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Dangerous Plays

February 26, 2013

The MHSAA’s fourth health and safety thrust for the next four years focuses on competition rules.  It intends to locate the most dangerous plays in each sport and to try to reduce their frequency.  For example:

  • We know that kickoff returns, punt returns and interception returns – plays in the open field with a change in direction – are the most dangerous football game situations.

  • We know that heading the ball in soccer is injurious, especially to younger athletes, and especially to females.

  •  We know that checking from behind is a cause of serious injury in ice hockey.

  • We wonder if protective headgear has a place in soccer, or if protective head and face protection has a future role in softball.

  • We know that ACL injuries in female basketball players and volleyball players is near epidemic and wonder if there is equipment or conditioning that can be mandated or recommended to save our players from what are serious and sometimes career-ending injuries.

We can make changes ourselves – through MHSAA sport committees – for the subvarsity level, but our committees can only make recommendations to national rules committees for varsity level play.  Over the next four years, we will be asking our sport committees to give more time to the most dangerous plays in their sport – identifying what they are and proposing how to reduce that danger.

FBI Tips

July 14, 2014

In a June 9, 2014 National Public Radio story about the first nine months of James B. Comey’s 10-year term as FBI director, two leadership tips emerged that may apply to all types of organizations.

The first is that since the 9/11 tragedy, the FBI has had to change from an agency created to catch bank robbers to an agency that prevents crime before it occurs.

While all comparisons pale next to 9/11, many organizations have had some kind of crisis that demonstrates dramatically that the organization must change fundamentally in order to serve its overarching purpose in a changing world.

It requires an entirely different mindset, perhaps, an entirely reordered set of priorities.

The second point raised in the interview, and very likely the key to accomplishing the first, is that the FBI is now focused on the biggest steps, not just the easiest ones. This is what Director Comey sees is necessary for the FBI to become the agency our nation needs in today’s world.

The required response to a defining-moment crisis cannot be cosmetic change, but must be almost genetic change. Hard change – a focus on deep, systemic issues, not superficial matters.

It requires an entirely different level of commitment than existed before.