An Excuse to Get Together
March 15, 2013
I recently heard a veteran teacher tell the story of years ago when she was leading a church youth group which was meeting regularly to prepare a play. The group met frequently for many months.
Eventually, one of the church members, and parent of one of the youth, asked when the group would be performing their production. The teacher/leader responded, “That’s not the point. The play is just an excuse for getting together.”
Hearing this story resonated with me as I thought back to my years as a high school student who participated in sports, drama and choral music, and as I thought about my two sons who did the same in middle school and high school, and as I thought about my too-brief time as a teacher/coach. The contests, concerts and dramatic performances for the public were almost entirely beside the point.
What was more important by far was getting together with other students to work together on projects outside the classroom. To do positive things, creative things. To experiment under controlled conditions. To develop a team spirit.
This is why it is especially important that schools maintain broad and deep extracurricular options for students. Important particularly that they not only maintain but grow subvarsity programs where the emphasis is more likely to keep focused on practice more than games, and teaching and learning more than winning and recordkeeping.
Culture of Excellence
October 20, 2015
What are the marks of excellence in a high school’s extracurricular activities program that set the most welcoming schools apart? What are they doing to create and perpetuate a culture of excellence in good behavior?
Our counterpart organization in the state of Washington invited the MHSAA and other state high school associations to consider these questions, and to offer examples which would help to recognize the best practices of schools that have a tradition of excellence in good behavior and a welcoming environment.
We discovered that our initial thoughts were like skipping stones on a pond. They barely skimmed the surface of this topic, and we quickly plunged more deeply than answers like comfortable venues, convenient parking, friendly signage, staff assigned to greet contest officials and visiting teams, and upbeat cheering sections.
We concluded that all of these welcoming attributes are the result of committed leadership that communicates clearly and consistently about the expectations of educational athletics, and these expectations are exceptional in how different they are than at every other level of sports.
What is abundant in these schools and scarce in less-welcoming schools is the appointment, and continued training and support, of a full-time athletic administrator who spends all day, every day on the interscholastic program.
And this athletic administrator provides ongoing training and support to coaches, as well as to team captains and other student leadership.
These are the schools where the MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program is provided time and time again to coaches. These are the schools where students have attended the MHSAA’s Team Captains Clinics, Sportsmanship Summits and Women in Sports Leadership Conferences. This is where the School Broadcast Program is providing events regularly and promoting the school proudly.
Simply put, these are schools where administrators are dedicated to creating a proper perspective of school-sponsored, student-centered sports, and spend time on this daily. They have gone beyond signs and slogans to the much more difficult (but more rewarding) work of nurturing better leaders out of coaches and athletes, individual by individual, week after week, season after season.