Logo

Thinking Inside The Box

October 5, 2012

Praise is often heaped upon the innovative person who thinks “outside the box.”  But thinking “inside the box” is equally praiseworthy.

By this I mean doing the essentials better.  I mean remembering our first and fundamental reasons for being, and delivering the very finest services that support those purposes.

It is possible that by thinking outside the box, some organizations forget about their reasons for being; and in interscholastic athletics, we would be well served to think inside the box.

In sports we learn we must compete within the confines of end lines and sidelines.  Go beyond the boundary lines and you’re out of play, where you can’t score and can’t win.

If school sports will secure a victory for its future – meaning, school sports continue to be a tool for schools to reach and motivate young people in an educational setting – it will not occur from out of bounds.  It will occur because we stayed within prescribed boundaries:  local, amateur, educational, non-commercial, sportsmanlike and physically beneficial.

A Different Language

January 16, 2015

Every other year my wife and I are able to spend the December holidays with our son and his wife who are international school educators, but we must journey to the other side of the world to make that happen. In crossing both the international dateline and the equator to see them in Australia last month, I learned a helpful lesson for those of us who try to communicate about school sports.

For two weeks I attempted to be a follower of Australia's "national pastime" -- cricket -- but try as I might, I could not grasp a passable understanding of the sport. On the surface, cricket seems a lot like baseball; but there are far more differences than similarities to the sport many North, Central and Latin Americans grew up with and know so well. I watched cricket on television and read the extensive newspaper coverage every day; but even after studying the rules and listening to and questioning a local expert, even the most basic rules, strategies and language of cricket remain mysteries to me.  

For a while at least, my struggle with cricket may make me more understanding of some parents and others who are so quick to criticize high school sports. Possibly I’ll be more purposeful and patient to explain our policies and the philosophies behind them.

Many of today's parents and spectators have never played the sports their children now play. They don't really know the rules and strategies of the games that were not a part of their upbringing, and they tend to be more unreasonably critical of decisions by coaches and officials in those sports.

Competitive cheer, gymnastics, lacrosse, ice hockey, soccer and other sports seem "foreign" to those who never played those sports. But it's true that in all sports we are likely to experience the most criticism, and the most unjustifiable complaints, where there is the least understanding or appreciation. That's true of a particular sport’s playing rules, and it's also true of the policies and procedures that govern all school sports. And in both cases, this demands extra effort on the part of coaches and administrators to communicate the rules and the reason for those rules.