The Other Side of Safety
August 13, 2013
One of our newest sports – girls lacrosse – is today presenting one of the oldest conundrums in competitive athletics.
On one side of the complex issues are many moms and dads who cite the dangers their daughters confront from contact to the head and face by other players’ sticks or the ball. They want hard helmets with face masks required in girls lacrosse. Many coaches and administrators agree.
On the other side of the issues are the “purists,” including the official position of US Lacrosse, who are concerned that by increasing head and face protection the rule makers would invite the kind of hard and high contact that would fundamentally alter the nature of the game and lead to more serious injuries in girls lacrosse.
This is the classic dilemma that the leadership and playing rules bodies of sports organizations have faced many times over many years for many sports. Justifiably.
When football added helmets, then face masks and then mouth protectors to the list of required equipment, there was a significant reduction in broken noses and chipped teeth, but techniques of blocking and tackling changed. The protected head and face became much more of a target and weapon than it had been before, and the unprotectable neck and spine became more at risk.
Some would argue that ice hockey’s experience is similar to football’s history. The discussion in the soccer community regarding hard helmets for goalkeepers and soft helmets for all other players often revolves around similar questions. Will required protective equipment change the game? And will one of the changes be that the game becomes still rougher and even more injurious, trading “moderate” injuries for more catastrophic?
While the debate continues over additional head protection requirements for girls lacrosse, and other sports, both sides seem to agree that the burden of the rule makers to be out-front in the search for ways to improve the rules is matched by the in-the-trenches responsibility of coaches to teach the game and officials to administer the contests in accordance with existing rules which already place a premium on participant safety.
Our Open Tournament
April 15, 2016
One of the criticisms we hear as a result of not seeding the MHSAA Girls and Boys Basketball Tournaments is that it doesn’t allow the best teams to avoid one another until later rounds of the tournament and often leads to anticlimactic Semifinal and Final games.
But, after spending thousands of hours and perhaps a million dollars to seed its Division I men’s basketball tournament, the NCAA had a 17-point mismatch when a No. 10 seed met a No. 1 seed in one national semifinal and a 44-point blowout between a pair of so-called No. 2 seeds in the other national semifinal.
Seeding is such an imperfect art, and teams can play so unpredictably from one day to the next in a one-and-done tournament, that seeding is more of a publicity stunt than it is a science on which to structure a tournament.
To send a team and its fans packing to distant venues on the basis of its winning percentage and margins of victory relative to other teams is not responsible policy at the high school level. It could be unsound fiscally and unsound educationally.
Our high schools enjoy a format that allows every high school entry into the MHSAA’s postseason tournament every year. If we were to limit our tournament to only 68 teams like the NCAA, seeding might be more practical. But as long as we accommodate 750 high schools in our Boys Basketball Tournament and 750 in our Girls Basketball Tournament, geographical districts with blind draws may be most appropriate.
The NCAA tournament, like so much of major college sports, caters to the few and most fortunate; so maybe seeding is good in that environment. But our high school basketball tournaments are open to all schools, and they require we make different decisions to serve those schools.