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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)

A Dedicated Downtime

November 7, 2014

Those who administer, coach or play school sports have become familiar with the phrase “downtime” to describe that period just before a season when coaches are not allowed to assemble players for activities that look too much like practice being conducted before the earliest practice of the season is allowed by rule.

In school sports, therefore, we often consider the downtime as a time to do less as teams – less than during the season, and even less than what is allowed teams during most of the offseason. If student-athletes are going to prepare for the upcoming season, they do so more as individuals than as organized teams during the brief preseason downtime.

In this we might look to the arts and literature for assistance; for it is in the downtime – the time away, on one’s own – that many artists, writers and other creative types have found their inspiration for excellence.

In Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, author Mason Currey describes the working habits of 160 creative thinkers. A common theme is the time these people demanded to be away from others to walk, sit and ponder. To wonder. To work through obstacles that seemed to be blocking their progress.

This is an imperfect analogy for student-athletes and school coaches, but it’s still instructive. In fact, a disconnected downtime – one without television, texting, tweeting and team drills, but with time and space to earnestly assess strengths and address weaknesses – might be central to an effective prescription for the upcoming season.