The 24th Annual MIAA Sportsmanship Summit was held at Gillette Stadium with over a thousand participants this year. The MIAA Sportsmanship Summit is an event that is held to honor and educate those who give priority to sportsmanship in their schools and continue to try to improve the athletic culture in high schools all over Massachusetts. At the Summit was Holland House Principal and president of the MIAA Marilyn Slattery, Malden High Athletics Director Charlie Conefrey and 11 MHS student athletes.
Slattery had learned about the MIAA from the previous school she worked at as the school’s team was in the MIAA Super 8 tournament. Throughout the tournament, she had gained “a better understanding of how the organization worked” and thought it was a “really good organization”. Slattery has “learned a lot” as the President of the MIAA as she was “never an athlete during school”. Being a part of the Board of Directors of the MIAA, she was “a founding member of an inclusion committee, which is working to open up athletics for everybody”.
Slattery had a “very nice experience” at the Sportsmanship Summit. One of the best parts of the event for her was seeing MHS students as she didn’t know they were also coming. As she doesn’t like speaking in big groups, having people from MHS had “made it so much nicer and comfortable.”
During her speech, Slattery had talked about women and sports. This was brought up by a recent controversy in the MIAA where a female golf player had gotten the highest score on the men’s golf team, and “as a result, she could accept the team award, but could not accept the individual award and go forward with that” stated Slattery. The MIAA is taking a look at the issue to see if the rule should be changed. Slattery mentions that “It’s really exciting to be a woman and be part of the MIAA right now” because she believes that there are a lot changes coming.
Slattery mentioned how it is interesting to look outside of what is done at MHS as she knows people who are a part of the MIAA that live on the other side of Massachusetts, and their concepts of team sports and what they do and how they work is so different. Slattery also mentioned that “the whole experience, as a non-athlete representing athletics” is kind of crazy, but kind of good.
