Made the right call? Enter the Ethical Athlete contest
UNITED WAY IN THE NEWS
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Neal Rubin
The Detroit News
F armington Hills Harrison High had won two straight state football championships and was already steamrolling opponents the next season when its coaches realized they had fouled up.
For one play in a 56-6 victory and six plays in another 1999 blowout, they had used an ineligible player. It was a simple clerical mistake; they had credited the kid with three class hours he hadn't earned.
Coach John Herrington immediately did the right thing. Better yet, when I complimented him for it years later, he seemed surprised. What choice did he have but to forfeit the two games, turn a 3-1 record into a 1-3 record and force his team to be near-perfect the rest of the season to even make the playoffs?
Because virtue is sometimes more than its own reward -- and because Harrison usually has a busload of studs -- the Hawks wound up squeaking into the playoffs, crushing a bunch more teams and winning the championship. But I've always hoped his players remember more about that season than the winning, and Herrington's reflexively honest response was the first thing I thought of when I heard about the Ethical Athlete Award.
Herrington, as it happens, would not be a candidate. The award is for a senior at a tri-county high school. But assuming you are one of those, you know one or you have one vaporizing all the groceries in your refrigerator, take note:
There's $5,000 at stake, and the deadline for entries is 11:59 p.m. Friday.
Take further note: At this point, there's not a lot of competition for the prize.
Deloitte & Touche and United Way for Southeastern Michigan will award the scholarship to an athlete who has "demonstrated exemplary behavior when faced with issues of moral, ethical or legal consequences."
Here in the Enron era, that's more than a lot of adults have managed to do. So it makes sense that an accounting firm would focus on accountability.
"We spend a lot of time on values, on who we want to be," says Tom Dekar of Bloomfield Township, Deloitte's vice chairman and regional managing principal. Then his high-school-age kids -- and everyone else's -- "read about performance-enhancement drugs, sports gambling, that sort of thing."
The right path can grow harder to define, or at least defend, when thugs get new contracts and obnoxiousness is the yellow brick road to endorsements. "The more we can do to keep these kinds of issues in front of our youth and our parents," Dekar says, "the better off we're going to be."
The Ethical Athlete Award contest involves an essay of no more than 500 words, written by a nominator or the athlete in question.
Because accounting firms are very precise and know lots of lawyers, there's a long-winded list of rules on the United Way Web site at www.uwsem.org. That's also where you will find the official entry form.
The winner will be honored Feb. 2 at the Sports Career Expo, an official Super Bowl XL event at Cass Tech High School. Early entrants include a boy who chose to skip an exotic summer vacation to stay and train with his team, and a girl who lost friends over her stance on illegal drugs.
As of last week, says Patricia Ellis of United Way, only 20 essays had been submitted. Compared to other, more hotly contested scholarship competitions -- and at the risk of introducing a gambling reference -- those are great odds.
If you know any eligible seniors, now would be a good time to nudge them away from the refrigerator and toward the room with the computer.
You can reach Neal Rubin at (313) 222-1874, nrubin@detnews.com or 615 W. Lafayette Blvd., Detroit, MI 48226.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Neal Rubin
The Detroit News
F armington Hills Harrison High had won two straight state football championships and was already steamrolling opponents the next season when its coaches realized they had fouled up.
For one play in a 56-6 victory and six plays in another 1999 blowout, they had used an ineligible player. It was a simple clerical mistake; they had credited the kid with three class hours he hadn't earned.
Coach John Herrington immediately did the right thing. Better yet, when I complimented him for it years later, he seemed surprised. What choice did he have but to forfeit the two games, turn a 3-1 record into a 1-3 record and force his team to be near-perfect the rest of the season to even make the playoffs?
Because virtue is sometimes more than its own reward -- and because Harrison usually has a busload of studs -- the Hawks wound up squeaking into the playoffs, crushing a bunch more teams and winning the championship. But I've always hoped his players remember more about that season than the winning, and Herrington's reflexively honest response was the first thing I thought of when I heard about the Ethical Athlete Award.
Herrington, as it happens, would not be a candidate. The award is for a senior at a tri-county high school. But assuming you are one of those, you know one or you have one vaporizing all the groceries in your refrigerator, take note:
There's $5,000 at stake, and the deadline for entries is 11:59 p.m. Friday.
Take further note: At this point, there's not a lot of competition for the prize.
Deloitte & Touche and United Way for Southeastern Michigan will award the scholarship to an athlete who has "demonstrated exemplary behavior when faced with issues of moral, ethical or legal consequences."
Here in the Enron era, that's more than a lot of adults have managed to do. So it makes sense that an accounting firm would focus on accountability.
"We spend a lot of time on values, on who we want to be," says Tom Dekar of Bloomfield Township, Deloitte's vice chairman and regional managing principal. Then his high-school-age kids -- and everyone else's -- "read about performance-enhancement drugs, sports gambling, that sort of thing."
The right path can grow harder to define, or at least defend, when thugs get new contracts and obnoxiousness is the yellow brick road to endorsements. "The more we can do to keep these kinds of issues in front of our youth and our parents," Dekar says, "the better off we're going to be."
The Ethical Athlete Award contest involves an essay of no more than 500 words, written by a nominator or the athlete in question.
Because accounting firms are very precise and know lots of lawyers, there's a long-winded list of rules on the United Way Web site at www.uwsem.org. That's also where you will find the official entry form.
The winner will be honored Feb. 2 at the Sports Career Expo, an official Super Bowl XL event at Cass Tech High School. Early entrants include a boy who chose to skip an exotic summer vacation to stay and train with his team, and a girl who lost friends over her stance on illegal drugs.
As of last week, says Patricia Ellis of United Way, only 20 essays had been submitted. Compared to other, more hotly contested scholarship competitions -- and at the risk of introducing a gambling reference -- those are great odds.
If you know any eligible seniors, now would be a good time to nudge them away from the refrigerator and toward the room with the computer.
You can reach Neal Rubin at (313) 222-1874, nrubin@detnews.com or 615 W. Lafayette Blvd., Detroit, MI 48226.
Labels: InTheNews
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