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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.

Practice Makes Perfect?

May 19, 2013

For years, leaders of educational athletics have been critical of sports specialization, citing the physical, emotional and financial price that is often paid by young people and their families as young athletes (or their parents) chase unrealistic dreams.  The weight of evidence I’ve seen has made me conclude that sports specialization is good for some, but a multi-sport experience is better for most young people.

Recently I’ve read about a new challenge to the sports specialization myth.  It’s called “interleaving.”  It posits that “mixing things up” is a better way to train; that brains and muscles get a better workout by mixing tasks.

This is getting national attention at thedanplan.com which chronicles a 30-something commercial photographer, Dan McLaughlin, who quit his job in Oregon with the goal of becoming a top-level professional golfer.  He had read in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers that 10,000 hours of practice would gain him international expertise.

Along the way on this quixotic journey, Dan McLaughlin not only has been testing the 10,000-hour theory, he’s been testing interleaving – mixing lengths of putts during putting practice, mixing different types of shots on the driving range, etc.

Time magazine reported in April that this has the attention of UCLA’s Learning and Forgetting Lab which is testing the Florida State University theory popularized by Gladwell, and is searching for “the biological sweet spot.”

FYI:  McLaughlin has not yet qualified for the PGA tour.  But on the other hand, he still has about 4,000 practice hours to go.