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Post-Event Celebrations

March 16, 2012

In my last posting I praised the high school participant as the best behaved athlete on any level of sport.  It’s ironic: based on what we see on higher levels, the older the athlete becomes, the more immature he or she is allowed to behave.

But we do have at least one conduct problem; and it’s one with potential for much bigger problems.  It’s post-event celebrations.

Post-event celebrations have led to property damage, and they will lead to personal injuries unless we give the problem more careful attention and supervision.

Post-event celebrations are largely outside of the published playing rules, and they are usually beyond the jurisdiction of contest officials.

So, they will end up being the responsibility of game administration, and injuries will become the liability of game administrators.

This spring, the Representative Council may adopt more policies and procedures to which the MHSAA will direct more attention. The initial focus, as proposed, is on MHSAA team tournaments and to hold participating schools more explicitly accountable for property damage caused by celebrating teams and spectators.

Hopefully, attention to the broader topic and tougher policies for this narrow slice of the problem will reverse what we see as an unhealthy trend in school sports – excessive post-event celebrations.

More Than A Myth

September 5, 2014

Without a sure sense of what the outcome should be, we are engaging school administrators and others in a year-long discussion of possible revisions in out-of-season coaching rules.

We know that we would like the outcome to be simpler rules that are easier to understand and enforce; and that we would like to permit coaches to spend more time with student-athletes out of season; and that we want none of this to make coaches feel like they must coach one sport year-round to be successful or make student-athletes feel like they must play a single sport year-round just to make the team.

If there is a policy that can accomplish the good that we hope for and avoid the bad that we fear, we haven’t yet found it or developed it.

There is a temptation to characterize the multi-sport athlete as an anachronism or myth of modern school sports. However, the multi-sport athlete remains the backbone of interscholastic athletic programs in Class C and D schools.

And the multi-sport athlete still appears to be the ideal athlete, regardless of school size. It is an instructive reminder, I think, that the Lansing State Journal named a three-sport star from Ithaca as its high school male athlete of the year for 2013-14, and it was a four-sport athlete from Eaton Rapids who was named the high school female athlete of the year.

Following my presentation to coaches, student-athletes and parents at Jonesville High School last month, a student approached me to offer thanks for our sponsoring bowling. Jonesville won the MHSAA’s 2014 Division 4 Boys Bowling championship; and the young man who thanked me participates in football, bowling and baseball for his school, representing in my mind the kind of student we should strive the hardest to serve as we develop, revisit and revise policies and programs.