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Second Half by MHSAA

Fixing Things

October 6, 2011

Leaders of schools and school sports have rarely been asked to do more with less than is demanded of them today.  Their plight has brought back to my memory that many years ago, a pastor from North Carolina, Stephen M. Crotts, told this story – one that I’ve kept in my files, and in my heart, ever since.  He said:

I started my ministry in Charlotte County, Virginia.  And there was a deacon in the church there named Harvey Milton who ran a seed and feed store in Drakes Branch.  Harvey and his wife Margaret sort of adopted me and helped me along during those first tentative years of the ministry.

I remember one day after I’d been there nearly three years.  I was struggling with trying to do too much, trying to keep everybody happy, trying to fix all the hurts.

I stopped by to see Harvey at his business and found him hunched over the back door replacing a broken hinge.

“What are you doing?” I politely inquired.

“Well, Stephen,” Harvey intoned, “there are four kinds of broken things in this world.  There are those things that are broken that if you just leave them alone they’ll fix themselves.  Then there are those things that are broken that are none of my business.  It’s up to somebody else to fix it.  Then there are those things that are broken that only God can fix.  And finally, there are those things that are broken that can be fixed and it’s my job to do it.  And this door is one of them.  And that’s what I’m doing . . . fixing this door.”

Stephen finished by saying this:  “When urgent calls, opportunities, pressure, criticism and thoughts of all I could be doing come, those words help me sort my duty.”

Perhaps those words will help you too.
 

No Easy Fix

February 13, 2015

“If we don’t fix this problem, even our friends and allies may turn against us.”

That was the dire warning one of the MHSAA staff members gave to the rest of us at a weekly staff meeting recently, during which this staff member was receiving emails from people appalled over the mid-season transfer of a basketball player from one school to another.

The “fix” that some people want is a rule that makes every transfer student ineligible for a full year, regardless of the reason for the change of schools or the circumstances of the student. Of course, that rule would never survive judicial scrutiny, and legislators in every corner of the state would be advocating change for the sake of one child or another.

A more moderate remedy is to utilize a rule that applies the full-year period of ineligibility to those students whose circumstances do not fit one of the already established 15 exceptions that make a student eligible without delay following a transfer. That half-measure would not stop many transfers that would still frustrate people, and it would snag many transfers that would continue to anger people.

The rules we already have in place are tools for schools to use to stop many of the transfers that frustrate without snaring those transfers that anger: the athletic-motivated transfer rule and especially the athletic-related transfer rule (or links law).

Before our friends and allies turn their backs on us, they need to turn in the transfer situations where the rules already apply, and the undue influence (recruiting) they can document. They need to give the system a chance to work to the full extent of its potential. We should not make tougher rules if schools fail to utilize the rules they already have.

Adopting rules is usually easy for the organization. Applying rules is often much harder for the schools.