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Raising Expectations for Managing Heat and Humidity

February 19, 2013

The MHSAA Representative Council is scheduled to vote on March 22, 2013, to approve a “Model Policy for Managing Heat and Humidity” that would appear in the 2013-14 MHSAA Handbook.

The policy, patterned after a mandatory policy of the Kentucky High School Athletic Association, requires that temperature and humidity readings be taken at the site of activities 30 minutes before the start of the practice or competition and again 60 minutes after the start of that activity.  The readings must be recorded in writing and kept in the files of school administration.  Inexpensive devices may be used that automatically calculate the “heat index.”

If the heat index is below 95 degrees, only normal precautions are required.  However, readings of 95 to 99 degrees and then 100 to 104 degrees require additional precautions; and all activity must be postponed or suspended if the heat index climbs above 104 degrees.

When the air temperature is below 80 degrees, there is no combination of heat and humidity that will result in need to curtail activity.

This is being proposed as a model policy for 2013-14.  The MHSAA will monitor school districts’ acceptance of this policy or adoption of similar policies before considering a mandate of this or similar policies.

The model policy will be mandatory for MHSAA tournaments. 

Stacking

December 19, 2014

Many in the interscholastic tennis community of this state have complained for years about the unethical practices of a small number of coaches who “stack” their lineups so that their better players compete in lower flights to increase their chances of success in advancing and earning points for their teams.

The current meet scoring system, which fails to reward teams for placing players at the highest levels, invites the problem. Appealing to personal integrity works with most coaches, but not all; so the issue of stacking festers, and it frustrates many coaches.

Hearing this pain, in 2009 the MHSAA convened a group of tennis coaches to discuss stacking. We utilized a paid professional facilitator. One obvious outcome was very little support to solve the problem by restructuring the tennis meet scoring system to disincentivize stacking.

The simple solution – to modify the meet scoring system to provide more team points for Number 1 singles than Number 2, and for Number 2 more than Number 3, etc. – was a double fault with the clear majority of the coaches assembled in 2009.

Of course, simple solutions rarely are so simple. And with this scoring system solution comes the likelihood that stronger teams move even further out of reach of their challengers. Other critics are uncomfortable with giving one student-athlete a higher potential team point value than another.

If those and other objections are the prevailing sentiment, then a new scoring system won’t be in our future. And stacking still will be.