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.
U.S. Soccer Gets a Red Card
March 9, 2012
My previous posting paid compliments to a non-school lacrosse organization which appears to share some of the same perspectives we have for young athletes. Today I express an opposite opinion about U.S. Soccer which has created a “Development Academy” that has announced it is moving to a 10-month season beginning in the fall of 2012.
U.S. Soccer has declared that participants in the Development Academy are prohibited from playing on their local high school teams. This has prompted criticism from high school coaches who in many parts of the country, including Michigan, will lose some of the more accomplished players to the Development Academy.
The academy’s design follows that of powerhouse soccer nations where, however, high school sports do not exist like they do in the United States, where high school students play on high school soccer teams during defined seasons of the year.
The design of the Development Academy and the exclusive participation that U.S. Soccer is promulgating violates the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, which requires national sport governing bodies to minimize conflicts with school and college programs. I was involved in the preparation and passage of that law by the United States Congress; I know what it says and what it stands for. U.S. Soccer is violating the spirit and specific language of the law.
The desire and drive of U.S. Soccer to have U.S. teams excel in international competition is admirable; but its violation of U.S. statutes in the process is deplorable.