Do The Opposite
July 15, 2013
During the summer weeks, "From the Director" will bring to you some of our favorite entries from previous years. Today's blog first appeared Aug. 12, 2011.
In Borrowing Brilliance, author David Kord Murray suggests that some of the brightest, most creative ideas emerge by doing the opposite of what your closest competition is doing.
So when I see school sports in some ways adopting over-hyped and commercialized traits of major college and professional sports or in more ways drifting toward behaviors of non-school youth sports, I sense an absence of creative thinking and doing by the folks in charge.
This wouldn’t worry me if I didn’t foresee that when school sports become too much like non-school sports, folks will begin to earnestly question why schools are spending severely limited time and money duplicating non-school programs.
Which will cause schools to drop those programs – first at subvarsity levels, as is already occurring, and then at all levels.
Which will cause schools to lose what has been well documented to be a great motivator for improving student attendance and grade-point averages and reducing student discipline problems and dropout rates.
It is almost to the point where if I see non-school sports do one thing, I recommend school programs do the opposite.
- Make athletes pay to play?
- Schools should do the opposite!
- Make athletes transport themselves to events?
- Schools should do the opposite!
- Schedule lots of games and little practice?
- Schools should do the opposite!
- Schedule long-distance travel and national-scope events?
- Schools should do the opposite!
- Focus on individuals more than teams?
- Schools should do the opposite!
In anything and almost everything, in large matters or small, schools should tend toward the opposite of what they observe in much of non-school sports. It will likely be better for the student-athletes and tend to preserve the niche school sports has long enjoyed in the world of sports.
Tournament Scheduling
May 3, 2016
Scheduling of MHSAA tournaments in ways that minimize conflicts is a difficult task, made easier by following several principles, yet certain to be upsetting to some people.
Spring tournaments pose potential for more conflicts than fall or winter tournaments because of many school-year-ending activities that are important to students and parents – like graduations, proms, baccalaureates, honors banquets, open houses, etc.
The Michigan High School Athletic Association publishes a seven-year calendar of MHSAA tournament dates, first rounds through Finals, that provides schools and their constituents an early alert; and within most sports is a range of dates on which early round contests may be played so that hosts and participating schools can work out the best scheduling for the teams assigned to each site.
Those are two of the scheduling principles that guide the MHSAA – flexibility for the early rounds and firm dates set many years in advance for Finals.
Not only do these principles assist with avoiding all variety of local conflicts, they also assist with avoiding conflicts for students who participate in more than one sport during a single season. Schools can, and do, choose days and times that allow students to participate in the Districts of one sport tournament as well as the Finals of another. Not all conflicts are avoided, but most are.
Another principle that guides MHSAA scheduling is to minimize conflicts with the academic classroom day. While schools, students and parents often make choices that seem contrary to this principle, the MHSAA works harder to avoid academic conflicts than any other conflicts, including social or religious or ceremonial. This is, after all, educational athletics; and one of our core values is to support – not conflict with – the academic mission of member schools.
Not only does the MHSAA publicize its tournament dates seven years in advance, the MHSAA also identifies six to nine months in advance potential conflicts between MHSAA tournament dates and anticipated standardized testing dates, and publicizes the alternative dates for students to complete those tests.
The MHSAA is sponsoring nearly 2,000 tournaments during the 2015-16 school year. Some tournaments will conflict with other activities for some of the nearly 300,000 participants in those events – regretfully, but unavoidably and understandably.