Involvement vs. Meaningful Involvement
November 27, 2012
By Jed Blanton
MSU Institute for the Study of Youth Sports
As I've worked with the MHSAA in student leadership development and through my role in performance consulting and mental training, a number of coaches and athletes have asked me how to “get kids to buy in” or see the vision of their coach/captain, etc.
Particularly in high school sports, rosters consist of players with reasons for participating in their sport that range from pure enjoyment and social life, all the way to kids with aspirations and ability to play in the highest level of college athletics.
Having a range of talent, and then a range of desire and commitment can be a difficult load to balance as a coach.
Based on the questions I've been posed over the years, it seems that the magic answer lies somewhere in this notion of “buy-in” and if, just if, the coach could trigger that “buy-in” everything would work out. A winning season or at least a more successful season would be a certainty, and all the athletes would be emotionally involved, or more so, emotionally invested, as well as completely and fully physically and mentally committed to THE GAME.
This almost sounds like the ideal ending of a Disney sports movie … but that doesn't mean it isn't a possibility, and we can find some ways to make your reality closer to this vision.
The trick is … there is no trick; there is no magic formula. The ability to create “buy-in” means giving up something that might make a coach shudder and cringe just a bit. My challenge to coaches is this: Give up control. SHARE some of the duties and tasks you feel are your job, with … your players.
DON’T hit the back button or close your browser just yet. Let me explain.
The first thing to understand here is how people learn. If we want our athletes to “buy in,” we may have to teach “buy-in” first, which involves understanding how people learn behaviors and adopt a mentality, as the state of “buy-in” would be considered.
Psychologically, we know that people can learn merely from watching and modeling others. But in the short-term, this tends to include only behaviors, not the more abstract notions of passion or commitment which is seemingly what coaches desire more of in their players when we talk about “buy-in.”
However, it is important. So the first thing a coach needs to do is behave in such ways that indicate they are “bought in,” more so than just telling kids to be more committed. Have you ever stopped to think about what it looks like when someone has “bought in” to an athletic team’s vision? Do you have a team vision statement to guide behaviors and goals?
The next step in how people learn new behaviors upon watching others is having those behaviors they are attempting to mimic reinforced. Encouraging players and showing gratitude to those who demonstrate the desired mentality will help foster the expectations you have for your players. I must point out here that punishing or dismissing players and behaviors that stray from this desired state won’t help the learning process.
Next, and here is where the challenge lies, is sacrificing some control and sharing some responsibilities with your players. This entails involving them in the process of the sport. So often our high school athletes experience sport very passively. They are told what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Then critiqued, sometimes put down and constantly judged on their abilities to do very little else than act in the ways they are told to act.
There is no option for personal investment here. Trust is the guiding factor. And while trust is extremely important, it’s not what may ultimately create “buy-in.”
Involvement fosters ownership. Meaningful involvement requires an emotional investment because the amount of responsibility increases. So what does being meaningfully involved look like? Being meaningfully involved in the sport as an athlete would mean being able to make decisions that are then actually carried out before they are critiqued. If you ask a player what they think about any given decision, then tell them what you think (which is also what they’ll do), you are merely seeking input rather than allowing them to be involved. What would it look like if the captain or senior players were able to set the starting line-up or batting order? Or what if the athletes were in charge of running a two-hour practice once a week? How about letting one or two of the athletes decide what play is going to be run in the final minutes of a close game? I mentioned the word “trust” earlier, and the key in these examples is coaches are showing athletes “trust.” This just might be what fosters the all important “buy-in.”
The hardest part on the coaches’ end is letting the decision play out, and then talking about why it may have failed. Discussing it rationally, debriefing the decision, and allowing them to process where the mistake was made without placing blame on them is where athletes can really learn about their sport, their role on the team, and how to make tough decisions while sharing in the full experience of the competition and preparation.
There is always a chance they’ll make the same decision you would make as the coach. After all, they have been practicing in your system. This is a great way to assess if you are having an impact and if your athletes are learning rather than just passively participating.
As a former athlete, I can honestly say I never truly understood my sport (distance running) until I was asked to serve as a race director or create training programs for younger athletes and people interested in taking their running to a more competitive level. I’m sure for most first-time coaches, the number of decisions you have to make humbles your former-athlete self rather quickly.
Watching the student leadership program participants I work with struggle with projects and presentations they are asked to design is tough, and I want nothing more than to help them and make sure that it’s “right.” But I can also say that in those times when I've been able to see the end result in those instances when they made the decisions, they created something on their own, they are happier, more knowledgeable, and certainly “bought in,” as they have control for the first time.
Blanton is a doctoral candidate at Michigan State University in the department of Kinesiology, specializing in the PsychoSocial Aspects of Sport and Physical Activity, and a research assistant for MSU's Institute for the Study of Youth Sports. He has served as a facilitator at MHSAA Captains Clinics the last three years and currently is assisting the association with its student leadership programs.
Century of School Sports: Why Does the MHSAA Have These Rules?
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
September 18, 2024
MHSAA administrators are two trips into their annual seven-stop fall tour that has become a tradition during nearly half of the Association’s “Century of School Sports” – and this year, a focus has been on answering a key question at the heart of educational athletics since long before the MHSAA was formed during the 1924-25 school year.
The MHSAA’s Update meeting series is in its 47th year and includes half-day conferences in seven locations – generally in the Kalamazoo, Metro Detroit, Grand Rapids, Saginaw, northern Lower Peninsula and mid-Michigan areas, and at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. The six Lower Peninsula sessions begin with an athletic director in-service during which MHSAA assistant directors explain recent rules changes and discuss challenges our administrators face on a daily basis (with Upper Peninsula athletic directors participating in a similar in-service during the spring).
Those in-services are followed by a session with executive director Mark Uyl, who speaks to athletic directors, superintendents, principals and school board members on a variety of topics including the MHSAA’s current objectives and ideas for the future, while also reinforcing the longstanding values that remain the bedrock of our daily work.
And that leads to the question he’s presenting across the state this fall:
Why does the MHSAA have these rules?
Frankly, the answer goes back to the beginning of school sports in Michigan – all the way back to 1895, when the first MHSAA predecessor organization was formed.
The first MHSAA Representative Council president Lewis L. Forsythe explained in his book “Athletics in Michigan High Schools – The First Hundred Years” how regulations always have been necessary:
“Eligibility rules are a necessity in interscholastic competition. It was common acknowledgement of this fact that led to the first State inter-school organization in 1895. The rules at first were few, simple and liberal. But with the passing of the years they came to be more numerous, more complex, and more restrictive, again through common acknowledgment of desirability if not of necessity.”
That necessity – and the reasoning behind it – has not changed.
Two main points explain why rules are absolutely imperative for educational athletics to thrive.
► 1. Participation – through providing as many opportunities as possible for students to play – has been the mission of school sports since their start. Rules contribute to the value of participation.
If there are requirements for children to participate in athletics – for example, an academic standard or rules that dissuade students from switching schools every year – then school sports programs mean more to all involved.
If we raise the bar, raise the standards of eligibility and conduct, we raise the value of our school sports programs. If we lower the bar, we lower the value of being part of school sports – because without rules, contest results are meaningless, and the value of participating is diminished.
► 2. We have rules where the stakes are higher, and agreement is lower – because where the stakes are highest, there is the greatest tendency for some people to try to gain an unfair advantage, and the greatest need for rules to curb possible dishonest activity.
This statement goes to the heart of the history, rationale and application of MHSAA rules. Obviously and simply put, school sports mean a lot to those who take part, and that significance is high enough to stoke disagreement – and we need rules to govern those disagreements. We have the most rules for high school sports, where championships are at stake and the possibility of disagreement is greatest.
***
Finally – and perhaps providing the strongest reinforcement of the two points above – is this:
Schools choose to make MHSAA rules their own.
Quite literally, school districts vote annually to be part of the MHSAA – and confirming this voluntary membership comes with the requirement to follow all MHSAA rules.
When schools challenge our rules, they literally are seeking to break the rules they already have committed to uphold.
These rules, and this commitment, are the strength of our organization across 752 member high schools and several hundred more middle schools and junior high schools. They have been constructed on a century of precedents and after considerations by representatives of those same member schools – representatives those schools have voted to elect every school year during the MHSAA’s history.
Previous "Century of School Sports" Spotlights
Sept. 10: Special Medals, Patches to Commemorate Special Year - Read
Sept. 4: Fall to Finish with 50th Football Championships - Read
Aug. 28: Let the Celebration Begin - Read