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Watch Boys Soccer Finals on MHSAA TV
November 4, 2015
By John Johnson
MHSAA Communications Director
The first weekend of November will see a trio of major rematches in the District Finals of the MHSAA Football Playoffs – presented by the Michigan Army National Guard – and live video and audio coverage of Saturday’s Lower Peninsula Boys Soccer Finals on FOX Sports Detroit and the MHSAA Network.
The second weekend of Playoffs on the PrepZone on FoxSportsDetroit.com will feature the following games on Friday (Nov. 6) at 7 p.m.
- St. Ignace at Johannesburg-Lewiston
- Lansing Catholic at Portland
- Detroit East English at Grosse Pointe South
- Pontiac Notre Dame Prep at Richmond
Saturday Playoff games live on MHSAA.tv are covered by members participating in the School Broadcast Program. This week’s games are:
- Petoskey at Mt. Pleasant – 1 p.m.
- Muskegon at Muskegon Mona Shores – 5 p.m.
St. Ignace (9-1) scored late in a Week 5 home game with Johannesburg-Lewiston (9-1) to win, 27-21. The Saints were No. 2 in the final Association Press Division 8 poll, and the Cardinals were ranked seventh. Portland (10-0) topped Lansing Catholic (9-1) in Week 4, 28-6 on the Cougars’ home turf. The Raiders were No. 2 and the Cougars (9-1) No. 4 in the final Division 5 AP poll. Muskegon (8-2) lost at Mona Shores (10-0) in Week 8, before a crowd estimated at more than 10,000. The Big Reds finished fifth in the final Division 3 AP rankings, and Shores was third in Division 2.
Fans can watch PrepZone games on their computer or handheld devices by following these instructions:
On Your Desktop/Laptop Computer
- Go to FOXSportsGo.com
- Click on the “All Chs” menu at the bottom left of the page
- Select “FOX Sports Go Extras”
On Your Handheld Device
- Download the free FOX Sports Go app from your store
- Click on the “All Channels” menu at the top of the app
- Select “FOX Sports Go Extras”
All PrepZone games will be archived on MHSAA.tv.
Saturday’s Boys Soccer Finals will be live on MHSAA.tv with games at noon and 3 p.m. The games will be played at Brighton and Comstock Park High Schools, with the games at each site to be announced after today’s Semifinals. All Finals also will have live streaming audio at MHSAANetwork.com.
One Soccer Semifinal game will be Live on MHSAA.tv – today’s Division 3 matchup between Grand Rapids South Christian and Gladwin, at 6 p.m.
A Day Pass to watch live on MHSAA.tv is $9.95. A Month Pass is $14.95, and would also allow access to the full schedule of MHSAA Tournaments during the month of November:
- Nov. 4 – Selected Boys Soccer Semifinals
- Nov. 7 – Boys Soccer Finals
- Nov. 7 – Selected Football Playoff District Finals
- Nov. 14 – Selected Football Playoff Regional Finals
- Nov. 19-20 – Girls Volleyball Semifinals & Finals
- Nov. 21 – Lower Peninsula Girls Swimming & Diving Finals
- Nov. 21 – Football Playoff Semifinals (12 games)
Other Football Playoff games available on an On Demand basis being produced by SBP schools this week are:
- Comstock Park at Ada Forest Hills Eastern
- Hudsonville at Rockford
- Laingsburg at Montrose
In its seventh 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.
Launching at Midnight every Friday throughout the season is MHSAA Football Friday Overtime on FOX Sports Detroit. Mickey York and Rob Rubick host the weekly 30-minute highlights show. The show will re-air most Saturday and Sunday mornings – and will be archived on the FOX Detroit Website. This week, FFOT will re-air at 6 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Saturday; and 10 a.m. Sunday on FOX Sports Detroit.
The following games are scheduled to be highlighted this week on Football Friday Overtime:
- Lake Fenton at Flint Powers Catholic
- Romeo at Lapeer
- Southfield at Berkley
- Clinton at Madison Heights Madison
- Frankenmuth at Freeland
- PLUS – Highlights from this week’s PrepZone games.
This week's School Broadcast Program highlights (see below) include football games with Saginaw Swan Valley at Comstock Park, Calumet at Negaunee and Dowagiac at Benton Harbor.
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.