After President Mark rang the bell to begin our meeting, Maestro Tom Strode played our National Anthem.
Our inspirational message today came from Victor Stoeffler who spoke about an inspirational man who enjoyed a successful baseball career in major leagues including the NY Yankees. He was the Rookie of the Year, won a Golden Glove award, had a total of 3,464 hits, hailed from Kalamazoo Michigan…and this inspirational man is none other than Derek Jeter!!
Rick Ingram led us in singing not the usual ‘Hail to the Victors’, but instead, UM’s alma mater (school song), ‘Yellow and Blue’.
Announcements today were made from:
Ed Johnson who reminded us of the next Adopt a Highway event sponsored by our Club on April 22. Meet at 9am at the Kensington Hotel.
Don Duquette – Be a Climate Hero! Dare to be a climate change hero and refer to the handout on our tables today. The same information will also be in the Rotarian newsletter and website. Select 3 of 7 items to complete by May 3. Turn your sheet in to Don or Nishta Bhatia. There are various opportunities: highway clean up, tree giveaway, walk to a meeting/take a bus, etc.
President Mark provided the introduction of our speaker today, Carol Hutchins, retired UM softball coach. His introduction provided a list of just some of the stats and accomplishments of ‘Coach Hutch’: 22 Big 10 titles, winningnest coach at UM – male or female, Coaches Hall of Fame 2006, 12 times in Softball World Series and in 2005 won the World Series, named Coach of Year 18 times, Pat Summitt coaching award, started the Pink Game and raised over $1 million for the American Cancer Society, she is one of 3 coaches from this campus known by a one word name – Bo, Red, and Hutch, and a softball field is now named for her!
After a rousing welcoming applause, Coach Hutch started her talk with some history of the journey of Title IX federal civil rights law enacted in 1972 which prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or education program that receives federal funding. Many people associate Title IX with girls and womens sports, but the law is much broader. For example, prior to the law, women didn’t have access to financial aid in college! Women’s sports were nonexistent in schools/colleges until the passage of the Title IX amendment and she, herself, was only able to play rec softball growing up in Lansing, MI. Coach came to UM in 1982 and at that time female sport coach positions were part-time, so she also worked outside of the university at jobs in retail and in restaurants. During that time (1982) women’s softball was finally considered an NCAA sport and with that, much better support, financially and otherwise. Coach then spoke about NCAA sports funding packaging and the continued inequities of money spent on men’s tournaments than women’s, and timing of games at tournaments which puts women’s games on schedule late at night (starting at 11pm for example)!
The Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) rule came about from lawsuits from student athletes. In short, previously NCAA funding for student athletes was closely monitored and students were prohibited from using their name, etc. for any outside funding or payments. Under the NIL rule, students can now get paid for such ‘outside’ activities that use their name or image. One example would be students participating at volunteer events where they are helping community members. In the past a $300 payment for their time would not be allowed by the NCAA and now it’s permissible. There’s a new term these days called NIL ‘deals’: college teams can now have deals with businesses, like luxury cars for example where the team’s name and images are used and all players get new cars.
College athletics has always been about recruiting ‘the best’ high school athletes, but these days, recruiting is like the arms race of college athletics. One example of a new challenge is the NCAA Transfer Portal where athletes can put their name in an online database declaring their intent to transfer colleges. Both athletes and coaches are using the portal to essentially ‘shop around’ and is also used for leverage. Coach says that being an athlete is glamorous to many and athletes sometimes have demands or high expectations that are sometimes unreasonable. In her opinion, you get to where you want to be (athletics or otherwise) from hard work and success navigating the occasional bump in the road. Thanks to Coach Hutch for an informative and inspiring talk! For more information about an upcoming event of Team Pink (Apr 27), visit msoftballacademy.org.
On the topic of athletics, on May 3rd our speaker will be Warde Manual, the current Athletic Director of UM.
Quote of the Day: Pat Summitt (former basketball coach of University of Tennessee’s Lady Vols):
‘Responsibility equals accountability equals ownership, and a sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon a team or organization can have.’
REMEMBER: Zoom only meeting on April 19, 2023
1:30 – Ring the Bell
Happily submitted by Pattie Katcher
