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Predicting Success

March 1, 2016

Participation in high school sports, music and drama – the educational buffet provided by comprehensive, full-service high schools – did more to shape my character and chart my life journey than any factor other than my parents.

It is no wonder that this is so, for it is well-established that ...

  • Participation in school activities is a better predictor of success in later life than either standardized test scores or grade point average.

  • Participants in school activities have higher GPAs, lower dropout rates, better daily attendance and fewer discipline problems than non-participating students.

  • Participants in school athletics have higher GPAs and lower use of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs during their seasons of competition than out of season.

We don’t know for sure if all this is cause and effect; but we do know there is a strong statistical correlation, and most parents prefer to have their children hanging out with these motivated, high-achieving young people.

Story Power

January 12, 2015

I spend time every day surfing the MHSAA’s family of websites – MHSAA.com, Second Half and MHSAA.tv. My counterpart in another state was astounded that I do this, and incredulous that I could find the time to do this. But it makes perfect sense to me.

More people visit our websites on a typical day than visit our office in East Lansing during an entire year. We have more visitors to our websites during a typical month than attend all of our postseason tournaments combined during a typical year.

We have more opportunity to make first impressions through electronic entry than tournament turnstiles; and for the large majority of people who make contact with the MHSAA, electronic media may provide the only impression they will ever get of the MHSAA.

This is why we have styled the MHSAA’s websites in a manner that is visually pleasing and easy to navigate on both desktop and mobile devices. And this is why we have stuffed these websites not only with schedules, scores and stats but also with stories; and it’s why the stories are presented in text, audio, pictures and video streaming.

We know that those who share the stories of school sports most effectively will shape the message of school sports most persuasively.

Our job is not merely regulation of school sports, but communication about school sports – not merely event management, but content management – managing the message and meaning of school-sponsored sports.