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Connecting with Coaches

January 28, 2014

In the coming weeks, the MHSAA will meet with the leadership of the high school coaches associations of our state. We have been doing this for more than 25 years, with two primary purposes.

First, we want to provide a forum for these leaders to share with one another their new ideas and initiatives and to discover “best practices” from one another, hoping that this will lead to the better plans being implemented in multiple organizations.

Our second purpose is to present some of the MHSAA initiatives or rules changes that are applicable to all or most sports. It’s not a time when we talk about the baseball pitching rule or the football playoff point system, but a time when we discuss topics of more universal application.

This year those topics included new requirements for coaches education, new rules for athletic-related transfers and proposed rules changes for international students, a simplified scrimmage rule for all sports, and a modified penalty for participation in certain all-star events.

It is intended that these coaches association leaders will be enabled to take these topics to their respective boards and members in order to increase understanding of proposed changes and to facilitate feedback to the MHSAA Representative Council and staff.

Cheering for Sportsmanship

January 8, 2013

I try to start each new school year at the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association summer camp at Michigan State University. I talk briefly about who the MHSAA is and what it does; and then two or three dozen high school newspaper editors and writers ask me questions; and in doing so, they give me clues to what’s going on in our schools and what’s important to our students.

Several years ago, when I opened the session to questions, one young man asked:  “Mr. Roberts, what’s your job?”  I paused, and then said, “I guess I’m the head cheerleader for high school sports in Michigan.”

So then this precocious student asked:  “Okay, what do you cheer for?”  With a briefer pause, this is some of what I said:

  • I cheer for sportsmanship that’s not merely good, but great.
  • I cheer for sportsmanship, not gamesmanship.
  • I cheer for playing by the rules, both the letter and the spirit.
  • I cheer for maximum effort to try to win each and every contest.
  • I don’t cheer for winning at any cost; I do cheer for learning at every opportunity.
  • I cheer for losing with grace and for winning with even greater grace, with humility and modesty.
  • I cheer for the lessons of victory and the even greater lessons of defeat.