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The Safe Play Game Plan

April 21, 2015

On Feb. 10, bills were introduced into both the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, together called the “Safe Play Act,” which addresses three of the four health and safety “H’s” described in my last posting: Heat, Hearts and Heads.

For each of these topics, the federal legislation would mandate that the director of the Centers for Disease Control develop educational material and that each state disseminate that material.

For the heat and humidity management topic, the legislation states that schools will be required to adopt policies very much like the “MHSAA Model Policy to Manage Heat and Humidity” which the MHSAA adopted in March of 2013.

For both the heart and heat topics, schools will be required to have and to practice emergency action plans like we have been promoting in the past and will be distributing to schools this summer.

For the head section, the legislation would amend Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments and would eliminate federal funding to states and to schools which fail to educate their constituents or fail to support students who are recovering from concussions. This support would require multi-disciplinary concussion management teams that would include medical personnel, parents and others to provide academic accommodations for students recovering from concussions that are similar to the accommodations that are already required of schools for students with disabilities or handicaps.

This legislation would require return-to-play protocols similar to what we have in Michigan, and the legislation would also require reporting and record-keeping that is beyond what occurs in most places.

This proposed federal legislation demonstrates two things. First, that we have been on target in Michigan with our four Hs – it’s like they read our playbook of priorities before drafting this federal legislation.

This proposed federal legislation also demonstrates that we still have some work to do.

Once A Coach

April 15, 2014

While I was doing some spring cleanup in the yard of my house a weekend ago, the legendary coach, Phil Booth, walked by with his wife. In response to his shout “Hi Jack!,” I replied “Hello Coach.”

Phil has been many things during his long life; and even now he is an accomplished painter. But as one of our state’s most winning high school baseball and football coaches while at Lansing Catholic Central High School before his retirement two decades ago, he is still “Coach” to me . . . as he is to very many other people.

Once a coach, always a coach.

At my father’s memorial service 15 months ago, several players from the high school and college teams he coached in the 1940s and 1950s paid their respects, still referring to Dad as “Coach.”

Once a coach, always a coach.

At the visitation and Mass for former MHSAA Associate Director Jerry Cvengros on April 7, many people referred to him as “Coach,” even though he had also been an English teacher, athletic director and principal. And in his eulogy for Jerry, the MHSAA’s current associate director, Tom Rashid, used the word “coach” at least 25 times, even though Jerry’s illustrious coaching career at Escanaba High School ended 30 years ago.

Once a coach, always a coach.

There are very many very important ingredients in educational athletics – students, officials, administrators, parents, media, and volunteers of all kinds – but the key ingredient always has been and still is the coach. The impact of the coach can be, and often is, deeper and longer lasting than all other contributing factors combined.