Resilience
November 8, 2011
Several seasons ago, University of Florida Men’s Basketball Coach Billy Donovan was asked what, after a necessary amount of player talent, is the key to a successful season. Coach Donovan responded: “Resiliency.”
Building on that, Harvey Gratsky, publisher of Association Convention and Facilities magazine, wrote: “Resilience, flexibility, persistence and the wisdom to take lessons learned and apply them are all characteristics of successful people.”
Mr. Gratsky continued with broadened remarks: “Resilient associations that dig deep and find ways to leverage the new normal have been rewarded.” He added, these organizations show “a real sense of urgency to reinvigorate . . .”
This publisher was addressing associations and the convention business that depends on healthy, vibrant associations; but he could have been describing the MHSAA these past three years. For even before the recession’s effects on associations generally, the MHSAA was dealing with a potentially lethal fee judgment in the sports seasons litigation.
But in what could have been our bleakest years, we’ve had our best. We accelerated our learning and expanded our services. Expenses went down and revenues went up, without increasing our basic tournament ticket prices.
We were resilient and felt urgency to reinvigorate our operations and programs; and we’ve been rewarded with the best three years in the organization’s financial history, poised now to serve our constituents in unprecedented ways.
Committees Fail Critical Issues
June 7, 2013
Typically, each sport committee meets once each year for three to five hours, during which time it considers proposals that come from schools, leagues and the state’s coaches association for the sport; and the proposals most often deal with allowing more regular-season events and more qualifiers to the MHSAA postseason tournament.
Occasionally there is a proposal that might improve sportsmanship. But much more often the proposals would increase conflicts between academics and athletics and/or strain overstressed local budgets. And almost never is there a proposal that would address the health and safety of participants (the Wrestling Committee has been an occasional exception and the Competitive Cheer Committee is a routine exception).
While coaches associations must shoulder some of the blame because they’ve brought MHSAA committees “trivial” topics, at least in comparison to the tougher health and safety topics, much of the cause of MHSAA committee ineffectiveness is that the committees don’t meet long enough or often enough to research serious problems and develop well-thought-out solutions. That is forgivable because it is difficult to get commitments from busy people all across Michigan to be absent from their regular jobs and travel dozens or even hundreds of miles, and to do so multiple times each year – which is what it takes to more fully understand complex problems and more carefully construct solutions. Meetings have to be few and they have to be efficient.
However, facing the worst publicity football has seen since the mid-1970s, we knew we had to supplement the football committee process. We did so by appointing a special Football Task Force of optimum size and experienced, representative makeup to meet on however many occasions are necessary during 2013 to accomplish three purposes:
- Review practice policies to improve acclimatization of players and reduce head trauma.
- Review competition rules to reduce head trauma and the frequency of the sport’s most injurious game situations.
- Develop promotions that extol the value of football to students, schools and communities and the safety record of school-based football.
The promotional efforts have begun to be rolled out; game rule modifications are being investigated; and four proposals for changing football practice policies have been prepared. They will be the topic of our next posting.