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Designed and Delivered

March 8, 2016

The benefits of school sports do not occur by accident. They occur by design and by delivery.

It is the design of policies and procedures to keep the program student-focused, school-centered, sensible in scope, safe, sane and sportsmanlike. All core values of educational athletics.

The value is also enhanced by the delivery system – the quality of coaching and expertise of administration.

  • Just as the teacher is the key to learning in the academic classroom, the coach is the key to learning on the athletic team. This is why the MHSAA has designed and delivers a face-to-face, multi-level coaching education program anytime, anywhere in Michigan.

  • The other key of the delivery system is the local school athletic administrator with a skill set that meets the complex demands of a program that operates in an arena of high emotion and risk of injury. This is why Michigan often leads the nation in the number of high school athletic directors who have completed the highest level of training and certification of the National Interscholastic Athletics Administrators Association, and why the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association and the MHSAA devote so much time and attention to initial and ongoing athletic director training.

Middle School Membership

September 27, 2013

Of the approximately 2,000 schools serving 7th- and 8th-grade students in Michigan, according to the 2013 Michigan Education Directory that does not include home schools, only 731 are members of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. There are several reasons that explain this gap.

It is not a matter of cost. As with high schools, junior high/middle school membership is free. More likely reasons for the gap between the number of schools serving 7th- and 8th-graders and the number of those schools belonging to the MHSAA are these:

  1. The school district overlooks MHSAA membership. This is often the case when there is no high school connected to the junior high/middle school.
  2. The school district does not sponsor interscholastic athletics at the 7th- and 8th-grade level. At that level, sports are community run, so the school sees no need for MHSAA membership.
  3. The school district does sponsor 7th- and 8th-grade sports but does not want to follow MHSAA rules. And among the rules these school districts object to are these:

  • The limits on the number of contests . . . they’re too few; and/or

    The prohibition of 6th-graders on teams of 7th- and 8th-graders.

This third reason, and especially these two objections, are being reviewed throughout the MHSAA constituency again this year. And I’ll have more to say in our next three postings.