
Inside Selection Sunday: Mapnalysis '14
October 26, 2014
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
The pictures we drew Sunday morning at the MHSAA office won’t be found hanging on anyone’s walls.
But we worked toward something suitable for framing, designing this season’s football playoff brackets while considering the months and years of work put in by our schools and their teams, parents and fans to earn an opportunity to continue their seasons this weekend.
The work completed today to draw up the 2014 MHSAA Football Playoffs began long before opening night in August. Our football tournament is like none other sponsored by the MHSAA – it’s the only team tournament in which every team doesn’t qualify – and we began talking about this tournament not long after last season’s champions were decided.
Then came April and May and tracking down schedules for 613 MHSAA varsity football teams, plus 45 out-of-state opponents our Michigan schools were set to play including 14 from Ontario and one from Minnesota.
The fun part was monitoring the scores and standings for all of these teams over the nine weeks of the regular season, each Friday night a stream of chatter from kickoff into our weekly highlights show on Fox Sports Detroit.
And then came Sunday – and navigating the most difficult maps to draw in my four seasons assisting in the process.
We often have versions “a” and “b” and on occasion “c” when considering which best accomplishes our goal – to create the correct geographical picture for each of eight 11-player divisions and our 8-player bracket.
Sunday morning, we saw a version “e” for the first time I can remember and some shapes that didn’t make much sense without explanation.
Some of those explanations are below – the stories behind how we made some of the toughest decisions. I start with a quick history lesson you can skip if you’re familiar with this annual report or our playoff selection process in general, then move into some of the specifics many will be discussing this week as they begin focusing on their Pre-District opponents. (Click for the full schedule.)
The process
Our past: The MHSAA playoff structure – with 256 teams in eight divisions, and six wins equaling an automatic berth (or five wins for teams playing eight or fewer games) – debuted in 1999. An 8-player tournament was added in 2011, resulting in nine champions total each season.
The first playoffs were conducted in 1975 with four champions. Four more football classes were added in 1990 for a total of eight champions each fall. Through 1998, only 128 teams made the postseason, based on their playoff point averages within regions (four for each class) that were drawn before the beginning of the season. The drawing of Districts and Regions after the end of the regular season did not begin until the most recent playoff expansion.
In early years of the current process, lines were drawn by hand. Dots representing qualifying schools were pasted on maps, one map for each division, and those maps were then covered by plastic sheets. Districts and Regionals literally were drawn with dry-erase markers.
Our present: After a late Saturday night tracking scores, we file in as the sun rises Sunday morning for a final round of gathering results we may still need (which can include making a few early a.m. calls to athletic directors). Re-checking and triple-checking of enrollments, what schools played in co-ops and opted to play as a higher class start a week in advance, and more numbers are crunched Sunday morning as the fields are set.
This season, there were 229 automatic qualifiers by win total – with the final 27 at-large then selected, by playoff-point average, one from each class in order (A, B, C, D) until the field is filled.
Those 256 11-player teams are then split into eight equal divisions based on enrollment, and their locations are marked on digital maps that are projected on wall-size screens and then discussed by nearly half of the MHSAA staff plus a representative from the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association. Only the locations themselves are marked (by yellow dots) – not records, playoff point averages or names of the schools or towns. In fact, mentions of those are strictly prohibited. Records and playoff points are not part of the criteria. Matchups, rivalries, previous playoff pairings, etc. also DO NOT come into play.
The same process is followed for organizing the 8-player bracket, with the difference that the 16 teams are selected purely on playoff-point average.
Geography rules: This long has been rule number one for drawing MHSAA brackets in any sport, and is a repeat as well for those who have read this report the last three Octobers. Travel distance and ease DO come into play. Jumping on a major highway clearly is easier than driving across county-wide back roads, and that’s taken into consideration. Also, remember there’s only one Mackinac Bridge and hence only one way to cross between peninsulas – and boats are not considered a possible form of transportation. When opponents from both peninsulas will be in the same District, distance to the bridge is far more important than as the bird flies.
Tradition doesn’t reign: Every group of 32 dots is a new group – these 32 teams have not been placed in a bracket together before. That said, how maps have been drawn in the past isn’t considered – it’s hard to say a division has been drawn in a certain way traditionally when this set of 32 teams is making up a division for the first time.
Observations and answers: 2014
Class A ripple: A total of 80 Class A teams qualified for the playoffs in 2013 after three seasons of 79 each. But 89 Class A teams are part of the 2014 field, and that increase in turn shifted a number of smaller schools into different divisions – including some annual favorites. Muskegon, Division 2 runner-up the last two seasons, is in Division 3. Marine City, last season’s Division 4 champion, will play in Division 5. Five-time Division 5 champ Jackson Lumen Christi moved into Division 6, where it could be the toughest obstacle as Ithaca attempts to win that division for the fifth straight season.
Stranger on paper: Yes, Division 1’s District 2 stretches from Grandville to Hartland. This isn’t a desirable outcome, but was necessary with this field. Six districts are filled with teams all east of U.S. 23, and a seventh is completely north and west of Grand Rapids. That left the four teams in the middle – Grandville, East Kentwood, Grand Ledge and Hartland.
Something similar came down in the 8-player bracket – why would we break up four teams in the Thumb to include three with Big Rapids Crossroads Academy all the way west of U.S. 127? It had to do with creating the appropriate semifinal matchup for whichever team emerges from the Rapid River/Cedarville/Engadine/Bellaire regional; keeping the Thumb teams together might’ve meant Lawrence or Waldron from near the Indiana border going all the way to Rapid River instead of Thumb teams that are still far away but closer to the convenient highways.
Line falls through Warren: Division 2 presented a few challenges. There are five districts made up of schools predominantly in the Greater Detroit and Port Huron areas, so one was going to end up potentially matching up farther from home. At first we drew a region across the bottom of the Lower Peninsula that connected teams from the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek area with a district from Ypsilanti and south of Detroit. But rearranging districts to draw a line between Warren DeLaSalle and Warren Counsino, although they’re nearly neighbors, helped make the rest of the map much cleaner – and eliminated that I-94 Regional we didn’t prefer.
Deconstructing D3: This was another toughie given the locations of teams involved. Three districts are all east of U.S. 23 and south of Pontiac, and four more are all west and/or north of Greater Lansing. Usually the Lansing area has a large share of Division 3 qualifiers – but not this season. So that left five schools somewhat without a sure home – St. Johns, DeWitt, Mason, Tecumseh and Linden. DeWitt is much closer to Mason and even Tecumseh, with the differences between St. Johns and DeWitt to Linden and St. Johns and DeWitt to Grand Rapids small enough to cancel out in the big picture.
Stretching Division 6: In the end, this map looks good – but there was a lot of conversation. The tough part was finding the fairest possible situation for whichever district champ might end up playing Negaunee – Bad Axe in the Thumb, Madison Heights Madison or Warren Michigan Collegiate as possibilities coming out of northern Detroit, or even Fennville near Lake Michigan south of Holland. Proximity to I-75 helped make this decision.
Crisscrossing Division 8: Figuring out this bracket started out easy enough with eight teams in the Upper Peninsula or just south of Mackinac Bridge and with the southwest and southeast Lower Peninsula set. But a group of 10 across the top of the Lower Peninsula – including neighbors Mount Pleasant Sacred Heart, Beal City and Coleman – made this interesting. A rule of thumb is we don’t want a team passing through a different district or regional to reach its opponent – and with three teams so closely bunched, that was a challenge in drawing this one out.
At the end of the day ...
What you see is what our committee decided upon after multiple discussions among multiple groups that broke down every sensible possibility we could muster. There are certainly points open to argument – and we likely made those arguments as well.
In the end, we present a group of dots on a map – as stated above, we don’t identify the schools until after the groupings are drawn. Part of the fun is then finding out what first-round matchups we’ve created: Muskegon Mona Shores vs. Caledonia and Detroit Martin Luther King vs. Southfield should be incredible, as well as the Ishpeming/Westwood and Iron Mountain/West Iron County rivalry games in the Upper Peninsula.
And no doubt, those who play for and support Burton Atherton, Ypsilanti Community, first-year Lapeer High School, Big Rapids Crossroads and New Haven Merritt Academy are ready to enjoy the playoff ride for the first time.
We’re excited to watch them all – and see which end up in Detroit with us to finish the fall over Thanksgiving weekend. We hope to see you there as well.
PHOTO: The Division 4 map for 11-player football has each region shaded; champion of the white plays green in a semifinal with yellow facing blue in the other.

VanderVelde Officiating Tree Branches Into 2nd Generation, Top-Tier College Football
By
Steve Vedder
Special for MHSAA.com
February 28, 2025
Mike VanderVelde always knew the apple wasn't going to fall far from the tree.
The longtime West Michigan football and basketball official correctly guessed that his son, Michael, who had accompanied his father to countless Friday night football games before he was even out of elementary school, would eventually pick up the family mantle of officiating. VanderVelde said he saw in his young son many of the key attributes an official must possess: a keen eye for details, an overwhelming desire to improve, patience and a love of sports.
Put it all together, and VanderVelde has seen his son evolve into one of the nation's top NCAA football officials.
"I think it was just like with any kid, he liked the competition," said Mike VanderVelde, who retired three years ago at the age of 78 after officiating in the Grand Rapids area for 61. "I guess it would be crazy to say now, but even then there was something about Michael that was going to make him a good official. It wasn't (following) me."
Michael, a Grandville High School and Hope College graduate, has gone from working middle school football games to make extra money in college to officiating eight college bowl games, including this year's Sugar Bowl national quarterfinal Jan. 2 in New Orleans and the semifinal Jan. 9 at the Orange Bowl in Miami. VanderVelde's first bowl game was the 2017 Bahamas Bowl, and he also officiated the 2024 Rose Bowl, the national semifinal between eventual champion Michigan and Alabama.
Before reaching those heights, Michael said some of his earliest sporting moments came when he was a ball boy jogging along the sideline while his father was working on the field. VanderVelde figures he was barely 8 years old, but he remembers being taught by his father to pay attention to detail. He also considers his father a major influence in his decision to pursue football officiating at the highest level.
"I'd buy that, absolutely. I loved spending time with my dad on Friday nights. That was definitely a common bonding time,” Michael VanderVelde said. “I'd see the smile on his face and see his passion for football. I'd see subtle little hints, and I'd pick up on that. The seed was definitely planted.”
Even as a youngster who was yet to see middle school, Michael said he understood the necessity of being where he was supposed to be as a ball boy. It was one of his first lessons in accepting responsibility and that actions had consequences.
"I would hand the ball to the umpire and pay attention to the game, and do what they needed me to do," he said. "And then I'd hang out with the crew after the games. Just being around the game and watching and being close to it, I loved it."
Both VanderVeldes entered officiating on the ground floor. Mike began doing YMCA fifth and sixth grade and church league basketball games at Grand Rapids' Franklin Park during the 1950s. He eventually graduated to working about 75 high school football and basketball games a year along with officiating Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association football games. VanderVelde also coached football, tennis and junior high basketball at Wyoming Kelloggsville High School for 30 years.
"I've always been involved with athletics; I've really enjoyed it," Mike said. "I always thought of (officiating) as a challenge. I wanted to see what I could do. It intrigued me, trying something new. It just clicked with me, and I kept going and I never really stopped."
The younger VanderVelde also started at the youngest levels, officiating fourth through sixth-grade football games before he graduated from high school in 2003. Then to make extra money while in college, VanderVelde took on freshman, junior varsity and his first varsity football game at Saranac. He eventually worked high school basketball games before moving to Colorado and doing Southland Conference games for three years beginning in 2013. VanderVelde went on to work for three years in the Mountain West Conference and now officiates Big 12 games while living in Louisiana.
While many fans often fail to grasp the pressures an official faces while working major college football bowl games, VanderVelde said he's thrilled to reach that elite level of officiating.
"It's a blast," he said. "To be there with other officials and doing things like working with the replays, getting the calls correct, 11 on 11 football and being on the biggest stage, I love it."
As for the recently completed college season, VanderVelde was honored that the NCAA – in a rare break from tradition – chose his crew to work back-to-back Notre Dame games in the Sugar and Rose Bowls. The NCAA typically will not assign the same crew to the same team two weeks in a row. It was an extraordinary gesture signaling the high esteem in which the crew is held, not only by the NCAA but with the blessing of all teams involved.
"It's tough to work back-to-back games like that, but I think the crew did an excellent job," he said. "There was no controversy, and I think we felt comfortable being assigned those games."
Considering his officiating success, VanderVelde said there is one step yet to take, one more hurdle to leap: the NFL. VanderVelde. who works United Football League games in the spring, has been part of the league's Mackie Development Program for the last two years. He's already worked Hula Bowl games and would gladly consider moving along to working on Sundays.
"I'd love to have that opportunity if it was ever presented to me," he said. "It'd be cool, but there are no guarantees. You know that snap by snap, you're only as good as your last game. But it's something I'd like to do some day.
"In football all you can do is look at your next assignment and try to do it well. It's exciting, but you're always trying to go on to the next game without a hitch."
PHOTOS (Top) Longtime MHSAA official Mike VanderVelde, left, and son Michael share a moment during Michael’s officiating assignment at the 2021 Outback Bowl in Tampa Bay, Fla. (Middle) Mike VanderVelde officiates a Grandville High school game. (Below) From left: Mike VanderVelde, Michael VanderVelde, and Michael’s son Hayden. (Photos provided by the VanderVelde family.)