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The Work I Want

December 22, 2015

I am long past the point of working because I have to. I work because I want to.

  • Because I’m lucky to work with co-workers I enjoy and a board I care about and whose members care about me.
  • Because I’m blessed to have work with a mission beyond the bottom line;
  • Because I see needs that I feel qualified to fill very well;
  • And, I’m equally certain, because I have needs that this work fulfills.

On some days or for some tasks, my passion is not great; but on most days and for most responsibilities I have, my passion is as great as ever. And it has never been greater for what I care about most. And that is to hold school sports accountable to ...

  • Pursue programs, policies and procedures that emphasize local opportunities for large numbers of students in a healthy, respectful, educational environment; and
  • Resist pressures to copy the elitism and commercialism of non-school programs.

There are more than enough people advocating that “anything goes.” My voice argues, “Not so fast.” I would much rather see school sports tackle a half-dozen difficult health and safety issues than spend a half-minute debating national travel and tournaments. The former needs all the passion we can generate; the latter has nothing whatsoever to do with the moral imperatives of school sports, and wastes our precious time.

The Safe Play Game Plan

April 21, 2015

On Feb. 10, bills were introduced into both the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, together called the “Safe Play Act,” which addresses three of the four health and safety “H’s” described in my last posting: Heat, Hearts and Heads.

For each of these topics, the federal legislation would mandate that the director of the Centers for Disease Control develop educational material and that each state disseminate that material.

For the heat and humidity management topic, the legislation states that schools will be required to adopt policies very much like the “MHSAA Model Policy to Manage Heat and Humidity” which the MHSAA adopted in March of 2013.

For both the heart and heat topics, schools will be required to have and to practice emergency action plans like we have been promoting in the past and will be distributing to schools this summer.

For the head section, the legislation would amend Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments and would eliminate federal funding to states and to schools which fail to educate their constituents or fail to support students who are recovering from concussions. This support would require multi-disciplinary concussion management teams that would include medical personnel, parents and others to provide academic accommodations for students recovering from concussions that are similar to the accommodations that are already required of schools for students with disabilities or handicaps.

This legislation would require return-to-play protocols similar to what we have in Michigan, and the legislation would also require reporting and record-keeping that is beyond what occurs in most places.

This proposed federal legislation demonstrates two things. First, that we have been on target in Michigan with our four Hs – it’s like they read our playbook of priorities before drafting this federal legislation.

This proposed federal legislation also demonstrates that we still have some work to do.