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Silence is Golden

July 2, 2013

During the summer weeks, "From the Director" will bring to you some of our favorite entries from previous years. Today's blog first appeared Oct. 22, 2010.

A minor repair to a vocal cord forced me into 48 hours of silence recently.  I rather enjoyed it and, frankly, was a little sorry to see it end.

You see, when you can’t talk, you’re forced to listen; and when you can’t talk, you’re more inclined to think.  Not “think before you speak,” just think.

I’ll spare you the time spent counting my many blessings, as well as the time worrying about a few family matters. But I’ll share with you some thoughts I had about our common ground, that is, school-sponsored sports in Michigan.

I believe the future of school sports hangs in the balance of how we respond to the financial pressures local programs now experience.  It worries me that too many responses are putting local programs on a course that will fundamentally and forever knock school sports off the course of educational athletics.

  • We are mistaken if we believe a $225 participation fee to play JV tennis doesn’t change the nature of JV tennis.
  • We are mistaken if we believe that a competitive athletic program, with high emotion and risk of injury, can be administered by inexperienced or part-time athletic administrators without clerical and event supervision assistance.
  • We are mistaken if we believe that we can operate educational athletics without our coaches involved in ongoing education regarding the best practices of working with adolescents.

It isn’t educational athletics if the program does not promote broad and deep participation and does not have expert leadership and coaching.

 That is what I thought about.  And what I intend to speak about.

Ready for Some Football

August 12, 2014

How seriously should we take public criticism of tackle football when that public promotes boxing or cage fighting? Or how seriously should we take public criticism of football played with helmets when that public allows motorcyclists to ride without any helmets at all?

This fickle if not hypocritical focus on football deserves to be exposed. 

However, and more importantly, this does not reduce our obligation to rise above the obvious questions of fair and balanced criticism and keep pressing for a safer environment for schools’ most popular participation sport.

In Michigan this has led to new limitations on head-to-head contact in football practices that began for more than 600 high schools this week. Specifically, no team or individual may participate in more than one collision practice per day before the first game, and no more than two collision practices per week after the first game.

The new policies promote instruction in proper blocking and tackling technique. It is full speed head-to-head contact that is further reduced, not full speed shoulder contact with sleds, shields and dummies nor slow speed contact between players.

Last month, and perhaps two years too late to be helpful, the National Federation of State High School Associations hosted a high-profile, high-powered summit to discuss practice policies of the kind that we developed, debated and adopted during the past school year to be ready for this 2014 season.