One Community at a Time
July 24, 2012
In the northwest corner of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula there is a group of volunteers who are focusing on the character-building potential of youth and high school sports. They are teaching the principles and recognizing the people that make character education happen frequently and by design, rather than only rarely and by accident.
The group is known as Beyond The Scoreboard. It draws on resources from Character Counts, Positive Coaching Alliance and others; and it delivers character education through inexpensive workshops for athletes, coaches, officials, sports leaders and spectators.
Beyond The Scoreboard also conducts a Champions of Character Awards Dinner, the 8th Annual held June 11, 2012 in Petoskey. I’ve attended most and was the speaker in 2011. This year’s speaker was my counterpart with the Arizona Interscholastic Association, Commissioner Harold Slemmer.
At an event like this there are many moments that uplift the best of youth and school sports. Here are two from this year’s banquet:
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When East Jordan High School runner Luke Hawley was thanking those who helped him be the kind of person who would be honored as the high school male athlete, he thanked many people, including the maintenance person who prepared the high school track. I had never before heard a high school student-athlete include a groundskeeper in his support group. And it told me a lot about this young man. He’s likely to be a good employee, spouse and parent someday.
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When a member of the Petoskey High School football team was introducing his coach, Kerry VanOrman, who was being honored as the high school coach, he said the first thing Coach VanOrman would say to every player he greeted was a question about something other than sports; and he would be the same way to every player, no matter how skilled. He’s coaching more than a sport; he’s coaching kids. Helping them become better people.
After a single banquet, an attentive person could develop a game plan for character building for an entire season. Imagine all that’s been shared to improve youth and school sports after eight years! Congratulations to founder Jack Taylor, Executive Director Ron Goodman and all board members and volunteers.
Growth Industry
December 26, 2014
We have wondered why Michigan’s high schools would enroll more J-1 visa students than in any other state, as well as more J-1 and F-1 visa students combined than the schools of any other state. It certainly can’t be our weather!
Like schools in many states, Michigan schools are looking to foreign countries to fill classrooms where enrollments have been falling, and they are looking to the tuition dollars of international students to help fill the hole of declining state funding.
And schools across the US are finding a hungry market, especially in Asia where families are willing to pay almost any amount to give their children the kind of educational opportunities their own countries don’t, including a leg up in gaining admission to a US college or university.
One unique contributing factor to our state’s leading totals is the late date when public school classes start in the fall. International students who miss the start of school in states which begin classes two, three or four weeks before Michigan can still try for a placement in Michigan where public high schools cannot begin classes until after Labor Day.
These late, scrambling and sometimes inadequately vetted enrollments are one of the many problems attendant to the increasing numbers of J-1 and F-1 visa students enrolling in Michigan each year. More serious are the “pipelines” that, for example, direct basketball players to some schools and ice hockey players to other schools.
It makes some people feel warm and fuzzy, but a lot more people get hot under the collar, to observe a foreign exchange student become a suddenly successful basketball team’s high scorer and rebounder, and then later be given a Division I university basketball scholarship. Or be the leading scorer on an ice hockey team that posts its best record and deepest MHSAA tournament run in the school’s history.
My wife and I have hosted an international college level student in our home for almost two years. I know the benefits to both parties. And I also know that there is a growing number of problems related to sports and profit that need to be stopped, or at least sent to some other state.