Author: admin

Rules are often viewed as roadblocks for our ultimate goals, whether in life or in high school athletics. But rules are critical to the moral structure in our everyday life, and even more formative to our children in those sports and activities they play.

High school athletics and activities playing rules are about education, about teaching our young people to work within a structured system. Rules add value to those games and enhance the life lessons learned in an appropriate educational setting.

Simply by participating, our children learn many valuable lessons, but those lessons are enriched by the standards and expectations demanded of them under the Colorado High School Activities Association by-laws and the playing rules developed by the National Federation of State High School Associations. These rules provide a reason to play, provide the legitimacy for the results of the games.

Under CHSAA rules, students earn their participation opportunities through their performance in the classroom.

Rather than look at rules as roadblocks, we need to encourage our student participants, their parents and our communities to view rules as a means to improve our society, the moral structure by which we all live.

Rules raise expectations. Higher expectations yield greater results. Rules establish a level playing field and give participants a place to start their ascent to the adult world. Rules begin the structure from which our ethics and principles develop.

Without everyone playing by, and knowing, the rules, making a basket, sinking a putt, spiking a ball is meaningless. Structure, rules create the learning environment children need to succeed in life.

In the modern day reality, coaches are held in higher esteem than many other leaders of society.  Whether this is earned or anointed, it makes little difference, because coaches truly have to be, are expected to be, leaders.

Too often, coaches are remembered for successes measured by wins and losses. That is the public face that those outside educational athletics seem to need to define success. The reality is not the playing field, the competitive court’s wins and losses, but what the young men and women take with them as they go through life.

As a leader, coaches play a crucial role in teaching life lessons to our competitive youth who choose to participate in interscholastic sports. These life lessons take place in locations outside the typical classroom like a weight room, the gymnasium, practice areas, and of course, the playing fields and courts.

Coaches are positioned to have a dramatic and positive influence on our students that go well beyond the playing field. As a membership, the CHSAA has established core expectations for the values that are imparted by our coaching professionals. There are minimum standards that coaches must meet, but those standards are designed to elevate that coach to a higher level where she/he can provide the necessary life lessons.

Coaches strive to teach and model the proper techniques that will enable their players and teams to be successful in an educational setting. Wins and losses are nice, but what that student takes from her/his participation is of paramount importance.

A colleague of mine often asks this question, “If we are teaching our students lessons that last a lifetime, are we as coaches positioning ourselves as lifelong teachers?”

The CHSAA Coaching Advisory Committee is focused on doing just that for every coach in Colorado.