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No Guns in Schools

April 29, 2015

It seemed crazy to me when I first learned that “gun-free zones” really were not free of guns.

Apparently, while many school sports administrators and officials hustled to replace blank-shooting starter pistols with different kinds of devices for signaling the start of races at cross country, swimming and track events, state laws were carving out exceptions to allow other people to carry guns into those very same events.

Now there’s an effort by some to trade a ban on “open carry” in exchange for permission to carry concealed weapons onto school grounds.

We’re proud to know our colleagues at the Michigan Association of School Boards and the Michigan Association of School Administrators and the Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals are all saying “No” to any such deal.

I suspect that many of those very same school board members, superintendents and principals are gun owners. But they also seem to appreciate that “gun-free” should mean what it says; that except for law enforcement personnel in the exercise of their official duties, guns have no place in our schools or at school events.

Connecting with Coaches

January 28, 2014

In the coming weeks, the MHSAA will meet with the leadership of the high school coaches associations of our state. We have been doing this for more than 25 years, with two primary purposes.

First, we want to provide a forum for these leaders to share with one another their new ideas and initiatives and to discover “best practices” from one another, hoping that this will lead to the better plans being implemented in multiple organizations.

Our second purpose is to present some of the MHSAA initiatives or rules changes that are applicable to all or most sports. It’s not a time when we talk about the baseball pitching rule or the football playoff point system, but a time when we discuss topics of more universal application.

This year those topics included new requirements for coaches education, new rules for athletic-related transfers and proposed rules changes for international students, a simplified scrimmage rule for all sports, and a modified penalty for participation in certain all-star events.

It is intended that these coaches association leaders will be enabled to take these topics to their respective boards and members in order to increase understanding of proposed changes and to facilitate feedback to the MHSAA Representative Council and staff.