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Family Focus

September 2, 2014

The year I graduated from college (1970), 40 percent of U.S. households consisted of a married couple and their children. According to research summarized in AARP The Magazine’s June-July issue, the percentage was only 19 percent in 2013.

Even more startling is this: In 1960, five percent of U.S. births were to unmarried women. In 2012, it was 41 percent.

Very far from the most important impact these trends have on life in America today is the slice of American society we serve: competitive school sports.

In the 1960s and 1970s, schools would expect two parents in attendance for each child’s games or meets. In 2014, it is not unusual that one or infrequent that both parents are absent when their son or daughter competes.

Of course, school programs today have more boys sports and an almost entirely new slate of girls sports for parents to observe than two generations ago; and many times multiple events are scheduled simultaneously and force attentive parents to miss one child’s game while another child competes elsewhere.

It’s not my purpose here to point to specific strategies needed to keep parents constructively engaged in school sports. The limit of my commentary now is to offer a reminder, even to myself, that the manner in which we did things when the family unit looked one way is very likely in need of an overhaul, or at least a tweak, when the family unit looks very different.

The challenge, of course, is finding new avenues for old messages – fresh ways to deliver lasting core values. If we continue to proclaim that our brand is family friendly, we will meet this challenge.

Close Calls

November 22, 2011

The little slip of paper I removed from the fortune cookie read:  “Every important call is a close one.”  That notion may be more critically important in some aspects of life than others, but nowhere in the fun part of life is it any truer than competitive athletics.

Where the winning margin can be a fraction of a second or inch, observed by hundreds or even thousands of spectators, athletes, coaches and contest officials, we know this to be true:  the toughest decisions are the most critical, most defining of all.

School and school sports administrators learn that it is the closest calls – where evidence is least conclusive, opinions most divided or precedent lacking – that have the greatest effect on their school communities and their own careers.

It is at these times – close calls – that leaders show up.  That they speak up.  That they stand up.