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Jets Go for Record Live On MHSAA TV
January 25, 2017
By John Johnson
MHSAA Communications Director
History could be made Friday night when Powers North Central attempts to break the MHSAA boys basketball record for consecutive victories when the Jets host Bark River-Harris in a battle of unbeatens in the Skyline Central Conference at 6:30 p.m. (Central Standard Time), a game which will be shown live on the MHSAA.tv website.
On Tuesday (Jan. 24), North Central ran its season record to 10-0 (3-0 conference) with a 76-24 win over Rock Mid-Peninsula to extend its winning streak over three seasons to 65 games, tying Chassell, which set the mark nearly 60 years ago in winning three consecutive MHSAA Class D titles in 1956-57-58.
Bark-River Harris is 2-0 in the Skyline this season and coming off a 71-47 loss in a nonleague game to Escanaba on Monday (Jan. 23) which gave the Broncos an 8-2 overall record.
The School Broadcast Program from Marquette High School will produce Friday’s game. The halftime show will be a feature on those Chassell teams which set the record, produced in 1998 by FOX Sports Detroit.
The Chassell video is available for viewing on the MHSAA.tv website (Click Here to watch) and on the MHSAA Channel on YouTube (Click Here to watch). You can also read more about Chassell on the Historical Articles and the Second Half pages of the MHSAA Website.
In its eighth year, the School Broadcast Program gives members an opportunity to showcase excellence in their schools by creating video programming of athletic and non-athletic events, with students gaining skills in announcing, camera operation, directing/producing and graphics.
The program also gives schools the opportunity to raise money through advertising and viewing subscriptions.
All sporting events – Live or On-Demand – are available on a subscription basis only for their first 72 hours online. They become available for free, on-demand viewing approximately 72 hours following their completion.
Here’s the schedule of events School Broadcast Program members plan to stream over the next week for broadcast at MHSAA.tv.
Wednesday, Jan. 25
- Wrestling – Quad at Comstock Park, 5 p.m.
- Wrestling – Quad at Otisville Lakeville, 5:45 p.m.
- Girls Competitive Cheer – OK Meet at Cedar Springs, 6 p.m.
- Boys Basketball – Sault Ste. Marie at Alpena, 7 p.m.
- Ice Hockey – Detroit Catholic Central at Trenton, 7:10 p.m.
- Ice Hockey – Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood at Grosse Pointe North, 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, Jan. 26
- JV Girls Basketball – Allendale at Comstock Park, 5:30 p.m.
- JV Girls Basketball – New Lothrop at Montrose, 5:30 p.m.
- Ice Hockey – Kingsford at Calumet, 7 p.m.
- JV Boys Basketball – New Lothrop at Montrose, 7 p.m.
- Ice Hockey – Farmington at Lake Orion, 7:45 p.m.
Friday, Jan. 27
- Boys Basketball – Grand Rapids Northview at Cedar Springs, 5:30 p.m.
- Boys Basketball - Allendale at Comstock Park, 6 p.m.
- JV Boys Basketball – Atlanta at Rogers City, 6 p.m.
- Boys Basketball – Zeeland West at Hamilton, 6 p.m.
- Boys Basketball – Traverse City Central at Alpena, 7 p.m.
- Girls Basketball – Grand Rapids Northview at Cedar Springs, 7 p.m.
- Boys Basketball – Atlanta at Rogers City, 7 p.m.
- Ice Hockey – Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood at Detroit Catholic Central, 7:10 p.m. (DCC feed)
- Boys Basketball – Bark River-Harris at Powers North Central, 7:30 p.m. (6:30 Central)
- Girls Basketball – Allendale at Comstock Park, 7:30 p.m.
- Ice Hockey – Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood at Detroit Catholic Central, 7:30 p.m. (BHCK feed)
Saturday, Jan. 28
- Ice Hockey – Detroit Catholic Central at Brighton, 4:40 p.m.
Monday, Jan. 30
- JV Girls Basketball – Au Gres-Sims at Rogers City, 6 p.m.
- Girls Basketball – Oxford at Lake Orion, 7 p.m.
- Girls Basketball – Au Gres-Sims at Rogers City, 7 p.m.
- Ice Hockey – Hancock at Calumet, 7:20 p.m.
Tuesday, Jan. 31
- JV Girls Basketball – North Branch at Otisville Lakeville, 5:25 p.m.
- Girls Basketball – North Branch at Otisville Lakeville, 6:45 p.m.
- Girls Basketball – Hopkins at Plainwell, 7 p.m.
- Boys Basketball – Birmingham Seaholm at Lake Orion, 7 p.m.
- Boys Basketball – Hudsonville Unity Christian at Cedar Springs, 7 p.m.
- Ice Hockey – Negaunee at Calumet, 7:20 p.m.
Be sure to check the Upcoming Events page at MHSAA.tv for schedule additions every day.
The NFHS Network has announced new pricing for 2016-17, eliminating the Day Pass and lowering the cost of a Month Pass to $9.95. Subscribers will have access to all live video and streaming statistics across the country. All content becomes available for free, on-demand viewing 72 hours after being shown live. Some schools also will be selling Annual Passes at a discounted rate. A portion of every subscription sold by a school goes to benefit its program.
A complete list of participating schools can be found on the School Broadcast Program page of the MHSAA website.
Fans also can access scores of games in-progress on the NFHS Network website via ScoreStream. Click on the Scores button in the upper right corner.
A weekly staple on the MHSAA.tv website and the MHSAASports Channel on YouTube is back for another year with highlights of selected games last week produced by members of the Association’s School Broadcast Program.
This week’s highlights package consists of clips of Saginaw Heritage at Midland Dow girls basketball, Norway at Negaunee boys basketball and also Saginaw Valley Lutheran at Otisville Lakeville boys basketball from last week.
Schools interested in becoming a part of the School Broadcast Program should contact John Johnson at the MHSAA Office.
1975 Class D Football Film Finds Way Back to MHSAA for All to Enjoy Again
By
John Johnson
MHSAA Communications Director emeritus
April 11, 2023
Chasing history was one of the most enjoyable parts of serving at the MHSAA for nearly 34 years. Researching information, but especially what I considered for a long time to be talking to the “old guys” (now I’m one of them) and soaking up their verbal histories of our games.
It also involved chasing down old photos, broadcasts and game films – especially those which preceded our more modern video era beginning in the 1990s.
When I arrived at the MHSAA in 1987, there was a shelf of old 16mm film canisters of an assortment of Boys Basketball Finals from the 1950s to the 70s – certainly not a complete set. The Association would shoot some game action from each quarter and the trophy presentations. They’d be sent out to the participating schools to show to the students (I remember watching a Mt. Pleasant Sacred Heart game in 1967 when I was in fifth grade). Some would find their way back to the office – most would not.
Will Robinson, the legendary Detroit Public School League coach who led Pershing High School to the league’s first MHSAA titles (in 1967 and 1970) after a district-imposed hiatus from 1931-61 from statewide tournaments, would pull my chain every time we saw each other about those games featuring Spencer Haywood and Ralph Simpson, among others. We never found them.
So it became a project to try and track down as many old game films of state championships as we could.
Any conversation with someone with a history tone always included a question about the whereabouts of a game film or video. One of those recently bore fruit.
When Crystal Falls Forest Park played in the 8-Player Football Finals at the Superior Dome in Marquette back in 2017, I spent a lot of time talking with living legend Bill Santilli, who led the Trojans to the Class D crown in the very first year of the tournament in 1975, and who would later coach the school to a second state title (2007) and serve as athletic director. He said he had a box on his desk collecting dust that he didn’t know what to do with – that box contained an old video tape from that game.
I uttered four little words – “Send It To Me.”
After a while the tape arrived in East Lansing, and I got our video production friends at When We Were Young Productions/Rush Media in Wisconsin on it. This winter, they found someone who could convert it and sent me a file that was recently posted to the MHSAASPORTS Channel on YouTube. You can watch the Trojans play Flint Holy Rosary by Clicking Here or watching above.
There are all kinds of old game films/videos and artifacts in attics, closets, garages, etc., in every town. Two of our Muskegon historians – Ron Pesch, the MHSAA’s history guy; and the old broadcaster, Jim Moyes, who called games on the radio for years in the Port City – can tell stories of their own about discoveries they have made. Moyes found all kinds of mementos while working on his book on the history of high school track & field in Michigan, and sitting with Ron at this year’s Girls Basketball Finals, he told a story of finding the mother lode of photographs from one of his other historical passions – silent film star Buster Keaton – who spent ten summers in the Actor’s Colony in Muskegon.
Pesch found a listing for Eleanor Keaton, Buster’s widow, using a telephone book (remember those?), made a phone call and shortly thereafter, on a vacation to California, was in her living room where he was loaned a photo album and family scrapbook containing all kinds of images from their time in Muskegon. Many of those images appear in a soon-to-be-released documentary, while the album and scrapbook now reside in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library in Beverly Hills, Calif. You can preview the film by Clicking Here.
So if you think you have something of a state championship that could be utilized on a bigger platform and enjoyed by everyone, drop a note to [email protected]. If something needs to be converted to a more modern format, you’ll get a copy back, and the footage will be eventually viewable on the MHSAA’s YouTube channel.
To help guide your search, think in the following terms:
► Just about anything before 1990. But there are gaps during the 90s that need to be filled as well.
► Only Championship games and Semifinal games, unless something momentous occurred (like Richie Jordan’s 60-point game for Fennville against Bridgman in a Regional Semifinal in 1965, which is still an all-time tournament single-game record for boys basketball).
► For a list of what’s in the MHSAA archives prior to 2000 – Click Here. A long-term project is to get all of the games on the list and up to about 2010 uploaded to the YouTube channel. Most games from 2013-14 on can be viewed on the NFHS Network, and some games between 2010 and 2013 are available for purchase as DVDs from PrepFilms.com.
PHOTO Posing with the championship trophy after the 1975 Class D Football Final are (left to right): Forest Park tight end Bryan LaChapelle, quarterback Richard Mettlach, head coach Dick Mettlach and running back Bill Santilli.