Generations of Girls Tournaments
June 22, 2012
The MHSAA will have its “40th Anniversaries” for seven girls sports tournaments during the next three school years, but they are not our longest running girls tournaments.
The earliest MHSAA tournament for girls was regional in scope for the sport of alpine skiing – almost 60 years ago – in the winter of the 1953-54 school year. Two regional meets were held for girls, and two for boys. This continued for 21 consecutive years.
The first statewide MHSAA Ski Meet was held in Marquette in early 1975, the culminating event for a season during which the sport was sponsored for girls by 63 schools and for boys by 68 schools.
The first statewide MHSAA tournament for girls in any sport was held Jan. 12, 1972 in the sport of gymnastics. Of 52 schools sponsoring girls gymnastics at that time, 33 had girls qualify for and participate in the meet, and 30 schools scored in six different events (today girls gymnastics has just four events; trampoline and tumbling no longer are contested).
During the 1972-73 school year, the MHSAA sponsored and conducted girls tournaments in tennis, swimming & diving, golf and track & field. The first MHSAA Girls Basketball Tournament occurred the following school year, 1973-74; girls softball followed in the 1974-75 school year; and girls volleyball followed in the 1975-76 school year.
The girls who played in these first tournaments are now women in their mid- to late-fifties; and some will be rooting for their granddaughters in one of the 14 MHSAA tournaments now conducted for girls.
Tools of Thought
July 13, 2018
(This blog first appeared on MHSAA.com on May 11, 2012.)
I am famous at home and office for my lack of keyboarding skills. The only “C” grade I received in high school was a summer school course in what was then called “typing.” At Dartmouth I paid a woman who worked at the dining hall to type my college papers. In an early job at the University of Wisconsin I typed the play-by-play of Badger football and basketball games with a clumsy “hunt-and-peck” approach.
Today, with the same lack of style, I pound out dozens of emails daily, hammering the keys like my first manual typewriter required four decades ago.
But for any document of great length or importance, I do as I’ve always done: take up pencil (my software) and legal pad (my hardware). There is no question that, for me, the nature of the equipment I’m using for writing affects the nature of the thinking.
With his eyesight failing late in his life, Freidrich Nietzsche bought his first typewriter, changing from pen and paper to the new technology of the 1800s. According to a 2008 article in Atlantic Monthly by Nichols Carr, a friend wrote to Nietzsche in a letter that, since adapting to the telegraphic style, Nietzsche’s terse prose had become even tighter. To which Nietzsche replied: “You are right, our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.”
Which makes one wonder where all today’s tweeting and texting may take us.