No Easy Fix
February 13, 2015
“If we don’t fix this problem, even our friends and allies may turn against us.”
That was the dire warning one of the MHSAA staff members gave to the rest of us at a weekly staff meeting recently, during which this staff member was receiving emails from people appalled over the mid-season transfer of a basketball player from one school to another.
The “fix” that some people want is a rule that makes every transfer student ineligible for a full year, regardless of the reason for the change of schools or the circumstances of the student. Of course, that rule would never survive judicial scrutiny, and legislators in every corner of the state would be advocating change for the sake of one child or another.
A more moderate remedy is to utilize a rule that applies the full-year period of ineligibility to those students whose circumstances do not fit one of the already established 15 exceptions that make a student eligible without delay following a transfer. That half-measure would not stop many transfers that would still frustrate people, and it would snag many transfers that would continue to anger people.
The rules we already have in place are tools for schools to use to stop many of the transfers that frustrate without snaring those transfers that anger: the athletic-motivated transfer rule and especially the athletic-related transfer rule (or links law).
Before our friends and allies turn their backs on us, they need to turn in the transfer situations where the rules already apply, and the undue influence (recruiting) they can document. They need to give the system a chance to work to the full extent of its potential. We should not make tougher rules if schools fail to utilize the rules they already have.
Adopting rules is usually easy for the organization. Applying rules is often much harder for the schools.
Classes or Divisions
April 4, 2014
Never is the continuous cycle of school sports more obvious to me than at this time of year. Just as winter tournaments conclude for 2013-14, we post the classifications and divisions for MHSAA tournaments in 2014-15.
Unlike many states which reclassify every two, three or four years, we collect enrollment figures each year and redraw the lines between Classes A, B, C and D each year in late March. And for all sports except basketball and volleyball, we place an almost equal number of schools that actually sponsor the sport into equal divisions – usually four divisions, but fewer for sports that are sponsored by a relatively small number of schools.
This traditional treatment of boys and girls basketball and girls volleyball – continuing with four classes rather than four divisions with an equal number of schools that actually sponsor the sport in each division – reflects that when last considered for change 17 years ago, there wasn’t much difference in the number of schools in the four classes vs. the four equal divisions in these three tournaments.
For 2014-15, of the 749 MHSAA member schools, 724 indicate they sponsor boys basketball, 716 sponsor girls basketball and 704 sponsor girls volleyball. (Among the sports in equal divisions, the most populous is baseball with 630 sponsoring schools.)
Last January, the MHSAA Classification Committee requested that staff provide the Representative Council what the numbers would look like for 2014-15 if these three sports were in “equal divisions” like other sports. The Classification Committee wasn’t recommending any change – just asking that the Representative Council see the numbers again.
- In boys basketball, the number of schools in Divisions 1, 2, 3 and 4 would be 181, compared to 188, 182, 182 and 172 in Classes A, B, C and D, respectively.
- In girls basketball, the number of schools in Divisions 1, 2, 3 and 4 would be approximately 179, compared to 186, 181, 182 and 167 in Classes A, B, C and D, respectively.
- In girls volleyball, the number of schools in Divisions 1, 2, 3 and 4 would be approximately 176, compared to 186, 178, 180 and 160 in Classes A, B, C and D.
Obviously, every time more schools are placed in a division, the enrollment range between the largest and smallest school of that division expands. Therefore, a change to equal divisions places more schools and expands the enrollment range in the division of schools where enrollment spreads have the greatest impact - Division 4. It was our smallest schools that least liked the change to equal divisions in other sports 17 years ago. They would be the dissenters to this change for basketball and volleyball today.