Legacy Speaks for Allen's Service
January 31, 2014
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Randy Allen was a face seen and a voice heard by thousands during the first two decades of his career in athletics, when he worked as a TV sports anchor and radio play-by-play personality.
But it’s fair to assume his son Dean has watched his dad at work more than anyone over the latter’s most recent 20-plus years serving high school athletic associations, including the last 13 as an assistant director at the MHSAA.
Dean Allen, now an assistant athletic director at Pontiac Notre Dame Prep, remembers many trophy presentations over the years and how his dad would step back and make sure the tournament manager or athletic director was the one handing the hardware to those who deserved the spotlight.
Randy Allen embraced a behind-the-scenes role after joining the high school association side in 1992. And as he retired from the MHSAA on Friday, it was no doubt the athletic directors, officials and coaches who worked with him behind the scenes over the last 13 years who most appreciated his many contributions to making his seasons run smoothly.
“The biggest smile you’d see on him was when the tournament was over and the kids were out there tackling each other, the excitement, the smiles on their faces when they get their medals and raise the trophy,” Dean Allen said. “For him, that’s most worth it. To see it run well, and when it’s over, seeing the kids and the community and parents and coaches, celebrating the successes they’ve had. Seeing the smiles on kids’ faces is really what it’s all about.”
Randy Allen’s name surely isn’t as recognizable to sports fans in Michigan as it was during the 1970s and 80s in Wisconsin.
That was by design.
Allen set that tone almost immediately at his first meeting as a member of the MHSAA staff – during the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association annual summer retreat.
“I remember telling them how glad I was to be here, and how much I looked forward to serving the membership. I just felt that was our main focus here, was to serve schools,” Allen said. “I’ve kept that thought in mind day in and day out.”
Allen knew only a handful of Michiganders when he joined the MHSAA staff. But he knew the job – and was ready for the challenges of fulfilling an aspiration while gaining knowledge of his new home on the fly.
His roots in high school athletics already dug deep.
Allen officiated baseball and softball for 25 years and also some of both at the college level. He also worked as a TV sports anchor at multiple stations near Madison, Wis., for 15 years while radio broadcasting high school football, basketball, baseball and hockey games on three networks and University of Wisconsin hockey games during the era of legendary coach Bob Johnson.
Allen went on to work in various other media roles as a producer, director and station manager, and broadcasted and produced Wisconsin high school tournament games – which led in part to his joining the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association staff as communications director in 1992.
In 2000, Allen became a seven-state regional director for iHigh.com. But an opportunity at the MHSAA two years later allowed him to pursue a goal going back to his days at the WIAA.
“I had always hoped I would get a chance to manage a sport in a state association,” Allen said. “When I came here, I went to heaven. I got to manage sports, and they were sports I knew like the back of my hand.”
Allen joined the MHSAA staff as assistant director in charge of baseball, softball, hockey and team wrestling. But that was just a start; Allen later traded in baseball and team wrestling for golf and played a leading role in the addition of bowling, which he has directed since its inception.
Allen also coordinated the junior high/middle school and MHSAA awards committees and served as staff liaison to the MIAAA, among other duties.
“Randy has been a perfect fit for his major sport responsibilities here,” MHSAA executive director Jack Roberts said. “He is a very hard worker, and he is very well liked by the coaches, officials and administrators he has served so well.”
It was during a trip to visit potential Hockey Finals sites roughly a decade ago that Roberts first brought up to Allen the possibility of bowling becoming the next MHSAA tournament addition – and the question of who on staff could run it. Roberts asked if Allen had experience in the sport.
Allen had an uncle in the bowling business and had been rolling since he was 4. “Bowling has been in my DNA since I was (a child),” Allen said. “I speak their language.”
He directed the MHSAA’s first Bowling Finals in 2004. Participation in the sport has continued to grow to 6,700 students in 2012-13.
Bowling also played a big part in making Allen something of an ambassador for the MHSAA, in that he reached out to an entire group of sports people who had not been in MHSAA conversations before.
He played a similar key role in serving others who also often work under the radar, providing training to the athletic department secretaries and middle school athletic directors during MIAAA conferences. And his experience in multiple states allowed him to provide a valuable and varied perspective.
“He always was willing to talk to someone – answer an MHSAA rules or regulation question, provide a quick fix to a school/league issue, give an anecdote to make a bad day better with a smile,” said Bear Lake athletic director Karen Leinaar, who also serves on the MHSAA Representative Council and is assistant to the executive director of the MIAAA. “And he always was a welcoming voice on the phone. No question, no person was ever a bother. He always took time and provided some type of direction.”
He’ll continue to do so.
Allen will begin Monday as commissioner of the Capital Area Activities Conference, the 27-school league that includes most of the biggest in the Lansing and Jackson areas.
“My entire life has been school sports. Not college sports, not professional sports. School sports,” Allen said. “It was my passion, what I was comfortable with as an official; I coached a little bit, I played a little bit (and) as a broadcaster.”
PHOTO: Retired MHSAA assistant director Randy Allen (left), with official Dan Dicristofaro, managed his final Hockey Finals in 2013.
2020-21 Classifications Announced
April 20, 2020
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Classifications for MHSAA elections and postseason tournaments for the 2020-21 school year have been announced – including football divisions determined preseason for the first time since 1998 – and with enrollment breaks for postseason tournaments posted to each sport’s page on the MHSAA Website.
Classifications for the upcoming school year are based on a second semester count date, which for MHSAA purposes was Feb. 12. The enrollment figure submitted for athletic classification purposes may be different from the count submitted for school aid purposes, as it does not include students ineligible for athletic competition because they reached their 19th birthday prior to September 1 of the current school year and will not include alternative education students if none are allowed athletic eligibility by the local school district.
All sports’ tournaments are conducted with schools assigned to equal or nearly equal divisions, with lines dependent on how many schools participate in those respective sports.
For 2020-21, there are 752 tournament-qualified member schools. Schools recently were notified of their classification, and sport-by-sport divisions were posted to the MHSAA Website today (April 20). MHSAA Executive Director Mark Uyl said schools may not subsequently lower their enrollment figure. However, if revised enrollment figures are higher and indicate that a school should be playing in a higher division, that school would be moved up.
Football will undergo a significant classification change for the 2020 season, with teams in both 11 and 8-player assigned their divisions before the season for the first time since 1998; from 1999-2019, divisions for the 256-team 11-player field (and later the 8-player tournament) were determined after the regular season. A hard enrollment limit also will take effect this fall for teams to be eligible for the 8-player tournament – all schools with 215 or fewer students are eligible for the 8-player playoffs if they play that format during the regular season.
Two 11-player football champions will play in different divisions in 2020 than those they won a year ago. Grand Rapids Catholic Central will move to Division 5 after winning the Division 4 championship last season, while reigning Division 6 champion Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central will play in Division 7 this upcoming season. Also, 2019 Division 2 runner-up Detroit Martin Luther King will play in Division 3 this fall. In 8-player football, the reigning champions will trade divisions – 2019 Division 1 winner Colon moving into Division 2, and Division 2 champ Pickford moving into Division 1 for this fall.
A number of 2019-20 champions will be playing in different divisions in 2020-21. Grand Rapids Forest Hills Northern’s boys soccer team will move into Division 1 after winning the Division 2 title in 2019. The East Grand Rapids girls swimming & diving team will move back into Lower Peninsula Division 2 – which it won in 2017 – after earning the last two championships in Division 3. Bridgman’s girls cross country team will move into Lower Peninsula Division 3 after winning Division 4 last fall, and Grass Lake’s boys bowling team will move into Division 3 after winning the Division 4 title this winter. The Allegan boys tennis team will move into Lower Peninsula Division 3 after sharing the Division 4 title in the fall, while the Ishpeming Westwood girls tennis team will move into Upper Peninsula Division 1 after winning the Division 2 title the last four seasons. (NOTE: MHSAA Finals in five Winter sports and all Spring sports were canceled in 2019-20 due to COVID-19.)
Visit the respective sport pages on the MHSAA Website to review the divisional alignments for all MHSAA-sponsored tournament sports.
Traditional classes (A, B, C, D) – formerly used to establish tournament classifications – are used only for MHSAA elections. To determine traditional classifications, after all counts are submitted, tournament-qualified member schools are ranked according to enrollment and then split as closely into quarters as possible. For 2020-21, there are 188 member schools in each class.
Effective with the 2020-21 school year, schools with 831 or more students are in Class A. The enrollment limits for Class B are 392-830, Class C is 182-391, and schools with enrollments of 181 and fewer are Class D. The break between Classes A and B decreased 32 students from 2019-20, the break between Classes B and C decreased three students, and the break between Classes C and D is seven students fewer than the 2019-20 school year.
The new classification breaks will see 18 schools move up in Class for 2020-21 while 15 schools will move down:
Moving Up from Class B to Class A
Fowlerville
Harper Woods
Ionia
Moving Down from Class A to Class B
Battle Creek Harper Creek
Eastpointe
Moving Up from Class C to Class B
Blissfield
Canton Prep
Dearborn Riverside Academy West
Detroit Pershing
Detroit Edison
Ecorse
Moving Down from Class B to Class C
Adrian Madison
Detroit Jalen Rose Leadership Academy
Grand Rapids Wellspring Prep
Menominee
Otisville-LakeVille Memorial
Perry
Pinconning
Moving Up from Class D to Class C
Birmingham Roeper
Detroit Academy of the Americas
Detroit Southeastern
Detroit The School at Marygrove
Eau Claire
Genesee
New Buffalo
Painesdale Jeffers
Moving up from Class D to Class B
Detroit Cornerstone Lincoln King Academy
Moving Down from Class C to Class D
Benton Harbor Countryside Academy
Deckerville
Detroit Douglass
Detroit Public Safety Academy
Indian River Inland Lakes
Mayville
New Postseason Eligible Tournament Schools in 2020-21
Bay City Academy
Boyne City Concord Academy
Detroit Cornerstone Lincoln King Academy
Lansing Martin Luther
Detroit Collegiate
Redford Westfield Prep
Enrollment Breaks by Classes – 2020-21
(Number of schools in parentheses)
Class A: 831 and above (188 schools)
Class B: 392 – 830 (188)
Class C: 182 – 391 (188)
Class D: 181 and below (188)
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.