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Push “Pause”

January 24, 2014

No student has the right to participate in the voluntary competitive interscholastic athletic program sponsored and conducted at an MHSAA member school. In practical application, this means that all students are assumed to be ineligible for participation until they have earned the privilege of participation.

Students do this by demonstrating that they have met every prerequisite condition for participation which, at minimum, are the eligibility rules of Regulation I (for high schools) and Regulation III (for junior high/middle schools). A student must be eligible under every Section of Regulation I or Regulation III before he or she competes in a scrimmage or contest.

For example, every student who is new to a high school is presumed to be ineligible for interscholastic athletics. School administration must be certain that each student’s circumstances comply with one of the 15 automatic exceptions to the transfer rule’s requirement that new students must sit out approximately one semester.

If one of the exceptions explicitly applies, the student becomes eligible, provided he or she complies with all aspects of all other Sections of Regulation I: enrollment, age, physical exam, previous and current academic records, amateur and awards, etc.

That’s why we teach at in-service meetings for coaches and administrators, “If in doubt, sit ‘em out.” Wait for as much information as possible before entering any student into a scrimmage or contest. Very often a week or two pause before play will avoid a season of forfeits and a school year of frustration.

Change of Pace

January 30, 2015

Michael Schwimer is little known to us in Michigan. He was a 6-8, 240-pound relief pitcher out of the University of Virginia who was drafted in the 10th round by the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008.

In his minor league career, Schwimer earned 20 wins against 10 losses with a respectable 2.51 ERA. He struck out an eye-popping 12 batters per nine innings.

When Schwimer made his Major League Baseball debut for the Phillies in August of 2011, he served up a game-tying home run to the first batter he faced. He was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in February of 2013, and was released by the Blue Jays the following August. You might say Schwimer majored in the minors. That’s where he peaked as a professional baseball player.

As a player, Schwimer made few waves. He wasn’t a “game changer.” And yet, he may still be known as one who helped to change the game itself.

Schwimer is widely reported to be the first MLB player to use a glove that was made of synthetics, not leather (which weighs twice as much), and was made using a plaster cast of his hand. It was a custom-made, form-fitting glove.

The result looks almost like a toy glove, fit for T-ball; but MLB gave it a “thumbs up” in December of 2011. MLB players have been warming to the glove, although very slowly.

To which Schwimer responds: “It takes forever for any change to occur. But when change happens, it happens really fast.”

That almost sounds like something Yogi Berra would have said – like, “it takes forever for change to occur, and then it doesn’t.” But experience very often teaches us the truth of this sentiment.

As the MHSAA reprocesses two of its toughest topics ever – out-of-season coaching rules and 6th-graders’ roles in school sports and the MHSAA – it seems like there is no progress toward change. And no change is the possible outcome of both long journeys.

But it’s also possible that, for one or both topics, the time will come when wisdom and will combine to create constructive change, which then seems to be occurring almost overnight.

My hope is that we find that formula before a rash of problems causes a tipping point that results in a rush toward solutions that are poorly conceived and/or politically imposed by outside entities.