No Returns or Refunds
January 18, 2013
The “Boxing Day” tradition of New Zealand, like most of the current or former British Empire, is to return to stores on the day after Christmas the unwanted or ill-fitting gifts of Christmas. My wife and I exchanged no gifts this year, except for the gift of time with each other and our China-based son and his wife in New Zealand. So we had nothing to return, and we’ve had moments to savor.
Outside our window on Christmas Day was an extinct volcano rising 758 feet above New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty coast. Its peak was hidden in clouds sent by the remnants of Cyclone Evan. We couldn’t see the top of Mt. Maunganui; but our fragment of the Roberts family who had gathered for this holiday, below the equator and on the other side of the International Dateline, decided on a “Christmas climb” anyway.
Attempting a challenge whose goal is shrouded in uncertainty is an every-season experience of coaches, which may be the opiate that draws so many men and women to that vocation for so long, and consumes coaches so far beyond what are reasonable hours for most other occupations.
Even in the more mundane existence of a state high school association administrator, it is the unknown of each year, week and day that energizes the grind. How boring it would be to know what’s at the end of each climb. How exciting it can be to come to a problem-solving table with good ideas and also with the expectation that the best ideas will come out of collaboration with others’ good ideas.
I count myself among the fortunate folks who, at the end of most days and weeks and years, do not feel inclined to want to return the gifts that each has brought. And I’m still attracted to the discovery of what the next cloud-shrouded climb may reveal.
A Rite of Spring
March 21, 2015
It is inevitable in March, as predictable as May flowers after April showers, that the weeks of District Basketball Tournaments will bring criticism, and calls to seed those tournaments so top ranked teams don’t face one another in early round games.
The MHSAA’s tournament has been unseeded for 90 years; and while we should never be slaves to the past, we should always be respectful and appreciate that smart people of previous generations had many of the same discussions we are having today; and they determined that the blind draw was best.
While the preference for the blind draw has prevailed in recent years, the almost addictive attention of the media and public to the “bracketology” of NCAA basketball tournaments appears to have improved the chances that some form of seeding will eventually be applied to the MHSAA Basketball Tournament and, in doing so, join a half dozen other sports for which the MHSAA employs at least a limited seeding plan for at least one level of those tournaments.
The challenge before us is not intellectual – seeding tournaments is not rocket science. No, the challenge is political – forming consensus for a plan that does not lead to extra travel and expense for participating schools, and that can be easily understood and simply administered at multiple sites. We are talking about 256 District tournament sites – 128 each in the Girls and Boys Basketball Tournaments. The problems and pitfalls of seeding tournaments of this magnitude are nothing the colleges have tried to tackle.
And no one should be deluded that seeding is a “no-brainer” that “everyone supports.” That is not accurate. There are many people who enjoy the fact that there are top-notch matchups every night of the District tournament weeks, and not all delayed to the nights of District finals. And there will be little enthusiasm from poorly seeded teams which are forced to drive past a closer opponent to get clobbered by a more distant opponent.
While postseason tournaments are the MHSAA’s “bread and butter” program, tournament seeding is not a defining or fundamental issue of educational athletics that requires our urgent or concentrated attention. Promoting participant health and safety, for example, demands much more attention. I’m not opposed to seeding; I just don’t give it the same importance as so much else we are challenged to do.