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“Who Needs This?”

May 24, 2013

One of the best barometers we have for informing us of the health of Michigan’s economy is to examine the number of registrations to be an MHSAA official.  When the economy is poor, registrations trend upward; when the economy is improving, registrations decline.

Well, business must be booming in Michigan!  Since the 2007-08 school year we’ve fallen almost 2,000 registrations.

Some of this decline can be explained away by the fact that registrations spiked upward when we allowed some free registrations in volleyball and basketball following the 2007 court-ordered changes in the girls volleyball and basketball seasons.  But most of the recent decline – certainly the 1,000 decline of the past two years – is unrelated to discontinuing those promotional efforts; and it’s unrelated to a very reluctant resurgence in Michigan’s economy.

What is at work here now are two newer forces that frustrate efforts to maintain a pool of officials that is adequate to handle all the contests of a broad and deep interscholastic athletic program, and to handle those contests well:

  • The first is the rise of social media and “instant criticism.”  Spectators not only can critique calls before the official gets home from the game, those spectators can do so during the game.  Their biased comments – and photos – can go worldwide before the official has left the venue!  Really, who needs this?  There have got to be less stressful hobbies.
  • The second factor is the increased dependence on assigners.  As local school athletic directors’ jobs became larger and more complicated, and as they were often given less time to do those jobs, more have had to turn to local assigners who will hire contest officials for groups of schools in one or more sports.  As assigners built their little kingdoms, new officials have found it harder to break in and obtain a rewarding number of assignments.  Many officials who have found themselves out of sorts with a local assigner have said, “Really, who needs this?”  They find more fulfilling ways to spend their time.

The fact is that school-based sports – educational athletics – needs officials.  We need them.

We need more officials and we especially need more young officials.  Officials are vital members of the team that is necessary to provide a school-based sports program that actually does what it says it does – and that is to teach life lessons, including fair play and sportsmanship.

 (Find out more about MHSAA officiating)

The Old Is New Again

October 23, 2015

In the hidden back reaches of my closet at home I’ve kept some ties, suits and pants I have not worn for many years, forgotten as I purchased or was given newer and more fashionable clothes. Needing space, and heeding my wife’s suggestion that it was time to donate what I never wear, I gave my wife a fashion show of my long-neglected wardrobe. I wanted her help to decide what to discard.

Some of the items I modeled brought back memories of happy times, like weddings and reunions; others of sadder times, like funerals. Some items were laughably out of style. But, surprisingly, some of the oldest items looked the best ... almost as good as the most recent additions to my wardrobe. They were, in fact, back in fashion.

This caused me to recall that some of the discarded policies of educational athletics are working their way back in fashion.  For example …

  • For many years, even after many states changed their rules, the MHSAA was criticized for prohibiting member schools’ students from wearing full equipment at and participating in the full-contact summer football camps of universities and commercial organizations. Now, with greater attention to improving acclimatization and reducing head contact in football, other states are returning to the policies we never discarded: contact-free out-of-season football camps and clinics.

  • Equally “dishonored” by those who believe there is never too much of a good thing have been MHSAA rules that limit the number of contests and the distance of travel. After years of more and more of everything, the new normal of severely limited school sports budgets makes our modest schedules more virtuous than ever.

  • For many years, MHSAA policy has stood apart from most states by limiting students to competing in only one level of a sport in a single day … no JV and varsity in the same day, no fifth or sixth quarter rule. Now, with even greater attention to reducing head and overuse injuries and other student health and safety issues, our rules look both protective and progressive, not overly restrictive.

If a man waits long enough, even his narrowest tie or widest lapel will be back in fashion; so what makes me cling to old clothes also makes me think twice about changing established rules. It is just as difficult to restore a discarded rule as it is to wear a discarded jacket.

It’s always easier to relax a policy than to restore it when we rediscover we need it.