Teaming Up
February 21, 2012
Try as I might, and no matter how much I practiced, I never became comfortable going to my left as a high school basketball player. I feel the same way about some of this job I have today.
If I’m asked a question about student eligibility, my response is usually quick and confident. The topic is in my wheelhouse, my comfort zone, my right hand.
But when I need to make a decision about information technology, a subject that didn’t exist when I started in this work, I need much more time and I’m more tentative with my answers. And it feels like I’m dribbling with my left hand.
Unfortunately, as time goes by, I’m faced with more questions that are in my area of weakness than my area of strength. It’s just the way the world works today, with everything tied into or revolving around technology.
Fortunately, we’ve assembled a team at the MHSAA office that includes staff for whom technology is not a thing. It just is. Like the air they breathe. They are as instinctive with their advice about technology as I am about the transfer rule.
Gratefully, there’s room for both of us in a modern enterprise serving traditional values.
One Concussion Conclusion
August 25, 2017
After both the first and second years of collecting head injury reports from all Michigan High School Athletic Association member high schools for all practices and events in MHSAA sports, we cautioned people to refrain from making too many conclusions.
It’s too soon. We now have a baseline, but we will need several years before we can be certain that we’ve spotted trends or trouble spots.
Nevertheless, one observation screams out. Girls report two to three times the number of concussions that boys do. In basketball, soccer, and in softball compared to baseball, girls report two to three times as many concussions. That was true in year one; it remained true in year two.
It may be that girls sustain more concussions than boys, or that girls are more forthcoming in reporting than boys are, or both. In the past, researchers have published both conclusions.
In either case, it means we need to coach boys and girls differently, and we need to prepare coaches differently for boys and girls teams, as we are doing in the MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program.