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Improving Over the Long Run

October 22, 2013

A participant in a 5K run told me recently that when she first entered races, her goal was just to finish. After those early successes, her goal in entering races was to improve her personal best time.

It was only after several years of consistent improvement that she entertained the thought of actually trying to attain a spot in the top 20. Eventually, a “Top 10” and then a “Top 5” finish became the goal. And only recently has she made it a goal to try to win one of these races.

This is a wise way to approach sports. Engage at first to improve your health and fitness. Then to enhance your speed, coordination and/or endurance. Then to test the limits of your abilities. And only then to test yourself against others.

Adults might look to this as a natural, healthy way to improve themselves in almost any endeavor. And adults who are coaching youth should look to it as a healthy way to lead young people to improve both as athletes and as human beings.

Story Power

January 12, 2015

I spend time every day surfing the MHSAA’s family of websites – MHSAA.com, Second Half and MHSAA.tv. My counterpart in another state was astounded that I do this, and incredulous that I could find the time to do this. But it makes perfect sense to me.

More people visit our websites on a typical day than visit our office in East Lansing during an entire year. We have more visitors to our websites during a typical month than attend all of our postseason tournaments combined during a typical year.

We have more opportunity to make first impressions through electronic entry than tournament turnstiles; and for the large majority of people who make contact with the MHSAA, electronic media may provide the only impression they will ever get of the MHSAA.

This is why we have styled the MHSAA’s websites in a manner that is visually pleasing and easy to navigate on both desktop and mobile devices. And this is why we have stuffed these websites not only with schedules, scores and stats but also with stories; and it’s why the stories are presented in text, audio, pictures and video streaming.

We know that those who share the stories of school sports most effectively will shape the message of school sports most persuasively.

Our job is not merely regulation of school sports, but communication about school sports – not merely event management, but content management – managing the message and meaning of school-sponsored sports.