Today In The MHSAA: 2/18/21

By Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor

February 18, 2021

More league champions were celebrated in skiing Wednesday, with regional champions rising in Muskegon-area bowling and statewide elite facing off in competitive cheer, basketball and hockey.

1. Skiing: Harbor Springs’ girls clinched their 13th-straight Lake Michigan Conference title, and Great North Alpine claimed the boys title – Petoskey News-Review

2. Skiing: The Onekema girls and Benzie Central boys finished league title runs in the Lake Michigan Ski Conference – Traverse City Record-Eagle

3. Bowling: Whitehall’s girls won their first Greater Muskegon Athletic Association championship, while Fruitport’s boys repeated – Local Sports Journal

4. Competitive Cheer: Reigning Division 2 champion Allen Park topped reigning runner-up Gibraltar Carlson after the powers were separated by less than a point after Round 2 – Southgate News-Herald

5. Hockey: Division 3 No. 3 Flint Powers Catholic shut out Division 1 No. 4 Saginaw Heritage 5-0 – WJRT

6. Boys Basketball: Orchard Lake St. Mary’s got past Grand Blanc 65-52 in a matchup of highly-regarded contenders – Oakland Press

7. Hockey: Division 2 No. 4 Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice downed Division 1 No. 2 Brighton 4-2 – Observer & Eccentric

8. Hockey: Division 1 No. 6 Traverse Bay Reps downed Division 2 No. 8 Traverse City Central 3-1 – Traverse City Record-Eagle

9. Girls Basketball: Carly McCrum went over 1,000 career points as Bay City John Glenn downed Alma 41-32 – Bay City Times

10. Girls Basketball: Although New Lothrop lost 52-47 to Linden, the Hornets’ Brooke Wenzlick went over 1,000 career points – Owosso Argus-Press

Also of note …

Athletic Directors: East Grand Rapids’ Tim Johnston, an MHSAA Bush Award honoree this past year, will retire this summer after 38 years in educational athletics – Grand Rapids Press

In Memoriam: Chip Mundy (1955-2023)

By Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor

August 16, 2023

When the MHSAA took a significant step in telling the stories of school sports with the introduction of the Second Half website in 2012, Chip Mundy was a natural to lend his expertise after a career doing the same in the Jackson area.

He always took special care in searching out the human interest side of our “stories behind the scores” – and today we remember that dedication as we mourn his death Monday. He was 68.

Chip MundyMundy was a graduate of Jackson Parkside and then served as sports editor at the Brooklyn Exponent and Albion Recorder from 1980-86. He then became a fixture in high school sports coverage as a reporter and later copy editor at the Jackson Citizen Patriot from 1986-2011.

Mundy was one of the original correspondents when Second Half took on a regional component beginning with the 2015-16 school year, thoughtfully providing biweekly features from the “Southeast & Border” area that includes Jackson, Ann Arbor, Monroe and the host of smaller communities north of the Michigan/Ohio line. Before the beginning of 2H’s “Region Reports,” Mundy also was among the first to begin producing coverage of MHSAA Finals for the site as Second Half started in part with a mission of covering all MHSAA championship events.

He admittedly ended up reporting on some sports he’d rarely or never covered before, and admittedly often wrote a little longer than he’d intended – but in his own words, because “there were so many stories” or “the story was so good.”

Click to read many of his features for the Second Half website.