Middle School Membership
September 27, 2013
Of the approximately 2,000 schools serving 7th- and 8th-grade students in Michigan, according to the 2013 Michigan Education Directory that does not include home schools, only 731 are members of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. There are several reasons that explain this gap.
It is not a matter of cost. As with high schools, junior high/middle school membership is free. More likely reasons for the gap between the number of schools serving 7th- and 8th-graders and the number of those schools belonging to the MHSAA are these:
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The school district overlooks MHSAA membership. This is often the case when there is no high school connected to the junior high/middle school.
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The school district does not sponsor interscholastic athletics at the 7th- and 8th-grade level. At that level, sports are community run, so the school sees no need for MHSAA membership.
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The school district does sponsor 7th- and 8th-grade sports but does not want to follow MHSAA rules. And among the rules these school districts object to are these:
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The limits on the number of contests . . . they’re too few; and/or
The prohibition of 6th-graders on teams of 7th- and 8th-graders.
This third reason, and especially these two objections, are being reviewed throughout the MHSAA constituency again this year. And I’ll have more to say in our next three postings.
The Importance of Play
September 9, 2016
In the usual post-Olympic sports news coverage there was the predictable commentary about over-commercialization of the Olympic movement and corruption of the Olympic ideal. Is this really what the Greeks intended?
Of course not.
But really, what do we do today that has any resemblance to what we intended a century ago when the “modern” Olympic movement was resurrected, much less to what was intended 27 centuries earlier when the ancient Olympics began?
But at least one thing with ancient Greek roots remains unchanged. It is this.
Plato, student of Socrates, mentor of Aristotle and founder of the “academy” in Athens during the heyday of the ancient OIympics, wrote that more can be learned about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation.
That has not changed.
And that is one very important of very many reasons why play of a competitive nature – not mere recreation – matters, just as much today as 28 centuries ago. In fact, in this “modern” world of nonstop electronic conversation, the hour of physical engagement between people may be our most revealing communication.