Crisis Coaching
June 14, 2013
On the highway outside my office window last week, there was a traffic accident that involved two 2012 graduates of a mid-Michigan high school. One was killed, the other appears to be recovering from serious injuries. The young men had been on their way to work.
The next morning’s newspaper coverage – in the news section, not the sports pages – revolved around the boys’ high school football coach. He told the reporter about his former players’ character and their dreams, and what a difficult day he had spent with their families. Later, local television stations made this coach their go-to person for updates.
This plays out so often: a family faces a crisis, and a coach is quickly on the scene. The best part of coaching – close and even lifelong relationships with players – becomes the toughest – being physically present when those players or their families need support.
It has played out so often in my experience that I can’t imagine what is lost in our schools as interscholastic coaching positions are farmed out to volunteers, or programs are eliminated altogether. I can’t imagine what is lost in the lives of students, and many of their families.
The richest part of coaching is relationships, which are often most revealed during the worst circumstances.
The Power of the MIAAA
March 15, 2018
Athletic directors from all corners of Michigan are gathering this weekend for the annual conference of the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association. This MIAAA might be the most powerful organization of its kind in the USA.
The MIAAA is powerful in its professionalism, in its commitment to ongoing professional training for its members.
Michigan has ranked consistently among the top states in the number of NIAAA Leadership Training Courses completed by interscholastic athletic administrators. The MIAAA attracts a higher percentage of its members to its annual conference than most states. And the MIAAA also conducts a smaller workshop for its members in late June and a leadership academy especially for newcomers to the profession early each August.
The MIAAA is powerful in its partnerships, most of all in its connections to the Michigan High School Athletic Association. Most of the MIAAA’s board meetings are in the MHSAA’s facility. The majority of the MHSAA’s Representative Council are MIAAA members. Many MHSAA staff participate in MIAAA programs, and many MIAAA members serve on MHSAA committees. There is a powerful synonymy as we pull in the same direction to serve school sports in Michigan.
This winter, as we watched a member school go off the rails over a transfer student’s eligibility, we were given a reminder of the power of professionalism and partnerships in the conduct of both personal and corporate affairs. While poison spewed from that school and two celebrity attorneys, the MHSAA kept a low profile and stayed on the high road. We worried less about defending ourselves and more about encouraging others to defend the policies and procedures they had adopted for school sports in Michigan. As usual, the MIAAA and many of its individual members led the effort.