We Get It
November 4, 2011
Participation in high school sports, both nationally and in Michigan, increased in 2010-11 versus the year before. It was the 22nd consecutive year of increases nationally, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
The National Federation also conducted a first-of-its-kind attendance survey that tells us in 2009-10 that there were more than a half billion spectators at high school sporting events across the country. There were more than two and a half times as many fans attending high school basketball and football contests as attended college and professional contests combined in those sports.
We should be excited about our programs and encouraged by their historical popularity and continuing growth. But clearly, we are not. In fact, we are a discouraged bunch.
We are discouraged because, behind the good numbers that are reported, we see serious erosion – a subtle “slip-sliding away” of the principles and the popularity of school-based sports. In spite of the good numbers, we sense that all is not well in educational athletics.
In many places athletic directors are losing their full-time dedicated positions, which are essential to oversee a program of high participation, large crowds, great emotion and some risk of injury. In many places students are losing participation opportunities, which are essential components of a complete education necessary to prepare young people for the increasingly complicated and competitive world which they are about to enter.
We get it at the MHSAA. We know what’s happening. Not only do we get it, we also get the hundreds of calls from coaches who don’t have an athletic director available to answer their questions. And we get the hundreds and hundreds of calls from parents and others who can find neither a coach nor an athletic director available to address their concerns or answer their questions. Almost every time a school district dials down its oversight of the interscholastic athletic program, its constituents dial up the MHSAA to answer their questions and address their concerns.
Less money for and less oversight of school sports is a combination tailor-made for problems – for ineligible students and forfeits, for crowd control and sportsmanship problems, and for injuries; and in all cases, for the controversies that follow. There are smarter places to make cuts in our schools and still turn out smart kids.
Fixing Things
October 6, 2011
Leaders of schools and school sports have rarely been asked to do more with less than is demanded of them today. Their plight has brought back to my memory that many years ago, a pastor from North Carolina, Stephen M. Crotts, told this story – one that I’ve kept in my files, and in my heart, ever since. He said:
I started my ministry in Charlotte County, Virginia. And there was a deacon in the church there named Harvey Milton who ran a seed and feed store in Drakes Branch. Harvey and his wife Margaret sort of adopted me and helped me along during those first tentative years of the ministry.
I remember one day after I’d been there nearly three years. I was struggling with trying to do too much, trying to keep everybody happy, trying to fix all the hurts.
I stopped by to see Harvey at his business and found him hunched over the back door replacing a broken hinge.
“What are you doing?” I politely inquired.
“Well, Stephen,” Harvey intoned, “there are four kinds of broken things in this world. There are those things that are broken that if you just leave them alone they’ll fix themselves. Then there are those things that are broken that are none of my business. It’s up to somebody else to fix it. Then there are those things that are broken that only God can fix. And finally, there are those things that are broken that can be fixed and it’s my job to do it. And this door is one of them. And that’s what I’m doing . . . fixing this door.”
Stephen finished by saying this: “When urgent calls, opportunities, pressure, criticism and thoughts of all I could be doing come, those words help me sort my duty.”
Perhaps those words will help you too.