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.
Controlled Fires
July 24, 2012
Forest fires have recently been scorching the United States with unusual reach and rage. Infernos in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, as well as Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, have made news in our state.
Behind the headlines of the lightning-ignited 150-square-mile devastation near Fort Collins, Colorado is the analysis of forestry and conservation experts that it has been the absence of small fires that has helped to fuel the large fire. Turns out that Smokey the Bear’s campaign to prevent forest fires may be partly at fault.
In most of life, little problems here and there help to avoid larger problems later. The little fires consume the fuel that would feed a catastrophic conflagration exploding out of pent-up fears or frustrations or long-festering problems.
Even those who work in the “prevention business” – whether that’s the US Forest Service or a statewide athletic association – must tolerate a few fires. They can have positive, productive effects, one of which is to keep small problems from growing large and more destructive.