Disappointing Seasons
June 24, 2013
It is appropriate to take the longest day of the year to address one of the long tails of the longest lawsuit in MHSAA history.
In August of 2002, a US District Court gave Upper Peninsula schools three choices for remediating gender discrimination in their sports seasons. They were told to switch seasons for girls volleyball and basketball and do one of three additional things:
1. Place boys and girls in the same season in all sports; or
2. Place UP seasons at the same time as Lower Peninsula seasons in all sports; or
3. Switch UP boys and girls seasons in either soccer or tennis.
For a host of reasons in this state and all others, it has made good sense for many sports to schedule boys and girls in different seasons; and for very many years for many good reasons, UP schools have scheduled their seasons differently than LP schools in several sports. So options 1 and 2 were non-starters.
As for the third option: after girls volleyball and girls basketball, the sport for which UP schools least wanted to have switched seasons was tennis. So soccer was the UP sport selected for the court-approved switched seasons for boys and girls.
In July of 2007, the Federal Court denied a Motion by Intervenors to extract UP soccer from its earlier Order so that UP soccer would not be forced to switch seasons for boys and girls. At the same time in a separate Order, the Federal Court denied a Motion to extract LP tennis from the earlier Order.
The LP tennis community was and is as unhappy with the Federal Court Order as the UP soccer community. In fact, LP tennis has had the greatest participation loss of all sports since the seasons changes, including an almost 23 percent decline in boys tennis participation. Almost one-quarter fewer boys are playing high school tennis today than before the seasons switched in the LP!
In any event, the Federal Court determined in 2007 that the switching of boys and girls seasons in LP tennis and UP soccer was legal (after all, the Court itself had offered the changes as acceptable options in 2002); and the Court said that the MHSAA had gone to extremes to explain all the options to schools and listen to their opinions.
Demonstrating their characteristic independence, UP schools have not switched their boys and girls soccer seasons; and some now want the MHSAA to make an exception so they can play in the MHSAA’s fall boys tournament and spring girls tournament. But unlike those schools, which are not specifically addressed in the Federal Court Order, the MHSAA is subject to that Order and cannot make exceptions or grant waivers without violating the Court’s Order.
Based on the rationale of the 2007 Court Order, there is only a slim chance the Federal Court would ever modify its Order. The best chance will occur when there is a Motion filed jointly by the original parties to the lawsuit. It must address both genders, not just girls. It must be a permanent solution, not a temporary exception. It must require no other sport season be changed, for that would just upset another sport community and derail this effort.
We Get It
November 4, 2011
Participation in high school sports, both nationally and in Michigan, increased in 2010-11 versus the year before. It was the 22nd consecutive year of increases nationally, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
The National Federation also conducted a first-of-its-kind attendance survey that tells us in 2009-10 that there were more than a half billion spectators at high school sporting events across the country. There were more than two and a half times as many fans attending high school basketball and football contests as attended college and professional contests combined in those sports.
We should be excited about our programs and encouraged by their historical popularity and continuing growth. But clearly, we are not. In fact, we are a discouraged bunch.
We are discouraged because, behind the good numbers that are reported, we see serious erosion – a subtle “slip-sliding away” of the principles and the popularity of school-based sports. In spite of the good numbers, we sense that all is not well in educational athletics.
In many places athletic directors are losing their full-time dedicated positions, which are essential to oversee a program of high participation, large crowds, great emotion and some risk of injury. In many places students are losing participation opportunities, which are essential components of a complete education necessary to prepare young people for the increasingly complicated and competitive world which they are about to enter.
We get it at the MHSAA. We know what’s happening. Not only do we get it, we also get the hundreds of calls from coaches who don’t have an athletic director available to answer their questions. And we get the hundreds and hundreds of calls from parents and others who can find neither a coach nor an athletic director available to address their concerns or answer their questions. Almost every time a school district dials down its oversight of the interscholastic athletic program, its constituents dial up the MHSAA to answer their questions and address their concerns.
Less money for and less oversight of school sports is a combination tailor-made for problems – for ineligible students and forfeits, for crowd control and sportsmanship problems, and for injuries; and in all cases, for the controversies that follow. There are smarter places to make cuts in our schools and still turn out smart kids.