By Staff
I get so much junk mail it's unreal. Not only through e-mail, but more and more junk has been coming in the actual real paper mail (it's hard to believe that exists anymore!).
Special prices on ski trips to nowhereville, Utah, horse back riding in the hot humid Florida weather and those little letters I get every now and then from some high school in Illinois telling me about their athlete of the month; a kid who I will never in my life see or cover for a sporting event, unless they attend college. It's a huge waste of paper, money and time if you ask me.
This past week, however, I received a booklet from the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan. I get these at the end of a sports season, filled with information on coaches, players, clinics and other basketball news. This issue, however, made me smile as a coach from a Michigan high school made a very good about about the switching of the sports seasons.
Jim Nelson is the boys, yes boys, varsity basketball coach at Center Line High School. I was very impressed that a coach, not of a girl's sport, wrote in his concerns about the season switch.
The Season's of Change
in Michigan
There is an issue facing the future of high school sports in Michigan. The questions has been raised whether or not to switch some of the boys and girls sports seasons, the two main sports in the debate are girls basketball and volleyball.
The schools in Michigan, along with the MHSAA, would like the current scheduling practices to continue.
A group of parents, known as the 'Communities for Equity' filed a federal class-action gender equity lawsuit against the MHSAA, a private, non-profit organization, in 1998. Citing concerns that their daughters are placed at a disadvantage because of the nontraditional practice of sporting scheduling in the state of Michigan, the parents asked the federal courts to force the MHSAA to realign girls' sports season so they coincide with collegiate teams and other states high school athletic programs. These parents felt that by their daughters not playing the same season as the rest of the country, they could not be recruited as easily as colleges.
We are in a state in which participation is continuing to grow and we are seeing record setting numbers by girls in sports. Michigan's total of 311,814 participants in all sports, including those in which the MHSAA currently does not conduct a post-season tournament, rank only behind Texas, California and New York, the nation;s top three states in total population and in males and females 14-17 years of ago, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Michigan ranks eighth in both categories.
Those were the overall numbers as of 2004-05. The number of girls participating has seen a dramatic increase over the past three years. The 2004-05 totals for girls, boys and overall participation in Michigan were all time records and girls set a new record for the third straight year.
Why, in a time where our participation numbers are skyrocketing, would we want to change the seasons in which our children currently play?
"Grand Valley State women's basketball coach Dawn Plitzuweit said Michigan has an advantage with seasons set up like they are.
She stated that from the standpoint of girls' basketball, Michigan has a major advantage in recruiting because playing in the fall allows coaches to come in before their own seasons have started. She also said that we need to realize that there is an advantage to this for all sports.
The debate over how much our girls in the state of Michigan are recruited seems to be in the seasons that we play. The fact is, girls basketball and volleyball play opposite of the collegiate level – that is where the debate lies.
The issue of the changing seasons does not make much sense when you take into consideration the numbers in the above paragraphs. The girls, by majority, do not want the change and it seems that it would put some of the smaller schools in out state at a disadvantage due to lack of facilities.
I couldn't agree more with Jim Nelson and I'm glad this is such a big issue, although it's not looking to positive for the season to stay the way they are.
This group of people should have really thought about what they were doing before they took action. This caue was brought up in 1998. Well, here we are, 2006, almost 2007 and I know thier daughters are not in high school any longer. So, basically the are speaking for all of the high school girls and their parents and have made this change possible because of selfishness, if you ask me.
I don't buy any of it it and I really wish judges in this case would look into it much deeper.
Indiana is a state where girls and boys play in the same ason. Did you ever notice how overshadowed the girls are? All we ever see on the news is 30-second clippings of boys basketball, maybe one girls game. In the paper it's the same. The boys dominate the girls, there's no way around that.
With our girls playing in the fall and volleyball in the winter, they have a much larger crowd following and more attention is paid to them.
Hopefully someone will open their eyes in this case, but with the way things are going, all eyes will remain closed.