Loss of Innocence
May 30, 2014
Last school year we were criticized for not looking before we leapt to the conclusion that some international transfer students at several schools were not eligible, and for ruling them ineligible for the then maximum allowable period of one calendar year.
In several cases – both school employees and others – told us that the students weren’t good basketball players, notwithstanding that it was people with interests in basketball who brought the students to our state, and that those people and others with basketball interests lobbied hard on the students’ behalf.
It turned out, almost without exception, those who appealed most ardently for the eligibility of an international transfer student actually had the least appealing cases.
In the case of one student, we discovered an online video made a year earlier, taped while the student was still abroad, touting his height and demonstrating his basketball ability. Not about basketball, you say?
In another case where “basketball was not the issue,” a student later committed to play basketball for an NCAA Division I basketball program in 2014-15. He went from “mediocre” to the Mid-American Conference without ever playing his senior season of high school?
We were criticized during 2013-14 for being too suspicious, but the results of 2013-14 will make us even more suspicious in 2014-15.
Fortunately, the MHSAA will have a more complete set of tools to address transfer students this fall than it has had at any time in its history; and after what has been happening in recent years, people seem ready – even impatient – for the MHSAA to be enabled to move with more might when students – either international or domestic – transfer for athletic reasons.
Planning & Doing
January 31, 2012
One of the MHSAA’s counterpart organizations in another state recently asked to see the business plans of other statewide high school associations. Some of the states supplied their detailed budgets, but most had nothing to offer.
Of course, a budget is a much different thing than a business plan. A budget is built more on past performance, while a business plan looks more to the potential of future problems and opportunities. A business plan is much more than numbers.
Since 2007 we’ve been using a “Mission Action Plan” (MAP) at the MHSAA. It was developed to deal with the opportunities and obstacles of three powerful trends: (1) growth of non-school youth sports programs; (2) expansion of educational alternatives to traditional neighborhood schools; and (3) proliferating technology.
While not a typical business plan or a classic “strategic plan,” the “MAP” has become increasingly useful to point the way for the MHSAA both in terms of program and finance. The MAP states a single “Overarching Purpose;” it identifies four “Highest Priority Goals;” and it lists four multi-faceted “Current Strategic Emphases,” many of which have quantifiable performance targets, including financial goals.
Next to each Current Strategic Emphasis are two boxes. The first is checked if we’ve gotten started, and the second is checked when we’ve completed the task or are operating at the level we had established as our goal. At this point, every MAP strategy has been launched, but only a portion have earned the second checkmark.
Quite efficiently, the MAP keeps us both strategic and businesslike without the formality of purer forms of strategic or business plans.