From the Director: Back to School
August 7, 2020
By Mark Uyl
MHSAA Executive Director
Since March 12, our world has been anything but normal. These times have tested most everything in life, and as summer turns toward fall, we find ourselves still with far more questions than answers. It has been said that an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
Let me start with these abnormal times. I’ve had many conversations with administrators over the past month about the start of school and school sports. The one constant theme is these are anything but normal times. Many of these conversations have moved to the issue of schools starting the academic year virtually while considering whether or not to offer school sports opportunities this fall. Let me share the things that have been part of almost all conversations on this topic.
The loudest message I hear is kids are going to be playing sports this fall someplace. Period. If we believe that kids are going to take the fall off if school sports aren’t offered, we haven’t been paying much attention since May. Since that time, athletic activity has taken place in the club, travel, AAU and non-school space nearly every day. From first-hand experience, many of these events have implemented ZERO of the safety standards and protocols that businesses and schools have adopted for their plans of return. The non-school world generally has plowed ahead this summer with few-to-no rules, regulations, enforcement, oversight and accountability to anyone. If kids are going to be playing sports, our member schools are telling us that activity needs to be in the safest environment possible – which is with professional educators and trained coaches in our school sports world.
Schools are quick to point out that kids have been conditioning and training with school coaches in school-sponsored workouts most of the summer. We believe that the absence of virus outbreaks among our 749 high schools’ summer activities, involving thousands of kids, has been because schools have been following the return-to-activity plans. Districts have told us they can continue doing what they’ve been doing safely since June by following all COVID guidance and regulations we have put in place with government’s leadership and partnership.
Schools starting the year virtually are telling us they will use the lessons learned from the start of sports for when students return to campus later in the fall. School administrators have shared this view privately as this has become a highly-charged topic among various groups within our school communities. Sports allow schools to bring students back to campus in small, consistent and defined groups with the same adults working with those students each day. In school sports, there is little mixing of students from one sport with those students in another – making it much easier to monitor, track and trace kids when needed than if all students were in the buildings, hallways and classrooms all day. We hear from administrators that valuable lessons can be learned with athletics in August and September for a successful school start-up with students back on campus in October.
All of us share the fundamental belief that we must protect the health and safety of individuals first. This doesn’t include only COVID prevention measures, but also the mental health of teenage students and adults as well. In districts that are starting the school year online, they see athletics being the one shred of normalcy students, and staff members who choose to coach, will have during the fall. It’s a chance to safely interact with peers and get needed physical activity that hasn’t been happening for some kids since March. Health and safety has to include all facets of the individual, and more research is being shared each day about how mental health is becoming a critical issue. For many at-risk kids, sports is the one motivating factor to keep them in school and progressing toward graduation. Given the challenges of all online education for these at-risk kids, sports and the daily routine they bring perhaps would be more important for this group of students than ever before.
With no school sports, the affluent communities and families can navigate online learning during the day and then afford the non-school athletic opportunities that kids and families in less-affluent areas simply cannot. In many communities, school sports can provide opportunities and open doors that would not appear if kids become priced-out from participating and competing.
The past five months have been the most abnormal in a century. School sports being the one pathway back to school for students in our state – the one norm for this fall – run by professional educators who put kids first, would be an incredible boost to the physical and mental health of all of us. We believe that school sports can be done safely and smartly, and the MHSAA has developed plans that do just that. While the optics of sports taking place while waiting for in-person education is not what any of us prefer, we believe we must react to these abnormal times by thinking differently and looking at these unique times through a unique lens.
Trying to find one normal for our kids in these abnormal school days might just be the best thing we can do.
MHSAA Winter Sports Underway with 65,000 Athletes Beginning Competition
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
December 5, 2023
With the first girls basketball games, wrestling matches and ski races joining the event schedule this week, an estimated 65,000 athletes will be competing across the 13 sports for which the Michigan High School Athletic Association sponsors postseason tournaments.
Girls basketball tipped off Monday, Dec. 4, and the first boys and girls wrestling meets may take place Wednesday, Dec. 6. The first girls and boys ski races may begin Saturday, Dec. 9, when they will join competition already underway in boys basketball, girls and boys bowling, girls competitive cheer, girls gymnastics, boys ice hockey, Upper Peninsula girls swimming & diving, and boys swimming & diving across both peninsulas.
The MHSAA winter schedule concludes this 2023-24 school year with the Girls Basketball Finals on March 23. This will be the first time since 2018-19 that the girls basketball tournament will finish the winter season, a switch made necessary by the start of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament March 22-23 and the possibility Michigan State University could host first-round games at the Breslin Center, where the MHSAA plays both its girls and boys basketball Semifinals and Finals.
Three more sports will incorporate changes this season related to MHSAA Tournament format or qualification.
For girls and boys bowling, Regionals will be conducted at eight sites – instead of the previous six – with each site qualifying to Finals its top two team finishers and the top seven singles for both girls and boys competitions. For the Team Bowling Finals, match play has been switched to a head-to-head, best-of-five Baker game format, whereas previously the format included regular games rolled by individual bowlers.
In girls gymnastics, an addition to criteria is expected to classify gymnasts more accurately as Division 1 (most skilled/experienced) or Division 2 for MHSAA Tournament individual competition. Athletes who have previously competed in a non-school event at either the Sapphire or Diamond Xcel levels would be required to compete at the Division 1 level for MHSAA postseason competition. These designations were added to other criteria used to determine an individual competitor’s division.
A change that led to much larger event fields at the Lower Peninsula Girls Swimming & Diving Finals this fall is expected to produce the same at the LP Boys Swimming & Diving Finals this winter. Beginning this season, qualifying times have been determined based on the past five years of MHSAA race data, but also accounting for past numbers of qualifiers in each swim race – which should, as with the girls, allow for more boys to advance to the Finals in events where fields have not been full over the previous five seasons.
Additionally, the Competitive Cheer Finals will return to its traditional Friday-Saturday schedule, March 1-2 at McGuirk Arena at Central Michigan University, with Division 1 on Friday and Divisions 2-4 on Saturday.
This regular season, wrestlers have two more opportunities to compete. Teams are allowed two more dual meets (between two teams only, not to be converted into three or four-team meets), bringing the total allowed days of competition to 16 with no more than eight of those allowed for tournament-type events where a wrestler competes more than twice.
At those tournament-type events, wrestlers may now compete in up to six matches on one day of competition (as opposed to the previous five matches per day) – but an athlete may not wrestle in more than 10 matches over two consecutive days.
An adjustment to the awarding of free throws in basketball is likely to be the most noticeable in-game change for any winter sport this season. One-and-one free throws have been eliminated, and fouls no longer will be totaled per half. Instead, fouls are totaled and reset every quarter, and two free throws are awarded with the fifth foul of each quarter.
The 2023-24 Winter campaign culminates with postseason tournaments, as the championship schedule begins with the Upper Peninsula Girls & Boys Swimming & Diving Finals on Feb. 17 and wraps up with the Girls Basketball Finals on March 23. Here is a complete list of winter tournament dates:
Boys Basketball
Districts – Feb. 26, 28, March 1
Regionals – March 5, 7
Quarterfinals – March 12
Semifinals – March 14-15
Finals – March 16
Girls Basketball
Districts – March 4, 6, 8
Regionals – March 11, 13
Quarterfinals – March 19
Semifinals – March 21-22
Finals – March 23
Bowling
Regionals – Feb. 23-24
Finals – March 1-2
Competitive Cheer
Districts – Feb. 16-17
Regionals – Feb. 24
Finals – March 1-2
Gymnastics
Regionals – March 2
Finals – March 8-9
Ice Hockey
Regionals – Feb. 19-28
Quarterfinals – March 2
Semifinals – March 7-8
Finals – March 9
Skiing
Regionals – Feb. 12-16
Finals – Feb. 26
Swimming & Diving
Upper Peninsula Girls/Boys Finals – Feb. 17
Lower Peninsula Boys Diving Regionals – Feb. 29
Lower Peninsula Boys Finals – March 8-9
Wrestling – Team
Districts – Feb. 7-8
Regionals – Feb. 14
Finals – Feb. 23-24
Wrestling – Individual
Districts – Feb. 10
Boys Regionals – Feb. 17
Girls Regionals – Feb. 18
Finals – March 1-2
The MHSAA is a private, not-for-profit corporation of voluntary membership by more than 1,500 public and private senior high schools and junior high/middle schools which exists to develop common rules for athletic eligibility and competition. No government funds or tax dollars support the MHSAA, which was the first such association nationally to not accept membership dues or tournament entry fees from schools. Member schools which enforce these rules are permitted to participate in MHSAA tournaments, which attract more than 1.4 million spectators each year.