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Safety First

August 16, 2012

In the final chapter of A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway writes:  “Skiing was not the way it is now, the spiral fracture had not become common then, and no one could afford a broken leg.  There were no ski patrols.  Anything you ran down from, you had to climb up.  That gave you legs that were fit to run down with.”

As motorized lifts carried less prepared people faster and with greater ease and comfort to higher and longer slopes, alpine skiing injuries became more frequent and serious.  Similar patterns can be found in many other sports as technological advancements have taken participants to extremes their physical bodies were unprepared or unsuited for.

The classic but far from unique example is football.  Improvements in helmets, mouth guards and face masks and the requirement of all three for head and face protection, encouraged coaches to teach and players to use blocking and tackling techniques that threatened their unprotected necks.  Catastrophic spinal cord injuries spiked in the early 1970s.  High school football rule makers countered with the prohibition of spearing in 1975, and then barring both butt-blocking and face tackling in 1976.  Certification of helmets was required in 1980.

New technologies created poles that catapulted pole vaulters to unexpected heights in the late 1960s; and high school rule makers responded with new requirements for poles and landing pits in 1975.  Risks of injuries and lawsuits were largely responsible for the pole vault being dropped at least temporarily from the schedule of events in some states.

The pursuit of profits by manufacturers and personal bests by athletes and their coaches will continue to push bodies to the extreme limits of what is safe; and rule makers will push back, often being labeled as out of date or out of step by those they are trying to protect.

Every four years the Olympics shine a spotlight on amazing dedication by athletes and alarming developments in equipment across the full spectrum of sports.  We are watching the 2012 Summer Games in awe of the participants, but on alert that some of the products they are utilizing will help, but others will harm, our high school programs.

We need to be certain that those who arrive at the top of our mountains have the legs to run down safely.

On the Move

June 8, 2012

Two members of the MHSAA’s executive staff live on the same side of the same town.  Each lives less than a five-minute drive to the MHSAA building; and yet they live in differently named neighborhoods, taking the names of the public elementary schools which serve their sections of town and the school district.

Students of those two elementary schools feed the one and only public middle school of the district, which feeds the one and only public high school of the district.  Historically, there would not be too much to deter the children raised in these two homes from attending the same schools.

However, if one of the families is Catholic, it might choose to send its children to the Catholic grade school located across the street from the public high school.  And it might decide to send its children to high school at the Catholic high school in the town which neighbors to the west.

If one of the families were inclined, it might choose to home school its children before sending them to the district’s high school or to one of two Christian high schools nearby.

Or perhaps one of the families would choose to send one of their children to a charter school near the location of the mother’s employment.  Perhaps another child would be a school of choice student at a traditional high school convenient to the father’s place of work but in a different school district.  These are common occurrences today that were rare just 15 years ago.

A multitude of other factors could affect the choice of school:

  • One school might be better known than others for a particular curriculum strength, or it might have a strong reputation in drama or music or sports, or in one particular sport.
  • Children are more likely today to have mingled on non-school youth sports teams and to decide to stay together for high school teams.
  • High school students might attend the same summer camps and be attracted to a different group of kids or a coach, and transfer to join the new group or coach.
  • As families relocate more frequently, students are required to transfer; and as the nuclear family becomes less stable, students are more often forced to change domestic settings, and change schools.

These and other factors – some worthy or unavoidable, some unhealthy and contrived – add up to the following:

  • During the entire 1986-87 school year, the MHSAA Executive Committee processed 96 requests by member schools to waive eligibility rules, and 58 of those requests were for student transfers.
  • 25 years later, the total requests for the school year were 462; and of those, 337 were to waive the transfer section of the eligibility regulation.

This demonstrates in numbers what we have observed to be true:  that during the past quarter century, the clientele of high school athletics has become five times more mobile.  It’s one of school sports’ greatest challenges.