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Moving Forward

December 28, 2012

Coaches will often convey to their teams a variation of this theme:  “If we’re not moving forward, we’re falling behind.”  And with such immediate feedback – the next contest – coaches can measure their team’s progress quite easily. Progress is harder to measure for the organizations that serve and support coaches and athletes.

If we are doing our jobs well, we will have both an “inside game” and an “outside game.”  We will create our own opportunities to improve our services and we will be alert to opportunities to improve ourselves when they are handed to us or forced upon us from outside sources.  Both types of change can be positive.

  • Change from inside has the benefit of institutional knowledge.  This change can be informed, measured and careful to avoid unintended consequences that hurt more than help customers.
  • Change from outside can be less rational but also less restrained by history and culture.  It can be more disruptive in a positive sense, perhaps more innovative in origin and more expansive in impact.

It’s my sense that, as the calendar turns from 2012 to 2013, the MHSAA is at the merging of two lanes of traffic – an inside lane of change combining with an outside lane change – which will modify some services and move them forward at unprecedented speeds during the new year and the next.

  • This has been obvious as we have partnered with ArbiterSports to prepare the ArbiterGame scheduling software for our member schools.  Hard work internally that’s about to show results to schools and their publics.
  • This may become obvious as we expand our schedule of inexpensive camps for inexperienced officials.  This could be an antecedent to additional training requirements for MHSAA tournament officials.  The public expects better, and we can do better.
  • This may also become obvious as we expand offerings and then add requirements for coaching education focused on maximizing good health and minimizing risk.  There is a gathering parade of experts and evidence advocating for much more training for many more coaches; and we must find our way to the head of that column.

Good New, Bad News

July 30, 2012

There’s some “good” news on a bad topic:  participation fees.

In addition to news stories about several school districts which have had fees but are now dropping them, and donors who are stepping up to reduce fees in other districts, the overview provided by the MHSAA’s annual survey of participation fees shows that predictions that fees would explode in frequency and size this year have not come true.

Surely, it is not good news that half of 514 reporting schools charged fees in 2011-12; but that percentage is unchanged from 2010-11.  Nine years ago, when the first survey was conducted, half that percentage charged fees.

Nor is it good news that the median fee charged was $75 in 2011-12; but that number has increased only $5 since 2009-10.  Nine years ago, however, the median fee was less than one-third of what it was this past school year.

The fact that the MHSAA has conducted this survey for nine years and provides resources to help schools fairly and efficiently administer participation fees does not mean we think they are a good thing, or a good way for schools to respond to their financial woes and realities.

  • We don’t think participation fees are the best business decision in an era of competition between school districts to enroll students and capture the accompanying state aid.

  • We don’t think participation fees are good for coaches who face different expectations from parents when they have paid for their child to be on the team.

  • We don’t think participation fees are good for students, especially winter and spring sport athletes and second, third and fourth children in families who sometimes get the short end of things when family budgets are tight.

Participation fees are an impediment to participation, which is an obstacle to student engagement in schools at a time when schools desperately need such investment.  And such fees remove one of the defining differences between school-sponsored sports and community-run youth sports programs.

(Go to Schools – Administrators – Pay-to-Play Resources for more information.)