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Deepening Appreciation

May 15, 2012

The first phase of ArbiterGame launches May 23.

The creation of these electronic athletic department administrative tools, tailor-made for Michigan high schools and fully integrated with MHSAA policies and procedures, is bridging most of whatever remaining gap that may exist in the MHSAA leadership’s understanding of and appreciation for the job of its member school athletic administrators and their support staff.

The MHSAA is in partnership with ArbiterSports to create the tools; and at each step of design and deployment, MHSAA staff are consulting with local athletic directors.  MHSAA staff have been engaged in training to help answer user questions from athletic administrators and secretaries.  There have been more hours than we can count when our staff has listened to athletic administrators talk about details of their tasks, and even more hours when our staff has talked about how we best respond to even the smallest details.

The process is helping MHSAA staff appreciate the long list of duties required for every athletic event for every level of every sport.  Never before have MHSAA staff talked so much about local scheduling of practices, games, facilities, transportation, workers and officials.  Never have we had a deeper and broader appreciation for all that is required – day after day, week after week, season after season.

As we develop administrative tools to ease the local school administrative burden, we deepen our understanding of the work in which local administrators are engaged.  We started this project to respond to athletic directors’ urgent requests to solve the problems of inadequate scheduling products and related support services from commercial vendors.  An unanticipated benefit has been to enhance our knowledge of their daily duties.  And we will be much better for it.

Tasks Before Us

May 20, 2014

A year ago the MHSAA convened the first of several task forces that are tackling the kind of complicated topics on which our annual committee meeting process seemed incapable of making sufficient progress.

We assembled a 16-member task force that met four times over six months during 2013 to develop policy proposals to enhance acclimatization and reduce head-to-head contact in football practices. Meeting multiple times, the group could delve more deeply into data and explore emerging trends in both school-based and non-school football. The task force would develop ideas at one meeting, test them with constituents for a few weeks and then tweak the ideas at the next meetings. Task force members had the time to be both philosophical and practical, to think about what would be ideal and then trim that idea to be workable in all sorts and sizes of schools across Michigan.

As a result of this focused, multi-session approach, the Football Practice Proposals sailed smoothly through a vetting process during the winter months, earned the MHSAA Representative Council’s approval in March and will be controlling MHSAA member school football practices this fall.

Meanwhile, we began 2014 with the appointment of another task force to tackle many thorny issues related to junior high/middle schools. Some of the issues are so fundamental that changes in the MHSAA Constitution could be required to change what the MHSAA should be doing with respect to school sports prior to the 9th grade. There is equal chance that the task force could propose some very large changes, or very little change. We don’t prescribe the result, we just provide the forum and facilitation – create focus that has been lacking for too long.

Later this year and during 2015 we see the likelihood that additional task forces will address other tough topics, like out-of-season coaching, redefining what subvarsity means, and possibly address more risk management issues, perhaps in ice hockey and soccer first and then other sports where health and safety questions are raised.