What We Do
August 16, 2012
It is not infrequent that suggestions are made that the MHSAA do something it is not presently doing, the something being a project or problem that conforms to the special interest of the one making the suggestion. That person will usually be incredulous when we respond that the project or problem is beyond the authority of the MHSAA or beyond the capacity of the MHSAA’s resources. The criticism is at least implied that if the MHSAA really cared about kids, it would do this thing that is important to the critic.
So, how does the MHSAA decide what it will do?
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The first criterion is to determine if the subject matter is a school district-wide concern or is sport-specific. If the former – like sexual harassment sensitivity training – then it is school districts’ responsibility to provide the service for all their faculty, including athletic personnel. If the subject matter is sport-specific – like weight control in wrestling – then the MHSAA should consider the possibility that it is the organization uniquely positioned to assist by providing leadership and support services to its membership in this narrow area of athletic-related concern.
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The second criterion is to determine if there are any other agencies, institutions or organizations better positioned or more capable to provide the service. For example, the American Red Cross is already in place with programs and personnel to provide first aid, CPR and sports safety training to athletic personnel throughout Michigan. So even though it is sports-related, it might create wasteful duplication for the MHSAA to start doing what the American Red Cross is fully capable of, prepared to do and already doing.
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The third criterion for determining what the MHSAA will do is to ascertain what its member schools want the association to help with. Schools have asked for assistance in establishing a minimum rule for the eligibility of transfer students; therefore, the MHSAA has promulgated such a standard for local adoption. But school districts have not asked for assistance in establishing rules regarding eligibility after tobacco and alcohol use or after allegations or convictions for crimes or misdemeanors; therefore, no MHSAA minimum standards exist.
The MHSAA provides services in the sports sub-set of issues with which schools must deal, and only after the MHSAA membership identifies the need and the MHSAA leadership prioritizes all of the identified needs and provides the resources necessary to address the needs of highest priority.
Standards Promote Value
October 29, 2012
I can’t speak for every state, but it is probably true for most states, that (1) no school is required to provide a program of interscholastic activities – such are not curricular activities; and (2) participation in voluntary interscholastic competitive activities is a privilege offered to those who meet standards of eligibility and conduct of the school and standards of ability for the activity involved.
It is not a liability but an asset of competitive interscholastic activities that they are not co-curricular, but extracurricular – voluntary programs with extra standards, extra requirements, extra expectations.
We don’t need to sell the public on the value of participation; they desperately want their children to participate, and they will even sue us for the opportunity. What we have to do is sell the public on the value of the standards we maintain for participation.
Much of the value of school activities results from the standards of school activities. Many of the benefits of school activities accrue from the requirements of school activities. Raise the bar, raise the value. Lower the bar, lower the value.
Activities are much less capable of doing good things for kids and good things for schools and their communities where there are lower standards of eligibility and conduct. It’s the difference between interscholastic and intramural, between tough and easy. It is because schools have raised the bar for interscholastic activities that these programs have value to students, schools and communities.