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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.
Second Half by MHSAA

Fixing Things

October 6, 2011

Leaders of schools and school sports have rarely been asked to do more with less than is demanded of them today.  Their plight has brought back to my memory that many years ago, a pastor from North Carolina, Stephen M. Crotts, told this story – one that I’ve kept in my files, and in my heart, ever since.  He said:

I started my ministry in Charlotte County, Virginia.  And there was a deacon in the church there named Harvey Milton who ran a seed and feed store in Drakes Branch.  Harvey and his wife Margaret sort of adopted me and helped me along during those first tentative years of the ministry.

I remember one day after I’d been there nearly three years.  I was struggling with trying to do too much, trying to keep everybody happy, trying to fix all the hurts.

I stopped by to see Harvey at his business and found him hunched over the back door replacing a broken hinge.

“What are you doing?” I politely inquired.

“Well, Stephen,” Harvey intoned, “there are four kinds of broken things in this world.  There are those things that are broken that if you just leave them alone they’ll fix themselves.  Then there are those things that are broken that are none of my business.  It’s up to somebody else to fix it.  Then there are those things that are broken that only God can fix.  And finally, there are those things that are broken that can be fixed and it’s my job to do it.  And this door is one of them.  And that’s what I’m doing . . . fixing this door.”

Stephen finished by saying this:  “When urgent calls, opportunities, pressure, criticism and thoughts of all I could be doing come, those words help me sort my duty.”

Perhaps those words will help you too.