Perspective
July 2, 2013
During the summer weeks, "From the Director" will bring to you some of our favorite entries from previous years. Today's blog first appeared Nov. 2, 2010.
Each summer I put together a list of all the problems we’re addressing and all the projects we know we’ll be working on through the MHSAA during the year ahead. It’s always a long list, and accomplishing just a few items would make any year a good year.
So, this requires that we try to decide between all that we might do and all that we must do. And here’s a reminder of one thing we must do.
When I ask school and community groups with whom I’m speaking about what they think the problems are in school sports, the most popular responses from these constituents are (1) too little funding, and (2) too many misdirected parents; or sometimes that order is reversed: over-involved parents and under-funded programs.
I like to caution people that in some situations, our students suffer from too little adult engagement in their lives and that, almost everywhere, interscholastic athletics benefit greatly from the time and energy parents and other adults volunteer to help local programs operate. But I get the point of what I’m hearing.
These and other responses I hear – serious as these cited problems can be – may merely be symptoms of the single, fundamental issue that’s at the heart of all the others. That’s perspective.
- Too little money for schools and sports?
Perspective – spending money on less essential things. - Pressure-packed parents?
Perspective – people focusing on adults’ desires more than students’ needs. - Poor sportsmanship?
Perspective – forgetting or never learning the pure purpose of educational athletics. - Too much specialization? Too much year-round competition?
Perspective again. - Too much talk of college athletic scholarships?
Perspective once again.
In essence, almost all issues arise from matters of perspective. At their root, almost all problems are problems of perspective.
What can we do about this?
I don’t have the perfect prescription; but one thing is certain: we can’t relegate this to an afterthought. We cannot hope to make time to address this problem each day; we must plan to make time for it each day.
We need to model a positive perspective. Point to it when we see it. Explain it. Reward it.
It can’t be left to others. We are the guardians of proper perspective. It’s Job 1.
Committees Fail Critical Issues
June 7, 2013
Typically, each sport committee meets once each year for three to five hours, during which time it considers proposals that come from schools, leagues and the state’s coaches association for the sport; and the proposals most often deal with allowing more regular-season events and more qualifiers to the MHSAA postseason tournament.
Occasionally there is a proposal that might improve sportsmanship. But much more often the proposals would increase conflicts between academics and athletics and/or strain overstressed local budgets. And almost never is there a proposal that would address the health and safety of participants (the Wrestling Committee has been an occasional exception and the Competitive Cheer Committee is a routine exception).
While coaches associations must shoulder some of the blame because they’ve brought MHSAA committees “trivial” topics, at least in comparison to the tougher health and safety topics, much of the cause of MHSAA committee ineffectiveness is that the committees don’t meet long enough or often enough to research serious problems and develop well-thought-out solutions. That is forgivable because it is difficult to get commitments from busy people all across Michigan to be absent from their regular jobs and travel dozens or even hundreds of miles, and to do so multiple times each year – which is what it takes to more fully understand complex problems and more carefully construct solutions. Meetings have to be few and they have to be efficient.
However, facing the worst publicity football has seen since the mid-1970s, we knew we had to supplement the football committee process. We did so by appointing a special Football Task Force of optimum size and experienced, representative makeup to meet on however many occasions are necessary during 2013 to accomplish three purposes:
- Review practice policies to improve acclimatization of players and reduce head trauma.
- Review competition rules to reduce head trauma and the frequency of the sport’s most injurious game situations.
- Develop promotions that extol the value of football to students, schools and communities and the safety record of school-based football.
The promotional efforts have begun to be rolled out; game rule modifications are being investigated; and four proposals for changing football practice policies have been prepared. They will be the topic of our next posting.