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Dear GADA member,
AD's, I realize most of us are making the transition from the end of fall sports to the beginning of winter sports at this time. It has been a great fall and that means double time for most of us. This time of year creates overlap overload with facilities and your administrative personal. I hope everybody has a great finish to the fall sports.
Also, GHSA will add the reclassification process in the near future to our calendars to navigate through for the next four years. Your role as the Athletic Director in facilitating communication between the school stakeholders will be the key ingredient.
I hope you have taken the opportunity to join the GADA for the 2015-16 school year as we work together to provide the best for our student athletes and coaches. The benefits of joint enrollment with the NIAAA are listed on our website. Also, make sure you mark your calendars for the upcoming GADA Conference in Savannah March 12-15. Keep on making a difference in the lives of our young people on a daily basis.
Kind Regards,
Tommy Marshall
GADA President
Athletic Director - Marist
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2016 GADA/NIAAA Scholarship Application
Applications now being accepted
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The High School Female/Male Scholarship Award will be presented to a senior who has represented his/her sport(s) in both performance and leadership. Each winner will receive a $1000.00 scholarship award.
Please complete and mail the following nomination form with one letter of recommendation attached to the form. Additional information and incomplete entries will not be considered.
The scholarship application must be returned no later thanFebruary 10, 2016. All applications after that date will not be considered. Nominees include one senior female athlete and one senior male athlete.
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The National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association App
FREE APP
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NEWS ARTICLES ENGAGE USERS
There are many ways you can create news articles to engage your users such as game recaps, player(s) of the week, game previews, player or coach profiles, season statistics to date, community service events, booster club meetings, team pictures. You can also copy and paste newspaper articles but please make sure to provide the author and source. Adding an image or your school logo to the article will personalize the article to your school. Login to the Control Panel here.
We are keeping this week short. Make sure you are updating the content for the app, entering final scores, and upcoming schedules. User traffic is growing daily, Your fans are watching!
More downloads = More users = More engagement with your fans!
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Change job, school, or retire? Help us keep our email list up to date.
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New school years bring new opportunities for our members. If you've changed school, job or know someone who has, email us the updated email address, contact information and title.
CLICK HERE
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By Doug Robinson - AtlhetlicBusiness.com
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There's a disturbing trend in high school football. I mean besides the concussions.And the bad sportsmanship (tackling referees, for instance, would probably fall under this category). And the year-round demands that are made on players.This is something more insidious: TV cameras.
More and more high school games are being broadcast on TV. I attended a game last weekend. The minutes crawled by, the game dragged. Timeouts stretched on and on while entire civilizations rose and fell.
And then I saw them: The cameras. The game was on TV. The long timeouts were for the TV station. We were all just extras on the set, waiting for the TV audience to rejoin us from a commercial. We waited. And waited. And waited. Everyone standing around looking at one another, tapping their toes, looking at their watches, as if this was a large bus stop and the bus was late. Lights, camera, wait! How long was it? Phil Simms would have struggled to fill the dead air. Read more...
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Join and Renew your GADA-NIAAA
memberships with Paypal
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Judge Dismisses Class-Action Concussion Suit Against IHSA
by Emily Attwood - AthleticBusiness.com
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A Cook County judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed last year calling for the Illinois High School Association to improve its concussion-prevention policies, putting a quiet end to the first class-action lawsuit filed against a prep sports governing body.
In his dismissal of the suit, filed on behalf of South Elgin football player Alex Pierscionek in 2014, Jude LeRoy Martin said the issue needed to be taken up by the state Legislature and that IHSA had enacted measures consistent with its scope of oversight.
"IHSA is simply a governmental entity charged with safeguarding student athletes," Martin wrote in his order of dismissal, going on to say "... Imposing broader liability on this defendant would certainly change the sport of football and potentially harm it or cause it to be abandoned." The lawsuit called for the IHSA to take financial responsibility for medical testing of for former football payers, have trained medical professionals present at all football games. Additionally, members of the lawsuit wanted new guidelines for screening players for brain injury and better concussion-related education for players, coaches and teachers. Read more...
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| Opinion: After Latest Death, Is Football Worth the Risk?
OpEd - Chicago Tribune
| What would our country be without high school football?
Might there be a time when we'll find out?
I wonder.
On Friday morning, 17-year-old Andre Smith, a football player at Bogan High School, died, apparently from a head injury suffered the night before in a game against Chicago Vocational at Stagg Field.
These are proud old schools _ you may remember that a fellow named Dick Butkus played at CVS. Among distinguished alums, the Sun-Times editorial page editor, Tom McNamee, is a Bogan graduate.
Stagg Field? Named for one of the fathers of the game, Amos Alonzo Stagg.
But the point here is that a young man is gone far too soon, killed while doing something we not only sanction but promote. Citizens have to wonder once more - if we ever stopped wondering - what the beloved American game of football has to do with the betterment of our society. We have to wonder if it is, perhaps, mainly about entertainment, atavism and the exploitation of children who will do dangerous things at our schools because we let them.
It appears that Smith was hit with a helmet-to-helmet blow on the final play of the game, a kick return of no consequence. (This is not to imply there is any play in football worth dying for.) His family says he had massive swelling of the brain, though, at this moment, the official cause of death has not been determined.
But Smith's demise had to do with football - that much is clear. Remember, at just 17 years old.
Do you remember when you were 17? When you most likely were a nutty, confused, exuberant, irrational, wonderful, stupid senior in high school - with your whole adult life before you?
""I don't know what to do,'' Andre's brother, Erick Smith, said on ABC-7 TV news, as he started to cry. ""It just killed everything inside of me.''
Whose fault is this tragedy, if anybody's?
Smith reportedly is the seventh high school football player to die from injuries suffered during a game this year. Is that an OK risk for young men who will do crazy things anyway, who adore this violent game - as Smith, who wanted to walk on in college, did - who are just part of the more than 1 million boys, and, yes, girls, who play high school football annually?
And, even more important, do we really know the true risk of playing football? Seven deaths - one per week - out of a million high school players, thousands of games, during the 2015 season. Is that such a big deal?
But what if those numbers aren't even close to the real magnitude of damage this sport causes? We know about the chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the wasted brains of many dead NFL players. We know about Junior Seau and Dave Duerson and other brain-damaged veteran NFL players who killed themselves. Read more...
Be sure to read the comments. |
Sincerely,
Tommy Marshall
President
Georgia Athletic Directors Association
www.gadaonline.net |
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| NIAAA's Guide to Interscholastic Athletic Administration
Featuring Decatur AD and past GADA President Carter Wilson
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 "It is an honor to have served as a contributor to Human Kinetics' NIAAA Guide to Interscholastic Athletic Administration. The goal of this publication is to serve as a comprehensive guide for athletic administrators in Georgia and throughout the country. I am proud to be a member of the GADA and the NIAAA and I hope that this publication will assist others in their service to young people." - Carter Wilson Click HERE to purchase the guide.
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| Praying Football Coach Suspended After Satanists Plan Invocation
By Ed Mazza - Huffington Post
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A high school football coach known for praying on the field after games has been placed on paid administrative leave after Satanists asked to hold their own invocation at Thursday night's game.
Bremerton (Washington) School District, located near Seattle, said late Thursday that coach Joe Kennedy had been placed on leave for his "refusal to comply with the District's lawful and constitutionally required directives that he refrain from engaging in overt, public religious displays on the football field while on duty as a coach."
Kennedy had been asked not to pray on the field after games, but has continued to do so and has even threatened to sue the district.
He was placed on leave shortly after the local chapter of the Satanic Temple said it had been invited by at least one student to give an invocation on the field after the game.
"The school district needs to create religious opportunity for everyone or ban it completely," class president Abe Bartlett, one of the students who contacted the Satanic Temple, told the Kitsap Sun. "There can't be a middle ground."
The district said that while no players complained about the prayer sessions, some may have felt coerced to join in.
"It is very likely that over the years, players have joined in these activities because to do otherwise would mean potentially alienating themselves from their team, and possibly their coaches," the statement said. "The District has a fundamental obligation to protect the rights of all of its students." Read more...
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