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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.

Making an Impact

September 11, 2012

Here’s a provocative statement by David Gergen, professor of public policy and director of the Center for Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a frequent political analyst for CNN:  “The nonprofits making the greatest impacts these days are entrepreneurial, adaptive, outward-looking, and sometimes a little messy.”

I like that, and I think using these four features or criteria to evaluate the MHSAA now and in the mid-range future would be good for those we serve.

  • Are we entrepreneurial?  How could we be more so?

  • Are we adaptive?  Are we flexible in how we do things?

  • Are we outward-looking?  Are we impacting school sports broadly and deeply?  Does the impact have staying power?  Are schools better because of what we do?  Are communities stronger for our doing it?

  • Are we sometimes a little messy?

I suspect that if we are the first three – entrepreneurial, adaptive and outward-looking – then messiness is a natural byproduct.  There will be starts and stops, failures before successes, changes.  There will be disagreements and compromises.

I suspect that we will have to tolerate a little more messiness if we are to move forward, even faster than we have, and if we are to have impact, even greater than we have.