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Second Half by MHSAA

Family Practice

September 21, 2011

During my first winter on the job with the MHSAA I took my 4th-grade son to his first basketball practice, and I watched uncomfortably when his coach directed him to set a pick.  My son didn’t have a clue what that meant, and was embarrassed; and I felt like a complete and utter failure as a sports dad.

During the drive home, my son asked me what the coach meant when he said “set a pick and then roll to the basket.”

So when we arrived home, I recruited his mom to guard my son as he dribbled the basketball in the living room, pretending the basket was over the fireplace hearth.  I came up behind her and blocked her path as my son dribbled by, opening his path to the “basket.”

We repeated the drill, but this time his mom was wiser and scooted by me to guard my son; and when she did so, I rolled toward the “basket” and called for the ball.  My son offered a perfect pass as I moved unguarded toward the goal.

We repeated the plays with me dribbling and my son setting the pick on his mom, and then rolling toward the goal.

Pick and roll, family style.

And my son couldn’t wait for the next practice.

The Safe Play Game Plan

April 21, 2015

On Feb. 10, bills were introduced into both the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, together called the “Safe Play Act,” which addresses three of the four health and safety “H’s” described in my last posting: Heat, Hearts and Heads.

For each of these topics, the federal legislation would mandate that the director of the Centers for Disease Control develop educational material and that each state disseminate that material.

For the heat and humidity management topic, the legislation states that schools will be required to adopt policies very much like the “MHSAA Model Policy to Manage Heat and Humidity” which the MHSAA adopted in March of 2013.

For both the heart and heat topics, schools will be required to have and to practice emergency action plans like we have been promoting in the past and will be distributing to schools this summer.

For the head section, the legislation would amend Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments and would eliminate federal funding to states and to schools which fail to educate their constituents or fail to support students who are recovering from concussions. This support would require multi-disciplinary concussion management teams that would include medical personnel, parents and others to provide academic accommodations for students recovering from concussions that are similar to the accommodations that are already required of schools for students with disabilities or handicaps.

This legislation would require return-to-play protocols similar to what we have in Michigan, and the legislation would also require reporting and record-keeping that is beyond what occurs in most places.

This proposed federal legislation demonstrates two things. First, that we have been on target in Michigan with our four Hs – it’s like they read our playbook of priorities before drafting this federal legislation.

This proposed federal legislation also demonstrates that we still have some work to do.