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Our Job

January 29, 2013

When I’m asked to describe the MHSAA’s job in a three-second sound bite, I say:  “Our job is to protect and promote educational athletics.”

Give me three seconds longer and I’ll say: “Our job is to protect and promote the values and value of student-centered, school-sponsored sports.”

Give me three seconds longer and I’ll add “. . . by raising standards for, and increasing participation in, educational athletics.”

And give me time to complete the thought and I’ll add that we do this through:

    • training for coaches, officials and athletic directors;
    • tournaments that keep sportsmanship levels high and both expenses and health risks low; and
    • telling the story to these groups: students and parents, school personnel, and the media and public.

We provide training and tournaments, and we tell the story of school-based sports.

That’s the job.  And it’s how we judge the “good idea du jour” that bombards our office.  We can’t do everything.  To do so would not be doing our job well.

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.