High School a Time for Plays of All Kinds
April 2, 2015
By Jack Roberts
MHSAA executive director
At end of season or school year banquets attended by student-athletes and their parents, I often tell this short story about my mother that never fails to get a good laugh, especially from mothers:
“At the end of my junior year of high school I attended the graduation ceremony for the senior class on a hot and humid early June evening in our stuffy high school gymnasium. The bleachers on each side were filled to capacity, as were several hundred folding chairs placed on the gymnasium floor.
“The public address system, which was wonderful for announcing at basketball games or wrestling meets, was awful for graduation speeches. Person after person spoke, and the huge audience wondered what they had to say.
“I was present because I was the junior class president; and as part of the ceremony, the senior class president handed me a small shovel. It had something to do with accepting responsibility or carrying on tradition.
“In any event, the senior class president spoke briefly; and then it was my turn. I stepped to the podium, pushed the microphone to the side, and spoke in a voice that was heard and understood in every corner of the gymnasium.
“Whereupon my mother, sitting in one of the folding chairs, positioned right in front of my basketball coach – who had benched me for staying out too late on the night before a game, because I had to attend a required school play rehearsal – my mother turned around, pointed her finger at the coach and said, ‘See there? That’s what he learned at play practice!’
“And she was heard in every corner of the gymnasium too.
“But my mother knew – she just knew – that for me, play practice was as important as basketball practice. And she was absolutely correct.”
This old but true story about in-season demands of school sports actually raises two of the key issues of the debate about out-of-season coaching rules.
One is that we are not talking only about sports. School policies should not only protect and promote opportunities for students to participate in more than one sport; they should also allow for opportunities for students to participate in the non-athletic activities that comprehensive, full-service schools provide.
This is because surveys consistently link student achievement in school as well as success in later life with participation in both the athletic and non-athletic activities of schools. Proper policies permit students time to study, time to practice and play sports and time to be engaged in other school activities that provide opportunities to learn and grow as human beings.
A second issue the story presents is that parents have opinions about what is best for their children. In fact, they feel even more entitled to express those opinions today than my mother did almost 50 years ago. In fact, today, parents believe they are uniquely entitled to make the decisions that affect their children. And often they take the attitude that everyone else should butt out of their business!
The MHSAA knows from direct experience that while school administrators want tighter controls on what coaches and students do out of season, and that most student-athletes and coaches will at least tolerate the imposed limits, parents will be highly and emotionally critical of rules that interfere with how they raise their children.
No matter the cost in time or money to join elite teams, take private lessons, travel to far-away practices and further-away tournaments, no matter how unlikely any of this provides the college athletic scholarship return on investment that parents foolishly pursue, those parents believe they have every right to raise their own children their own way and that it’s not the MHSAA’s business to interfere.
It is for this very reason that MHSAA rules have little to say about what students can and can’t do out of season. Instead, the rules advise member schools and their employees what schools themselves have agreed should be the limits. The rules do this to promote competitive balance. They do this in order to avoid never-ending escalating expense of time and money to keep up on the competitive playing field, court, pool, etc.
Every example we have of organized competitive sports is that, in the absence of limits, some people push the boundaries as far as they can for their advantage, which forces other people to go beyond what they believe is right in order to keep up.
If, during the discussions on out-of-season rules, someone suggests that certain policies be eliminated, thinking people will pause to ask what life would be like without those rules.
Our outcome cannot be mere elimination of regulation, which invites chaos; the objective must be shaping a different future.
A good start would be simpler, more understandable and enforceable rules. A bad ending would be if it forces more student-athletes and school coaches to focus on a single sport year-round.
Back to Building Boys Into Men, Munger Bringing Newfound Success to Newaygo
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
November 6, 2024
NEWAYGO – After a long, physical practice Tuesday, as the light rain started to intensify, Newaygo coach Ralph Munger decided to squeeze in a quick game of “Simon Says.”
Within a few minutes, players were laughing, making fun of each other for clapping their hands when Munger didn’t say the magic words (and doing five push-ups as punishment) – and learning mental focus in the process.
“He’s an old-style coach,” said Newaygo senior Henry Wood, a senior captain and two-way starter. “But he has a crazy passion for the sport, and his football IQ is insane.”
Simon Says is just one of proven techniques the longtime coach is using to teach and motivate his players at Newaygo, which is 8-2 and hosting Central Montcalm on Friday for a Division 6 District championship in just his second year as coach.
Munger, 72, is having a ball at his latest coaching stop and is up to 11 wins over his two years at Newaygo, a small, rural school northwest of Grand Rapids – after winning 80 games in 11 years at Frankenmuth and 255 games over 28 years at Rockford, the latter tenure including five Finals appearances and three titles. He entered this season the sixth-winningest coach in state football history, and heading into this weekend his career record is 343-117.
“We’re making strides, and things are starting to click,” said Munger, who was an all-state football player in his own right at Frankenmuth in the late 1960s. “I feel pretty good, and I thank God every day that he has allowed me to coach again.”
Newaygo knocked off traditional Division 6 power Montague, 30-17, last week for the school’s first playoff win since 2018.
The Lions are doing it with Munger’s beloved power game, led by senior quarterback Blake Kerr (55-of-99 passing for 805 yards and 10 TDs), junior running back Porter Slominski (130 rushes for 934 yards and 13 TDs) and senior running back Ethan Reyburn (104 rushes for 673 yards and 8 TDs).
Kerr, who has good size at 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds, has thrown primarily to his two fellow senior captains in split end Hunter Yearsovich (18 catches for 255 yards and 3 TDs) and Wood (9 catches for 140 yards and 3 TDs).
Luis Ceja Alvarez (5-10, 155), is a crafty, undersized linebacker who leads the defense with 34 solo tackles and 52 assists. Fellow linebacker Xavier Stroud has 17 solos and 32 assists.
Yearsovich, a team leader and two-way starter with a 4.4 GPA, said he and his senior teammates had an immediate connection with their Hall of Fame coach.
“I’ll never forget when we met him in the gym last year because he talked to us like we were men,” said Yearsovich. “With him, we don’t ever have the mentality that we’re going to lose, no matter who we’re playing. It hasn’t always been like that around here.”
As the Lions broke into groups in the middle of Tuesday’s practice, Munger headed off with the defensive backs.
The joy of hands-on coaching was apparent as he schooled them on back-pedaling and cutting on what could be a muddy playing surface Friday night, and then concentrating and catching a wet ball.
Munger, who had quadruple-bypass, open-heart surgery in the summer of 2019 and has undergone three separate spine surgeries, is thankful to still be able to stalk the sidelines with a whistle around his neck. He endured one long autumn away from coaching, during the COVID year of 2020, which is when he knew he wasn’t done.
“I was going stir crazy,” said Munger with a grin. “I needed my football fix, anywhere.”
That led him to tiny Mancelona High School, which is near his cabin in northern Michigan, where he helped coach the offensive and defensive lines in 2021 and 2022. He then in 2023 pursued and landed the Newaygo head coaching job, which is a 30-minute drive from his home in Rockford.
He led Newaygo to a fairly typical 3-6 record last year. But with a full year of his coaching under their belts, the Lions are enjoying a breakthrough fall.
Newaygo finished the regular season 7-2, with the only losses coming against Reed City and Big Rapids, who are both still alive in the playoffs. One of the wins came against this week’s playoff opponent, Central Montcalm, 21-12, in Week 2.
Another victory over CM would earn the Lions yet another home game, against the winner of Ovid-Elsie at Lansing Catholic, this time for a Regional championship. Newaygo has never won a football Regional title, and 2012 was the only year it won more than one playoff game, losing to Grand Rapids West Catholic in a Division 5 Regional Final.
Munger said, at this point in his life, his only goals are to bring some positive energy to Newaygo and help his players make the transition from boys to men – the same thing he has been doing for almost 50 years.
“I am enjoying myself, very much so,” said Munger, who is a member of six Halls of Fame for his coaching achievements. “I find it fun getting after all the challenges out here. That’s what drives me.
“That’s the calling that the Good Lord has given me.”
Tom Kendra worked 23 years at The Muskegon Chronicle, including five as assistant sports editor and the final six as sports editor through 2011. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Muskegon, Oceana, Mason, Lake, Oceola, Mecosta and Newaygo counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Newaygo varsity football coach Ralph Munger, right, talks things over with his senior quarterback Blake Kerr during a 53-26 win over Lake Odessa Lakewood on Oct. 18 at Central Michigan’s Kelly-Shorts Stadium. (Middle) Senior tight end Henry Wood (84) works to get past an outstretched defender. (Below) Munger, play sheet in hand, has led the Lions to an 8-2 record. (Photos by Tashina Kerr.)