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Making Participation Valuable

October 23, 2012

Boiled down, the role of state high school associations is to both protect and promote school sports, the second of which I comment on here.

It’s my experience that the most effective promotions speak for themselves.  The most effective promotions promote the fundamentals of school sports, like scholarship and sportsmanship and safety.  The most effective promotions provide tools to the membership at the grass roots level.

In Michigan we have a few initiatives whose primary purpose is to promote the value of participation, but we have many initiatives that encourage and equip those who make participation valuable.

For example, we administer the Coaches Advancement Program (CAP) all year long around the state to assist in the preparation of coaches for their important responsibilities.  Across the state during August through October we conduct Athletic Director In-Service programs.  Like many states, we conduct rules meetings for coaches and officials year-round, statewide. 

Each spring we have a training program for local officials association trainers and for their officers and leaders and assignors.  We conduct an annual Officials’ Awards and Alumni Banquet.

Every other February we conduct a Women in Sports Leadership Conference; and in the off years we provide mini-grants to support similar efforts on a more local level.

We conduct Sportsmanship Summits and provide mini-grants to leagues and local school districts to implement sportsmanship efforts at the local level where they can be most effective.  We conduct Team Captains Clinics and other student leadership events, and we provide mini-grants to support similar efforts on the league or local level.

None of these initiatives promotes the value of participation per se.  All of these initiatives encourage and equip those who make participation valuable.  That’s where I think our promotional efforts are best made.

 

Large Topics for the Lower Level

December 22, 2017

Editor's Note: This blog originally was posted May 21, 2013, and the topic continues to be of prime concern today.

Sometimes our meeting agendas give the impression that junior high/middle school programs are unimportant or an afterthought; but that was not the case during the MHSAA Representative Council meeting May 5 and 6, and it will not be the case at many meetings throughout the next 12 months at least.

Here are just two of the tough multi-faceted topics that the Representative Council has asked to be addressed at constituent meetings from now through next February and will be studied by the MHSAA Junior High/Middle School Committee, Classification Committee and many of the MHSAA’s separate sport committees:

  • Are current season limitations for contests and limitations on the lengths of contests appropriate for the junior high/middle school level? Do the current limits reflect the correct philosophy for sports at this level? Do they accommodate the four-season approach many schools encourage? Do the limits drive some students to non-school programs? Do they cause some schools to not join the MHSAA?

  • Should the MHSAA provide rules, programs and services for 6th-graders who, in nearly 80 percent of situations, are located in the same buildings with 7th and 8th-graders? Does the MHSAA’s lack of involvement encourage the same by schools, and allow non-school programs to fill the resulting void; and does this drive those students away from school-based sports permanently? Or would the MHSAA’s involvement at this level pressure school districts to add sixth grade programs and services at a time of dwindling resources for the 7-12 grade program?

    • to benefit both kids and their schools at the junior high/middle school level as at the high school. Our agendas for the

We have always maintained that there is at least as much potential for school-based sports next year will have that belief as its foundation as these tough topics get the time they deserve.