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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. 

In Others’ Words

August 22, 2014

I’ve read and heard multiple times – so I’ve come to believe it’s at least partly true – that one of the techniques that marketing departments or agencies use when developing campaigns to promote a product or service is to look at it from the consumer’s, customer’s or client’s perspective.

The point is often brought home that if management would use this technique as much as marketers, then management would be more effective and would label itself, rather than marketers, as the “creative team.” It chafes me to hear a CEO say he or she wants to know what “creative” has to say about a sponsorship initiative before the CEO will offer an opinion.

Thinking about what our customers want doesn’t require that leaders suspend their personal beliefs or reverse experience-based opinions. It merely asks that we look at things from a different and sometimes even opposite point of view. And to be truly revealing, it asks that we try to put into words where other people stand on a particular topic.

It asks us to actually try to describe what our customers see from where they stand and what they say they want. For example, in our work, it would ask administrators to think about and actually describe what coaches want, and vice versa. And it asks both coaches and administrators to think about and put into their own words what student-athletes want, and what their parents want.

This has been an ongoing part of my life, provoked I suppose by my marriage of 42 years to a woman whose political views often point 180 degrees from my own. And this approach has been especially enlightening on school sports’ most troublesome topics, some of which we are tackling at this time, like ...

  • Out-of-season coaching rules
  • Junior high/middle school programming
  • Health and safety mandates