MHSAA Teams Up for Leadership Training
October 2, 2014
By Rob Kaminski
MHSAA benchmarks editor
Nothing strengthens a community like neighbors working together. The same can be said for organizations whose missions and goals are closely aligned.
Welcome to East Lansing, where the MHSAA and the Michigan State University Institute for the Study of Youth Sports share geographical boundaries and the same philosophies for educational athletics.
The ISYS mission, as stated on its website, is as follows: “The mission of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports is to provide leadership, scholarship and outreach that ‘transforms’ the face of youth sports in ways that maximize the beneficial physical, psychological, and social effects of participation for children and youth while minimizing detrimental effects.”
That should sound familiar to athletic leaders within the MHSAA.
Key to the relationship between the MHSAA and the ISYS was the hiring of Dan Gould to the MSU faculty in 2004. Director of the ISYS, he helped to facilitate one of the first major initiatives between the ISYS and the MHSAA, which was to revamp the coaches education program, replacing the PACE program with the Coaches Advancement Program (CAP). Dr. Larry Lauer of the ISYS was heavily involved in creation of the CAP under the direction of MHSAA Assistant Director Kathy Vruggink Westdorp.
At the same time, Dr. Gould also led a study with athletic directors and coaches throughout the state to understand the greatest issues in high school sports. Additionally, to continue the ISYS mission to disseminate research findings, Dr. Marty Ewing, Dr. Gould, and a number of the ISYS graduate students have been presenters at the MHSAA Women in Sport Leadership Conference.
Such services have now become a natural fit into the development of the MHSAA’s student leadership programs, providing huge dividends to those in the ISYS program and the MHSAA.
“The mutually beneficial relationship led to a joint project to enhance student-athlete development with a specific focus on leadership development,” said Scott Westfall, one of two ISYS graduate students who work closely with MHSAA Director of Brand Management Andy Frushour.
Frushour spearheads the student-based programs at the MHSAA with assistance from Andi Osters and Paige Winne. Among the first ISYS students to work with the MHSAA were Dana Voelker and Jed Blanton, who helped conceptualize the Captains Clinics curriculum. Today at the clinics, ISYS graduate students lead one-day seminars that provide student-athletes with insight on how to understand themselves as leaders, build key leadership skills and handle tough situations on their teams.
Currently, Westfall and Scott Pierce are the ISYS members providing their time and expertise with the MHSAA Student Advisory Council, Captains Clinics, and a new Online Captains Course set to debut this school year.
The Course is student-driven, with two SAC members serving as the faces of the program. Such peer delivery is vital to delivering the messages.
“Students often view leadership from teachers, coaches and administrators as regular, everyday activity. While adults are highly respected figures, students often see adults as outsiders who do not fully understand what it is like to walk a mile in their shoes,” Westfall said.
“The power is rooted in the peer-to-peer relationships and mutual empathy, as student-athletes are very close in age. Student-based leadership is often held with higher validity because the student leader is likely experiencing many of the same adversities and temptations as the peers on his or her team.”
Adding value and credence to the opinions of the ISYS staff is the fact they are steeped in research. The ISYS can gear its efforts to surveys and field studies that the MHSAA, due to staff constraints, cannot. It’s what the ISYS does; it’s the forte of its staff, and the findings help to shape CAP, the SAC and Captains Clinics.
“Research tells us that when kids get to middle school and high school, peer comparison has a really strong influence on how students and student-athletes act and behave,” said Pierce. “Based on this, we believe that student leaders can, and do, act as important role models on the field and in the classroom.
“It is not always easy for students to stand up as leaders because often times this means standing up and being different. So while student-based leadership is vitally important, it doesn't happen automatically. It needs to be talked about and developed over time.”
The MHSAA Captains Clinics and upcoming online course, it is believed, are examples of programs which can develop leaders.
“One of the leadership quotes we used in Tier 1 of the online student leadership course is from Vince Lombardi. It states: ‘Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile,’” said Westfall. “This type of sentiment, combined with the joint belief between the ISYS and the MHSAA that leadership skills can be taught and cultivated, leads us to believe that leadership can be developed in an individual.”
Through such development, real inroads can be made to promote sportsmanship, teamwork and citizenship in school sports. It’s a worthwhile endeavor for participants, both attendee and instructor.
“Our staff finds the MHSAA Captains Clinics to be some of the most enjoyable and rewarding work that we do,” Pierce said. “The events focus on building leadership in the student-athletes, and give us (ISYS) an ideal opportunity to put our research and scientific knowledge into practice with the students and have a lot of fun doing so.”
Throughout the year, Frushour works with schools and conferences to schedule dates and locations for the clinics. For each day-long clinic, three to five ISYS staff lead a series of workshops for high school student-athletes. The workshops focus on building the four key pillars of leadership – motivation, communication, positive peer-modeling and team cohesion – and have the students involved in discussions, group activities, journaling and role plays.
“We are always trying to find new ways to integrate the new knowledge that we acquire about leadership and trying to reach as many students as possible,” said Pierce, alluding to the forthcoming Online Captains Course. “The online course aims to build off the great things the MHSAA and the ISYS have done with the Captains Clinics.”
A tremendous amount of enthusiasm surrounds the project, and for good reason. The track record of the MHSAA-ISYS partnership reflects a successful venture that might just be hitting stride.
“Over the past 15 years, the relationship between the ISYS and the MHSAA has blossomed. It is to the credit of the forward-thinking MHSAA staff members along with the ISYS faculty and graduate students that this relationship is stronger than ever,” Westfall said. “With the arrival of Dr. Karl Erickson to the ISYS this fall, the upcoming MHSAA coaching requirements for CAP courses, and the launch of the Online Captains Course, the future looks bright for the ISYS-MHSAA team.”
PHOTO: Scott Westfall from the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports conducts a Captains Clinic session as part of his work with the MHSAA.
Cohen Champions Treatment, Technology
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
March 10, 2014
Abby Cohen was looking for a problem to solve.
Two years later, she’s potentially only one more year from helping relieve a medical dilemma faced by 25 million Americans.
And the most impressive part might be that she graduated from high school a mere five years ago and is 23 years old.
Cohen, a 2009 MHSAA Scholar-Athlete Award winner as a senior at Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood, certainly could be called proactive, going back to her days as a volleyball, basketball and soccer standout for the Cranes. Less than a year after graduating from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., she’s co-founder and co-CEO of Sparo Labs, which seeks to provide asthma sufferers with a proactive way of monitoring their symptoms and improving their treatments.
“Everyone has a different perspective on how to go about doing things,” Cohen said. “For me, growing up trying to improve in sports, I’d write down a list of things to do every day and actually do them, follow through. That aspect of always wanting to get better, and improve, is something that’s carried through to the rest of what we do at Sparo and in general how I approach things.”
On March 22, the MHSAA and Farm Bureau Insurance will recognize a 25th class of Scholar-Athlete Award winners. In advance of the celebration, Second Half has caught up with some of the hundreds who have been recognized (see additional links at the bottom of this page).
Cohen, who also served on the MHSAA Student Advisory Council from 2007-09, chose Washington based on its strong engineering problem and successful women’s basketball program. She studied bio-medical engineering and was a freshman on the Bears team that defeated Hope College for the Division III national championship in 2010.
But that first season was followed by a series of ankle injuries that required reconstructive surgery – and, effectively, ended her collegiate sports career. She still can play pick-up games, but four-hour daily practices and the other commitments of a varsity program would've been too much.
She missed basketball. But the end of her competitive career on the court, as it turned out, allowed more time to dive into a new pursuit – and, in her words, “work with another kind of team.”
“I’m a big believer in everything happens for a reason,” Cohen said. “It was disappointing having to have surgery to make everything feel better, for the long term, not just basketball. For me at that time, I didn't appreciate that with the extra time I could have, I could take the time to try new things, make the world a better place.”
Cohen planned at first to eventually become a physician. She shadowed a number of doctors, but decided that in the long run she could have a greater impact as an engineer designing products physicians could use.
In addition to her classwork, she helped form an extracurricular entrepreneurial group – and set out for an issue in need of repair. She and her now-business partner Andrew Brimer didn't realize how many Americans are affected by asthma, “that respiratory diseases are the only ones getting worse over time rather than getting better. That although technology is improving, why it’s not making a dent.”
They set out find out and make that dent themselves.
Through a series of interviews with patients, doctors, respiratory therapists and others in the field, Cohen and Brimer got an idea what could help – an affordable, easy-to-use device to allow patients to monitor on their own their symptoms so they can better manage them and the treatments to help. Cohen and Brimer designed a device that plugs into a smart phone and allows patients to blow into it like a whistle and register lung function readings – while also collecting data on medications, pollen counts, and other variables that affect lung function. Their device also should dent the health care costs that go with current testing, which generally requires an office visit.
Sparo will work over the next six months to improve its app interface and user experience, and then submit for Food and Drug Administration approval at the end of this year or the beginning of 2015 – with the hope it will then become available to patients later next spring.
Cohen is based in St. Louis, where she and Brimer have been able to work with three large local hospitals and within a nurturing entrepreneurial community. Brimer's brother owns a tech education company in New York which has provided additional support as she and Brimer discussed what was possible. “We were talking to patients and physicians, and it just seemed like the right thing to do,” Cohen said. “If we weren’t going to do this, who was?”
Cohen and Brimer have won 9 of 11 entrepreneurship grant competitions they've entered, netting more than $300,000 to get their lab rolling and allow them to hire two more engineers. Long-term, today’s work could just be the start of what Cohen hopes eventually will reach into developing countries as well.
She remains in touch with a number of teachers at Cranbrook-Kingswood – also, her mother Sheila Cohen teaches sixth-grade math at the school – and she spoke there at the end of 2013 as part of a TEDx event.
As she continues to build her team, Cohen is reminded of additional lessons she learned on the courts and soccer field – including a major one that will continue to pay as Sparo expands.
“Learning how to work on a team, with really different personalities, different people who all play different roles,” Cohen said. “That really came from sports – the ability to work with people and reach one common goal.”
Click to read the series' first installments:
- 25 Years Later, Scholar Athletes Shine On
- On Call as Doctor, Director, Mom
- "Mailloux Management" Goes Global
- Goorhouse Gives Back at Home
PHOTO: Abby Cohen (10) helps her teammates hoist a trophy while a player at Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood in 2009. (Photo courtesy of Cranbrook-Kingswood.)