Ten Basic Beliefs of Michigan Interscholastic Athletics

  1. Interscholastic athletics were begun outside the school day and curriculum and remain there as voluntary, extracurricular programs in which qualifying students earn the privilege of participation.
  2. Interscholastic athletics are not courses offered by schools but are tools used by schools to reach and motivate students and to rally support within the community for school’s academic and activity programs.
  3. In order to justify school sponsorship, interscholastic athletics must be compatible with the academic mission of schools, giving priority deference to the academic schedule and requiring proper decorum at athletic events.
  4. Interscholastic athletics are secondary to the academic program of schools and are partners with the schools’ non-athletic activities in providing students opportunities to develop loyalty and school spirit, to practice teamwork, hard work, discipline, sacrifice, leadership and sportsmanship and to gain lifetime appreciation of the arts, sports and healthy lifestyle.
  5. There is equal potential to achieve these objectives in every sport and on the subvarsity as well as the varsity level.
  6. A proper philosophy of interscholastic athletics emphasizes participation by many, not for few, and academic scholarship in school, not athletic scholarships to college.
  7. To promote competitive equity and a program that is educational in both its means and its ends, the policies and procedures of interscholastic athletics must be determined by school representatives, not by courts, legislatures or commercial interests.
  8. Schools, through their elected boards of education and their appointed administrators, are solely responsible, legally and practically, for governing and conducting interscholastic athletics at the local and league levels.
  9. Any statewide organization which schools join to assist their administration of interscholastic athletics must be independent of outside interests and guided exclusively by the direct input of its member schools.
  10. Interstate competition in interscholastic athletics is unnecessary in most situations; regional and national events are harmful to the purposes of interscholastic athletics in Michigan.