Basketball Tournaments on the Move?
March 3, 2017
It is uncertain where the Michigan High School Athletic Association Boys and Girls Basketball Tournaments, currently at the Breslin Center of Michigan State University, will be conducted in 2018 and 2019; and after that, there are questions of when they will be conducted.
The most serious of several concerns is that MSU can no longer guarantee Breslin’s availability for the MHSAA Semifinals and Finals. This is the result of a change in the format of the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament that assigns its 16 regionals to the top 16 seeded teams.
That schedule conflicts with the MHSAA Girls Basketball Semifinals and Finals in 2018 and 2020, and with the MHSAA Boys Basketball Semifinals and Finals in 2019.
In 2016, when MSU’s women’s basketball team was highly seeded, it had to travel to Mississippi State University because the MHSAA girls tournament was occupying Breslin. The contract that guarantees MHSAA priority ends with this year’s tournament, March 16-18.
The MHSAA is proceeding on two tracks. First, it has just distributed a “Request for Proposal” to MSU and other potential hosts for at least 2018 and 2019. There are options for venues to submit proposals for boys, girls or both.
Second, the MHSAA has begun what is likely to be a long discussion regarding dates. For example, if the girls season started and ended one week earlier, the NCAA conflict may not occur. However, this would likely require a one-week earlier end to the girls volleyball season in the fall, which some people have advocated but others are certain to oppose.
A flipside variation of this idea is to start and end boys basketball season two weeks earlier than is the case now, and to delay the start and end of girls basketball season by one week. This is a means of reducing the volleyball/basketball overlap for girls in November, and it would avoid that March weekend when the NCAA Division I women’s tournament can be a conflict.
Another option is to start the boys season one week earlier, extend the girls season one week later, and conduct the two tournaments simultaneously over four weeks – different days of the same weeks for Districts and Regionals; with Semifinals for both genders around the state on the weekend when the girls tournament has ended in the past; and then Finals for boys and girls at a single site on the Friday and Saturday when the boys tournament has traditionally ended.
Unless things change at the NCAA level, none of these models guarantees a schedule that is always free of conflicts with both the boys and girls MHSAA tournaments. Therefore, other innovative but possibly even more intrusive, changeable and tradition-breaking calendar adjustments could also be investigated that might provide a better long-term solution than merely changing venues.
Venue decisions are the responsibility of MHSAA management and should be made by early May. Calendar changes, if any, will be membership driven and may take more than 18 months to finalize.
Amping Up
September 15, 2017
For the past 18 months, the Michigan High School Athletic Association has amped up its voice regarding trends in sports specialization and the benefits of multi-sport participation.
For many preceding decades, it seemed that it was only the leaders of school sports who were speaking out, and only from a philosophical point of view; but in recent years, the cause has been taken up by increasing numbers, and the philosophical perspectives have been joined by experts from the fields of child psychology, pedagogy, sociology and sports medicine.
The MHSAA’s resources have been modest in comparison to the billion-dollar business that youth sports has become. We’ve used publications, PSAs, our statewide radio network and tournament telecasts on Fox Sports Detroit; more recently the NFHS digital broadcast network for additional tournament events and some regular-season contests; and this fall a partnership with State Champs! Sports Network for television and radio messaging on a weekly basis.
The MHSAA’s Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation has been operating for 18 months and identifying strategies and developing tools for allied organizations and schools to use with youth athletes and their parents, as well as coaches, to promote the multi-sport experience. One new tool – “Coaching Coaches for Multi-Sport Participation” – will soon join the MHSAA’s ongoing Coaches Advancement Program to supplement local school administrators’ efforts to blunt the effects of the specialization tsunami in youth sports.
Much of the sports specialization storm is commercially driven. Local entrepreneurs across the country have seized opportunities to help create and satisfy the appetite of parents to push their children toward early, intense and prolonged focus on a single sport.
Also behind the craze are national sport governing bodies (most notably soccer and volleyball) and professional sports organizations (baseball, basketball, football especially) and local convention and tourism bureaus to build their brands on the backs of young athletes and their families.
Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and National Football League and other professional leagues have subsidiaries or affiliates who are investing in grassroots programs to grow their sports, often with only their own sport in mind, and the health and welfare of the whole child of secondary concern.
All of this begs us in school sports to think bigger.
To think again about building our own multi-purpose facility to host local and statewide events, and to make it “the destination” for high school teams in Michigan.
To think more about ways to make school sports “the experience” for junior high/middle school and even younger students.
To think anew about an investment arm which incentivizes schools to develop the policies, programs and places that attract and hold students, and which partners with for-profit entities to create school-centered sports initiatives.
The battle for the hearts and minds of youth and their parents is trending poorly. It’s time – almost past time – to employ more impressive tactics, without losing the soul of school sports ... pure, amateur, local, educational athletics.