Century of School Sports: Let the Celebration Begin

By Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor

August 28, 2024

A milestone is an opportunity to look back, and we’ll surely dip into our history plenty during the 2024-25 school year as the Michigan High School Athletic Association celebrates 100 years of educational athletics.

But an anniversary of this magnitude also provides an ideal opportunity – at an ideal time in MHSAA history – to explain how we provide opportunities for students to participate in sports, and why that work remains vital.

Beginning next week and continuing through our final championship events next spring, we’ll be telling several of these stories as part of our “Century of School Sports” series on MHSAA.com.

School sports have advanced significantly over the last century, of course, but the values we strive to teach in educational athletics have remained consistent – and we’ll detail several of those efforts and how they’ve evolved over the years. There also are more high achievers and difference-makers worthy of recognition than we could ever highlight even during a year-long quest. But we will do our best to tell you about as many as possible.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson we at the East Lansing office learned during the COVID-19 pandemic is that school sports are just as meaningful to communities all over Michigan, and despite any perceived notion they are being pushed to the background by the multitude of non-school sports options that have sprouted over the last few decades.

We care about them enough to make them our life’s work – and we’re excited to tell many stories of what’s been, what we enjoy today and perhaps what’s to come for the next million student-athletes who will learn lifelong lessons studying in our extension of the classroom.

Kick Off Your 2022-23 with MHSAA.com's New Look, Enhanced Experience

By Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor

August 1, 2022

Welcome to what we hope will be your best – and most welcoming experience yet – on MHSAA.com.

As part of the kickoff of the 2022-23 school year, the Michigan High School Athletic Association is reintroducing this redesigned website filled with enhancements we hope better tell the ever-inspiring story of school sports – while making it easier for visitors to learn how they can be part of these stories as they unfold.

Driving this new fan-focused MHSAA.com are the following:

  An opportunity to tell your stories, front and center. You’ll see them immediately on the front page of the website and on pages for all of our sports and schools. After 10 years, our “Second Half” website is gone, with that coverage of schools all over Michigan now moved to MHSAA.com.

  The ability to make schedule and tournament information easier to find. The navigation at the top of the site is designed to get you places in fewer clicks. And our pages for every sport will be updated frequently throughout the season and especially at tournament time with information on how to attend and watch your favorite teams compete.

  The probability you’re connecting with the MHSAA on your phone. The majority of our web traffic – 70 percent, in fact – is via a mobile device, and our website will be much easier to navigate moving forward.

Much of this will look familiar – just different, and hopefully more organized and easier to navigate.

Are we missing anything? To answer that question in advance, “Yes.” We will be working throughout the coming months to backfill much of the historical data that has made MHSAA.com a home for high school sports, while also positioning those results, records and more in a way our millions of visitors will be able to better enjoy them.

So please, stop by frequently and stay a while. What’s the best place to start? Check out the “I AM …” link at the top of this page, and dive in.