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More Than A Myth

September 5, 2014

Without a sure sense of what the outcome should be, we are engaging school administrators and others in a year-long discussion of possible revisions in out-of-season coaching rules.

We know that we would like the outcome to be simpler rules that are easier to understand and enforce; and that we would like to permit coaches to spend more time with student-athletes out of season; and that we want none of this to make coaches feel like they must coach one sport year-round to be successful or make student-athletes feel like they must play a single sport year-round just to make the team.

If there is a policy that can accomplish the good that we hope for and avoid the bad that we fear, we haven’t yet found it or developed it.

There is a temptation to characterize the multi-sport athlete as an anachronism or myth of modern school sports. However, the multi-sport athlete remains the backbone of interscholastic athletic programs in Class C and D schools.

And the multi-sport athlete still appears to be the ideal athlete, regardless of school size. It is an instructive reminder, I think, that the Lansing State Journal named a three-sport star from Ithaca as its high school male athlete of the year for 2013-14, and it was a four-sport athlete from Eaton Rapids who was named the high school female athlete of the year.

Following my presentation to coaches, student-athletes and parents at Jonesville High School last month, a student approached me to offer thanks for our sponsoring bowling. Jonesville won the MHSAA’s 2014 Division 4 Boys Bowling championship; and the young man who thanked me participates in football, bowling and baseball for his school, representing in my mind the kind of student we should strive the hardest to serve as we develop, revisit and revise policies and programs.

It’s Change, Not Status

January 5, 2016

When I see a professional sports team install a scoreboard that is more expensive than the total of the interscholastic athletic budgets of the two dozen high schools closest to that stadium, I gripe.

When I see a half-dozen medical professionals scamper out to attend to an injured college football player, and then watch a local high school junior varsity soccer game where no medical professional is present, I grieve.

But in spite of these dispiriting moments, I never wish that my life’s work had been at those higher levels. Long ago I was impressed by the statement that we should measure impact by change, not by status.

It is at the school sports level, much more than at so-called higher levels, that lives are changed. No glitz. No glamour. Just huge results, with limited resources.