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On the Move

June 8, 2012

Two members of the MHSAA’s executive staff live on the same side of the same town.  Each lives less than a five-minute drive to the MHSAA building; and yet they live in differently named neighborhoods, taking the names of the public elementary schools which serve their sections of town and the school district.

Students of those two elementary schools feed the one and only public middle school of the district, which feeds the one and only public high school of the district.  Historically, there would not be too much to deter the children raised in these two homes from attending the same schools.

However, if one of the families is Catholic, it might choose to send its children to the Catholic grade school located across the street from the public high school.  And it might decide to send its children to high school at the Catholic high school in the town which neighbors to the west.

If one of the families were inclined, it might choose to home school its children before sending them to the district’s high school or to one of two Christian high schools nearby.

Or perhaps one of the families would choose to send one of their children to a charter school near the location of the mother’s employment.  Perhaps another child would be a school of choice student at a traditional high school convenient to the father’s place of work but in a different school district.  These are common occurrences today that were rare just 15 years ago.

A multitude of other factors could affect the choice of school:

  • One school might be better known than others for a particular curriculum strength, or it might have a strong reputation in drama or music or sports, or in one particular sport.
  • Children are more likely today to have mingled on non-school youth sports teams and to decide to stay together for high school teams.
  • High school students might attend the same summer camps and be attracted to a different group of kids or a coach, and transfer to join the new group or coach.
  • As families relocate more frequently, students are required to transfer; and as the nuclear family becomes less stable, students are more often forced to change domestic settings, and change schools.

These and other factors – some worthy or unavoidable, some unhealthy and contrived – add up to the following:

  • During the entire 1986-87 school year, the MHSAA Executive Committee processed 96 requests by member schools to waive eligibility rules, and 58 of those requests were for student transfers.
  • 25 years later, the total requests for the school year were 462; and of those, 337 were to waive the transfer section of the eligibility regulation.

This demonstrates in numbers what we have observed to be true:  that during the past quarter century, the clientele of high school athletics has become five times more mobile.  It’s one of school sports’ greatest challenges.

Tasks Before Us

May 20, 2014

A year ago the MHSAA convened the first of several task forces that are tackling the kind of complicated topics on which our annual committee meeting process seemed incapable of making sufficient progress.

We assembled a 16-member task force that met four times over six months during 2013 to develop policy proposals to enhance acclimatization and reduce head-to-head contact in football practices. Meeting multiple times, the group could delve more deeply into data and explore emerging trends in both school-based and non-school football. The task force would develop ideas at one meeting, test them with constituents for a few weeks and then tweak the ideas at the next meetings. Task force members had the time to be both philosophical and practical, to think about what would be ideal and then trim that idea to be workable in all sorts and sizes of schools across Michigan.

As a result of this focused, multi-session approach, the Football Practice Proposals sailed smoothly through a vetting process during the winter months, earned the MHSAA Representative Council’s approval in March and will be controlling MHSAA member school football practices this fall.

Meanwhile, we began 2014 with the appointment of another task force to tackle many thorny issues related to junior high/middle schools. Some of the issues are so fundamental that changes in the MHSAA Constitution could be required to change what the MHSAA should be doing with respect to school sports prior to the 9th grade. There is equal chance that the task force could propose some very large changes, or very little change. We don’t prescribe the result, we just provide the forum and facilitation – create focus that has been lacking for too long.

Later this year and during 2015 we see the likelihood that additional task forces will address other tough topics, like out-of-season coaching, redefining what subvarsity means, and possibly address more risk management issues, perhaps in ice hockey and soccer first and then other sports where health and safety questions are raised.