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:
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training for coaches, officials and athletic directors;
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tournaments that keep sportsmanship levels high and both expenses and health risks low; and
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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.
Making Participation Valuable
October 23, 2012
Boiled down, the role of state high school associations is to both protect and promote school sports, the second of which I comment on here.
It’s my experience that the most effective promotions speak for themselves. The most effective promotions promote the fundamentals of school sports, like scholarship and sportsmanship and safety. The most effective promotions provide tools to the membership at the grass roots level.
In Michigan we have a few initiatives whose primary purpose is to promote the value of participation, but we have many initiatives that encourage and equip those who make participation valuable.
For example, we administer the Coaches Advancement Program (CAP) all year long around the state to assist in the preparation of coaches for their important responsibilities. Across the state during August through October we conduct Athletic Director In-Service programs. Like many states, we conduct rules meetings for coaches and officials year-round, statewide.
Each spring we have a training program for local officials association trainers and for their officers and leaders and assignors. We conduct an annual Officials’ Awards and Alumni Banquet.
Every other February we conduct a Women in Sports Leadership Conference; and in the off years we provide mini-grants to support similar efforts on a more local level.
We conduct Sportsmanship Summits and provide mini-grants to leagues and local school districts to implement sportsmanship efforts at the local level where they can be most effective. We conduct Team Captains Clinics and other student leadership events, and we provide mini-grants to support similar efforts on the league or local level.
None of these initiatives promotes the value of participation per se. All of these initiatives encourage and equip those who make participation valuable. That’s where I think our promotional efforts are best made.