Future Actions
February 19, 2016
MHSAA committees have prepared not quite two dozen recommendations for Representative Council action later this spring. Once again this is a smaller than average number of proposals, and again they are modest in scope and significance. What has been different in recent years, and especially this year, is the length and depth of discussions by some of the committees.
Slowly, we are changing committee focus from tournament tweaks and other strictly transactional business to more strategic, even transformational issues.
Several committees talked longer than ever about health and safety issues, with attention to concussion and sports specialization, and how to accommodate and appeal to younger grade levels (6th, 7th and 8th).
I look forward to the day when these long discussions turn into provocative proposals. For example, I would love to hear that ...
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The MHSAA Football and Junior High/Middle School Committees recommend MHSAA sponsorship of flag football at the 6th- through 8th-grade levels.
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The MHSAA Soccer and Junior High/Middle School Committees recommend practice and game policies that reduce heading at the 6th- through 8th-grade levels.
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The MHSAA Golf Committee recommends MHSAA sponsorship of coed, Ryder Cup format golf.
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The MHSAA Tennis Committee recommends MHSAA sponsorship of coed team tennis.
There is so much more we could be doing to transform school sports for the 21st Century. New sports and formats, with increased attention to health and safety and the junior high/middle school level. This is our future, when talk turns to action.
Pulling Up the Welcome Mat?
September 8, 2011
Michigan’s welcoming foreign exchange program network and the MHSAA’s accommodating rules have caused there to be more placements in Michigan schools than any other state during each of the last two school years. But this open environment for foreign exchange students may change if the MHSAA is unsuccessful in defending its current rules through judicial proceedings in Michigan courts.
Presently under MHSAA rules, international transfer students are treated identically to domestic transfer students: unless the student meets one of 15 stated exceptions, that student is ineligible for approximately one semester and then becomes eligible insofar as the transfer regulation is concerned until that student’s high school graduation.
If, however, this student is a foreign exchange student placed in an MHSAA member school through a program listed by the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel, that student is permitted immediate eligibility and that student’s eligibility is limited to one academic year. This special exception for bona fide foreign exchange students is intended to maximize the benefits of their academic exchange year.
The current court challenge is to the absolute limit of one year of athletic eligibility for foreign exchange students. If the MHSAA is unsuccessful in preserving that one-year limit, schools may be forced to treat foreign exchange students as all other international transfer students who are ineligible for their first semester and thereafter eligible until graduation.
That solution may seem simple, but it would reduce the value of the academic exchange experience for bona fide foreign exchange students, and that would certainly drop Michigan from the top spot in the nation for foreign exchange student placements.