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.
Student-Centered Sports
November 1, 2013
We boldly, unapologetically and repeatedly state that interscholastic athletics are different than sports programs on any other level by any other sponsor – different because these programs are school-sponsored and, to an extent like no other, student-centered. But what does that really mean?
The easier to describe – school-sponsored – means that interscholastic athletics are conducted by schools themselves. They are administered under the auspices of boards of education, with responsibilities delegated to administrators, and then to coaches, who are closely supervised by those administrators under the broad policies and procedures approved by their local boards of education.
The more difficult to describe – student-centered – means that our orientation starts with students. We think first about how many we can include, not how many we exclude. We adopt rules not to be elite but to enhance the experience for students, knowing that the higher the standards we establish for eligibility and conduct, the greater the benefit to the students, their schools and the surrounding community.
In a student-centered program, thought is given not only to the students who want exceptions to rules, but also to the other students who would be displaced if those exceptions were made.
In a student-centered program, we consider the whole child and all the children.