Network Loaded with Playoff Action

November 3, 2020

By John Johnson
MHSAA Director of Broadcast Properties

To say there’s a lot of great high school action in the coming week on the MHSAA.tvMHSAANetwork.com and FOXSportsDetroit.com websites is an understatement.

More Girls Volleyball Tournament action than ever before runs throughout a week culminating with more than 50 Football Playoff games, the Boys Soccer Finals and two days of Cross Country Finals.

The Lower Peninsula Cross Country Finals will take place Friday and Saturday (Nov. 6-7) at Michigan International Speedway, with a modified format. There will be two heats in each division for each gender.  The first race will include third-place Regional team finishers and individual qualifiers, with the second race made up of teams that finished first or second at Regionals. 

The Cross Country coverage is enhanced this year with an additional camera on the back of the course to better capture the first 800 meters, and the 1.5-mile and 2.25-mile marks of the race. The traditional Finish Line camera also will cover the action, with commentary from a crew of announcers. 

Here’s the schedule:

Friday – Nov. 6
Division 1 Finals - Boys at 9:30 and 10 a.m. - Girls at 11 and 11:30 a.m.
Division 2 Finals - Boys at 1:30 and 2 p.m. - Girls at 3 and 3:30 p.m.
 
Saturday – Nov. 7
Division 3 Finals  - Boys at 9:30 and 10 a.m. - Girls at 11 and 11:30 a.m.
Division 4 Finals - Boys at 1:30 and 2 p.m. - Girls at 3 and 3:30 p.m.

On Saturday the Boys Soccer Finals will have live audio and video streaming of its championship games from Novi and Comstock Park High Schools. Two games will be played at each site with the game times set for Noon and 3 p.m. The finalists will be determined following Semifinal play on Wednesday (Nov. 4), with all four of those games being streaming live video on MHSAA.tv and live audio on MHSAANetwork.com.

Lots of Football Playoff games will take place beginning Friday evening with three featured games as part of the FOX Sports Detroit “Game of the Week” and the FOX Sports Prep Zone.  All of these games can be seen on FoxSportsDetroit.com and on FOX Sports Go! for handheld and streaming devices like Roku. Here are this weekend games:

  • Hudsonville at Rockford – Prep Zone – Friday, 7 p.m.
  • Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central at Muskegon Mona Shores – Prep Zone – Friday, 7 p.m.
  • Clinton Twp. Chippewa Valley at Rochester Hills Stoney Creek – FOX Sports Detroit “Game of the Week” – Friday, 7:30 p.m.

MHSAA.tv will play host to more than 50 District Semifinal Football Playoff games over the weekend, most produced by participants in the School Broadcast Program with traditional student crews or Pixellot units. The NFHS Network is providing bonus coverage of one additional game on Friday – Bath at Laingsburg. Here’s the complete schedule: 

Friday - Nov. 6
Suttons Bay  vs. Whittemore-Prescott   - 6 PM
Whitehall  vs. Coopersville   - 6 PM
Montrose  vs. Chesaning   - 6:40 PM
Adrian Lenawee Christian vs. Mayville   - 6:50 PM
DeWitt  vs. Lansing Waverly   - 6:50 PM
Lowell  vs. Caledonia   - 6:55 PM
Belleville  vs. Northville   - 7 PM
Birmingham Seaholm  vs. Birmingham Groves   - 7 PM
Brownstown Woodhaven  vs. Dearborn   - 7 PM
Cadillac  vs. Alma   - 7 PM
Cass City  vs. Sandusky   - 7 PM
Charlevoix  vs. Mancelona   - 7 PM
Corunna  vs. Richmond   - 7 PM
Detroit Catholic Central  vs. Novi   - 7 PM
East Grand Rapids  vs. Holland   - 7 PM
East Lansing  vs. Portage Central   - 7 PM
Fenton  vs. North Farmington   - 7 PM
Frankenmuth  vs. Almont   - 7 PM
Freeland  vs. Midland Bullock Creek   - 7 PM
Grand Rapids Catholic Central  vs. Belding  - 7 PM
Ithaca  vs. Ravenna   - 7 PM
Laingsburg  vs. Bath   - 7 PM
Madison Heights Lamphere  vs. Sterling Heights Chandler Park - 7 PM
Manistee  vs. Grayling   - 7 PM
Maple City Glen Lake  vs. Boyne City   - 7 PM
Mason  vs. Fowlerville   - 7 PM
Millington  vs. Mt Morris   - 7 PM
Muskegon Mona Shores  vs. Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central   - 7 PM – FOX Sports Prep Zone
New Lothrop  vs. Burton Bendle   - 7 PM
Ortonville Brandon  vs. Goodrich   - 7 PM
Pontiac Notre Dame Prep vs. Detroit Country Day   - 7 PM
Portage Northern  vs. Battle Creek  Lakeview - 7 PM
Redford Union  vs. Livonia Clarenceville   - 7 PM
Riverview Gabriel Richard vs. Jackson Lumen Christi - 7 PM
Rockford  vs. Hudsonville   - 7 PM – FOX Sports Prep Zone
Romulus Summit Academy North  vs. Dearborn Heights Robichaud   - 7 PM
Saline  vs. Ann Arbor  Huron - 7 PM
South Lyon  vs. Walled Lake Western   - 7 PM
St. Joseph  vs. Battle Creek Harper Creek   - 7 PM
Traverse City Central  vs. Swartz Creek   - 7 PM
West Bloomfield  vs. Troy   - 7 PM
White Lake Lakeland  vs. Howell   - 7 PM
Zeeland West  vs. Middleville Thornapple Kellogg   - 7 PM
Rochester Hills Stoney Creek  vs. Clinton Twp.  Chippewa Valley - 7:30 PM – FOX Sports Detroit Game of Week
 
Saturday - Nov. 7
Traverse City St. Francis  vs. Harbor Springs   - 12 PM
Hemlock  vs. Bad Axe   - 1 PM
Kinde North Huron  vs. Peck   - 1 PM
Kingsley  vs. Gladwin   - 1 PM
Midland  vs. Midland Dow   - 1 PM
Pewamo-Westphalia  vs. North Muskegon   - 1 PM
Reed City  vs. Kingsford   - 1 PM
Stevensville Lakeshore  vs. Coldwater   - 1 PM
Mount Pleasant  vs. Marquette  - 2 PM
 
Girls Volleyball District Semifinals and Finals take place Wednesday through Saturday (Nov. 3-7). Separate releases will be issued with detailed Semifinal and Final coverage.
 
This week, more 250 events at all levels in a variety of sports will be available on the NFHS Network/MHSAA.TV. Monthly subscriptions are $10.99. Click for a complete list of upcoming games, and for a complete list of on-demand games
 
Fans also can type their school name into the search field on the MHSAA.tv page to search for events. Varsity games being streamed also have links from the MHSAA Website’s Score Center, and from the schedules on individual school pages. Clicking on the green TV set icon listed next to an event will take you directly to a game. You can also watch on Roku enabled devices.

Now in its 12th 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. Pixellot – The NFHS Network’s automated streaming solution – is used by schools wishing to live stream games, but lacking the ability to staff the events. The program also gives schools the opportunity to raise money through advertising and viewing subscriptions.

NFHS Network subscriptions begin at $10.99 a month. 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. A portion of every subscription sold by an SBP 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.

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.”

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.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.