Membership Growth
September 19, 2014
My last posting addressed the need for the Michigan High School Athletic Association to act like a member-based organization even though MHSAA membership is free and member-based revenue does not contribute to the MHSAA’s fiscal well-being. I cited the need to apply membership recruitment and retention principles as we work to attract and hold registered contest officials.
I might also have cited our need to attract and hold junior high/middle school members. While the MHSAA’s membership includes most of Michigan’s public and nonpublic high schools, fewer than half the state’s junior high/middle schools are MHSAA members.
We know the reason that most of the non-member schools at this level do not join the MHSAA is that they want to do their own thing – make their own rules – and they do not see enough benefit in MHSAA membership to overcome the advantages of their local autonomy.
They want to schedule more contests and/or sponsor longer seasons than is permitted by MHSAA rules. They are not much concerned with consistent application of playing rules, eligibility rules and limits of competition, which MHSAA membership requires. They are not much concerned with providing MHSAA-registered officials for their contests or MHSAA-purchased catastrophic accident medical insurance for their student-athletes.
There is no revenue incentive for the MHSAA to try to change these attitudes; but actually, the reasons for the MHSAA to do so are more important than money. In fact, the future of high school athletics depends more on what is happening today at the junior high/middle school level than at the high school level.
The less connected that junior high/middle school level programs are to high school programs today, the more problems the high school programs will have tomorrow – including controversies over conduct, confusion over eligibility and problems related to disconnected policies, procedures, philosophies and perspectives.
The MHSAA will serve school sports in Michigan best if it makes recruitment and retention of junior high/middle schools one of its highest priorities, and serves those schools with what the students and parents at that level want – which is, in fact, more school-sponsored competition, some even resulting in MHSAA-sponsored regional tournaments. Of course, both membership and tournament entry would be free of charge.
Just like most member organizations which need to look constantly for new, younger members, the enterprise of high school sports needs to be recruiting new schools which serve younger grades. It may not just be a matter of growth; it may be a matter of survival.
Researching Reclassification
January 25, 2013
The MHSAA was the first state high school association in the U.S. to divide its member schools into enrollment groups for season-ending tournament play. Over the years, in one form or another, all other statewide associations have done the same; and in more recent years, some have tweaked their systems to facilitate practical considerations of tournament administration or to address demographic or political shifts among their memberships.
Two forces have combined to bring increased attention to the participation of public and nonpublic schools in the same tournaments:
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First, as state associations expanded the number of classifications to provide more opportunities for their schools to experience tournament success, the percentage of nonpublic schools winning those championships has increased. Nonpublic schools rarely won any championships at all before the expansion to multiple classifications and especially to the additional expansion in football classifications. Public schools are not winning fewer championships today than years ago; they are merely winning a lower percentage of the championships now provided.
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Second, as state governments have reduced funding to public schools, those schools have been forced to reduce support for their sports programs and more often make them pay-as-you-go, much like nonpublic schools have operated for years. As pay-for-play and fundraising have been popularized in public schools, their “marketing advantage” over nonpublic schools has been diminished.
Often overlooked by those who call for separate tournaments for public and nonpublic schools is the fact that the majority of nonpublic schools rarely have had any success in statewide tournaments, and some have never had any success at all. An occasional District championship and a rare Regional trophy is the reality of most MHSAA member schools, both public and nonpublic. This, and the fact that "multipliers" have addressed only nonpublic schools and not also select-enrollment public schools (magnet, charter, choice), explains why MHSAA study groups have rejected the use of an automatic enrollment multiplier for nonpublic schools which is now in use in about 10 states.
Two other states have recently implemented a system that places schools in a classification for larger schools after they achieve a certain level of tournament success in the classification in which they would normally be placed. Of course, critics of this type of system that address the “chronically successful” are quick to point out that this does nothing for the school which is successful in the largest classification and tends to “penalize” next year’s students for the success of the previous years’ teams. Would it be right to force Ithaca High School into a higher classification in football in 2013 because it captured MHSAA titles in 2010, 2011 and 2012? And what would be done with Detroit Cass Technical after back-to-back titles in Division 1 of the Football Playoffs?
About these topics nationwide, there is much talk, some action, and no consensus.