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February 23, 2016

If there is one month of the year that demonstrates the difference in the MHSAA today compared to a generation ago, it is February.

  • This is the month when 775 people, including more than 700 students, gathered for the MHSAA Women in Sports Leadership Conference in Lansing. This year’s was the 22nd edition of the conference.

  • This is the month when the 120 finalists and 32 recipients of the 2016 MHSAA Scholar-Athlete Award are announced. This is the program’s 27th year, sponsored by Farm Bureau Insurance.

  • This is the month when MHSAA staff is on the road to visit finalists for “Battle of the Fans V,” and thousands of students vote for their favorite on social media, and the MHSAA Student Advisory Council finalizes the selection of this year’s top cheering section.

For most of its history, the MHSAA worked with school personnel who then interacted with students. Today, the MHSAA delivers much more than its postseason tournaments directly to student-athletes, including captains clinics and sportsmanship summits all year round.

While this work must never displace from our top priority the development and delivery of eligibility competition standards that are safe and sound for an educational environment, these direct interactions inform the rules making process in very positive ways.

Standards Promote Value

October 29, 2012

I can’t speak for every state, but it is probably true for most states, that (1) no school is required to provide a program of interscholastic activities – such are not curricular activities; and (2) participation in voluntary interscholastic competitive activities is a privilege offered to those who meet standards of eligibility and conduct of the school and standards of ability for the activity involved.

It is not a liability but an asset of competitive interscholastic activities that they are not co-curricular, but extracurricular – voluntary programs with extra standards, extra requirements, extra expectations.

We don’t need to sell the public on the value of participation; they desperately want their children to participate, and they will even sue us for the opportunity.  What we have to do is sell the public on the value of the standards we maintain for participation.

Much of the value of school activities results from the standards of school activities.  Many of the benefits of school activities accrue from the requirements of school activities.  Raise the bar, raise the value.  Lower the bar, lower the value.

Activities are much less capable of doing good things for kids and good things for schools and their communities where there are lower standards of eligibility and conduct.  It’s the difference between interscholastic and intramural, between tough and easy.  It is because schools have raised the bar for interscholastic activities that these programs have value to students, schools and communities.