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War Stories

May 25, 2012

I recently returned from a national meeting of my counterparts – an annual gathering where legal and legislative topics are on the agenda. With increasing frequency, the business aspects of the gatherings are sidetracked by “war stories,” as my colleagues relate the latest attacks on their organizations by media, legislators, lawyers, parents and others as these good leaders assist their member schools in regulating interscholastic athletics. 

It is well known that respect for authority figures and organizations of all kinds has been slipping for decades; and there are many reasons for it.  What has made the decline even more apparent is the Internet where people can communicate with more speed and less consequence than before.

It is well studied that appropriateness of tone and language diminishes as one moves from face-to-face meetings, to telephonic conversations, to traditional letters, to emails, texts and Twitter.

People will usually research topics and learn more about the complexities of an issue before meetings and use dialogue to come to consensus during conversations.  They will be more circumspect and contemplative in correspondence (which means, literally, an exchange of letters).  But they will not hesitate to make assertions and cast aspersions without any factual basis in brief, one-sided email or social media comments; which usually adds nothing but acrimony to the issue.

Perhaps by being the No. 1 user of social media among the nation’s state high school associations, the MHSAA has made the problem worse.  Perhaps by being the only state high school association executive director in the country to blog, I’ve also added to the problem.

Sports, after all, is not a subject that often suffers from too little communication.  Perhaps, at least sometimes, it suffers from too much quantity and too little quality.

Remarkable Student-Athletes

May 8, 2015

Every spring I have the privilege and pleasure of participating in several league or local school events that acknowledge and reward the careers of student-athletes who distinguished themselves as multiple-sport participants with very high academic grade point averages. One of those events this year was the 2015 Senior Athlete Recognition Ceremony of the Capital Area Activities Conference. It was remarkable in several ways.

It was my fourth time in attendance at the event, which started when the league was smaller and simply called the Capital Area Conference. I was the speaker at one of its first recognition ceremonies. In later years I attended as our first son, and then our second, were among the evening’s honorees. But I found the 2015 CAAC event remarkable in two other and more important ways.

First, as the Master of Ceremonies Tim Staudt read off the intended college majors of the 200 honorees (10 per school), I noticed that not one of the students had declared the intention of being an English major, which was my college major and to which I credit much of the pleasure I’ve enjoyed as a human being and the success I’ve experienced as an administrator of school sports. I’m hoping some of these 200 of the CAAC’s best and brightest – a truly impressive group – will decide or even just stumble into an English major – a place to learn how to think and to communicate.

The second remarkable feature of this remarkable group of 200 was that the number of boys almost equaled the number of girls. This almost never happens, and that has always concerned me – that boys settle for athletic achievement alone while girls strive to achieve in athletics, academics, activities and much more of what a comprehensive education has to offer.

It is extremely important to the future of our society that we demand much more of boys than we are getting. If we expect them to be productive in life and to be good citizens, husbands and fathers, boys need to learn in high school that “settling” is not sufficient and that a life which revolves around sports alone is a life that will be disappointing.