The Needle
March 2, 2012
Jordan Cobb is one of the MHSAA’s superbly talented staff members; and one of his many duties may intrigue you.
Jordan watches “the needle.”
The “chartbeat” needle tells us, at any moment, how many visitors we have to MHSAA.com. It even tells us what page they’re viewing on MHSAA.com, how they got there, and where they’re located in the world.
Not so long ago, Jordan would fret on a Friday night in the fall that our servers did not have the capacity to handle all those looking for game scores. Through lots of creative programming and work-arounds, and an in-house eight-unit “server farm” that shifts and spreads loads to accommodate peak demands, Jordan now watches the needle more in wonder than with worry.
On most Friday nights during the fall and winter, and for the entire months of November and March, MHSAA.com is among the one percent most visited U.S. websites – on any topic, not just sports.
Even on a quiet weekday afternoon, there will at all times be one to two hundred viewers navigating MHSAA.com.
A decade or two ago, the MHSAA office would not receive two hundred telephone calls per day or two hundred letters per week. Now, every second of the workday and long into the evening and all weekend long, one hundred to one thousand people or more are making contact with the MHSAA at MHSAA.com.
So MHSAA.com deserves our attention and resources. It is creating first and lasting impressions. It is branding us, and doing so far beyond the walls of schools and the borders of our state.
Most importantly, it is demonstrating what we value. It is conveying messages about who we are, what we do and what we believe. And providing a stark contrast to who we are not and what we don’t do and don’t believe.
Neighborhood Pressure
June 7, 2016
Of all the forces working to cause adolescent youth to focus on a single sport to the exclusion of others, one of the most insidious and impactful is “neighborhood pressure.” It’s “keeping up with the Joneses” applied to youth sports instead of house, car and boat.
Some parents feel like bad people if they do not only facilitate but also force their child to keep climbing the sports ladder, moving from neighborhood team to select team to elite team, and from a season experience to a year-round commitment, and from local participation to a schedule that requires out-of-town travel for both games and practices.
“If the neighbors do this for their son or daughter, what kind of parent am I if I don’t do this for my child?”
Actually, the answer is that you are the smart parent – one who has read the literature and has learned that early and intense sport specialization is not best for your child’s future in sports or in life. Sport specialization is a less healthy experience – physically, emotionally and socially – for children ages 6 to 12; and it is no more likely to result in success in high school sports or a college athletic scholarship than a balanced youth sports experience.
All the intense specialization is certain to do is cost much more money than a college scholarship is worth, assuage parents’ consciences and give them topics to talk about at neighborhood gatherings.