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A Solutions Approach

July 13, 2015

I had not been to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, and I expected to see much change since my several visits before the flooding. What I discovered when I attended national meetings there recently was little change ... including most of the same sights, sounds and smells of years before. I expected the same of the national meetings ... “same-ol’ same-ol’.”

It has become tradition that the executive directors of the 50 statewide high school athletic associations meet twice during the annual summer meeting of the National Federation of State High School Associations in sessions separate from all other delegates to that large convention. It has also been customary for me to leave those sessions depressed as problem was heaped upon problem by the directors, with little attention to solutions.

However, between the two sessions this year, a small group of the executive directors talked about strategies to redirect the conversation; and the result of the second session in New Orleans was to develop a strategy for identifying and prioritizing the most significant problems of school-based sports, and then identifying and prioritizing the resources and alliances currently available, as well as those that could be developed through cooperative effort and strategic partnerships, to attack the most pressing problems.

The expertise to solve such problems has been in our room for years. What has been lacking is the commitment to a process that could move us from a group accomplished in citing problems and suggesting reasons for them to a group accomplished in working together to solve the most significant problems.

So, the “Big Easy” is and may remain pretty much as it always has been. But maybe future meetings of the National Federation, wherever they may be, will be undergoing substantive change.

Words from Down Under

February 1, 2013

In the County Hotel, one of the few buildings in Napier, New Zealand, that survived the 1931 earthquake in that region, there is a library of books that have been left by previous travelers and may be exchanged for books of current travelers.  Among the books I found was Lord Cobham’s Speeches.  Lord Cobham was the Governor General of New Zealand from 1957 to 1962.

From his speech at the “Sportsmen Luncheon” in Wellington, NZ, 52 years ago today, I found these pearls:

  • “. . . sport is a great character-former; it teaches that self-control which must always precede self-expression, and that gracious acceptance of defeat is the gold to victory’s silver.”
  • “Sport is harmony, balance and rhythm, the triple heritage handed down from ancient Greece, without which art is barren and civilization itself out of joint.  Above all, the acquiring of a technique is increasingly important in an age when automation and the machine have robbed human beings of that sense of fulfillment that comes of fine craftsmanship.”
  • “Today we see the result of trying to hustle youth through childhood and adolescence into manhood and womanhood.  Education is one of the few things that cannot be hurried, although modern techniques may facilitate instruction, for which education is often mistaken . . .  In these instances, sport and games can and must play an increasingly important part in producing well-balanced citizens.  But before we do this, we must see to it that the games themselves don’t fall victims to the prevalent evils of selfishness, sharp practice and greed.”
  • “It is when the player of the game thinks himself greater than the game that both get into trouble.”