to our partnership, we learned of its membership in the prestigious Mayo Clinic Care Network; and during our review of some of Mayo’s work we reviewed an April 2012 Mayo Clinic article about the risks of concussion in high school football.
The article presented the results of a carefully controlled study of individuals who played high school football in Rochester, Minnesota, during the decade 1946 to 1956.
The conclusion was that those participants did not have an increased risk of later developing dementia, Parkinson’s disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) compared to non-football-playing high school males. The study notes that this was the case even though, compared to today, “there was poorer equipment and less regard for concussions and no rules prohibiting head-first tackling (spearing).”
There is no small supply of data that sheds better light on the head trauma hysteria in sports in general and football in particular. We cite such data as a counter-balance, not as a reason to slow the search for safer ways to conduct school sports. Our new sponsorship is evidence that we are increasing our capacity to do much more.
Change of Pace
January 30, 2015
Michael Schwimer is little known to us in Michigan. He was a 6-8, 240-pound relief pitcher out of the University of Virginia who was drafted in the 10th round by the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008.
In his minor league career, Schwimer earned 20 wins against 10 losses with a respectable 2.51 ERA. He struck out an eye-popping 12 batters per nine innings.
When Schwimer made his Major League Baseball debut for the Phillies in August of 2011, he served up a game-tying home run to the first batter he faced. He was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in February of 2013, and was released by the Blue Jays the following August. You might say Schwimer majored in the minors. That’s where he peaked as a professional baseball player.
As a player, Schwimer made few waves. He wasn’t a “game changer.” And yet, he may still be known as one who helped to change the game itself.
Schwimer is widely reported to be the first MLB player to use a glove that was made of synthetics, not leather (which weighs twice as much), and was made using a plaster cast of his hand. It was a custom-made, form-fitting glove.
The result looks almost like a toy glove, fit for T-ball; but MLB gave it a “thumbs up” in December of 2011. MLB players have been warming to the glove, although very slowly.
To which Schwimer responds: “It takes forever for any change to occur. But when change happens, it happens really fast.”
That almost sounds like something Yogi Berra would have said – like, “it takes forever for change to occur, and then it doesn’t.” But experience very often teaches us the truth of this sentiment.
As the MHSAA reprocesses two of its toughest topics ever – out-of-season coaching rules and 6th-graders’ roles in school sports and the MHSAA – it seems like there is no progress toward change. And no change is the possible outcome of both long journeys.
But it’s also possible that, for one or both topics, the time will come when wisdom and will combine to create constructive change, which then seems to be occurring almost overnight.
My hope is that we find that formula before a rash of problems causes a tipping point that results in a rush toward solutions that are poorly conceived and/or politically imposed by outside entities.