Lessons Learned Keep Paying Off
February 8, 2013
By Terri Finch Hamilton
Reprinted with permission of CMUChippewas.com
Gina Mazzolini's parents taught her to be a good person first, a good student second, and a good athlete after that. But Mazzolini says her involvement in sports at CMU taught her things that went way beyond the classroom.
"At Central, I learned women are just as good as men -- or better," says Mazzolini, assistant director at the Michigan High School Athletic Association. "I learned that if we put our minds to it, we can do anything."
A star athlete in volleyball and basketball at CMU from 1974 to 1978, Mazzolini says college sports helped her soar after the limitations for girls in high school sports in the early 1970s.
"In high school, women were always taking the back seat to men," says Mazzolini, 57. "I didn't see women in leadership positions in high school. Girls couldn't use the weight room -- we had to sneak in, then we'd get kicked out. They'd look at me and say, 'Why would you want to lift weights?'
"When the guys were done with the gym, then we could use it."
As an athlete at St. Johns High School, Mazzolini was just starting to compete competitively, she says. She won the school's first ever female athlete of the year award.
"Then I went to Central Michigan, and my teammates were all the best kids from their high school teams. Suddenly, everybody was good. And everybody we played against was good."
It was eye opening, she says.
"You learn a lot about yourself," she says. "If you can survive a practice, if you can survive playing Michigan State, you get confidence. I realized I was good. I learned how to be competitive, in a good way."
In basketball, she led the Chippewas in scoring and rebounding three straight seasons - averaging in double figures in both categories. After graduating from CMU, Mazzolini went on to teach and coach at the high school and college levels. She was inducted into the CMU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1992.
A few years later, Mazzolini received the 2009-10 Women In Sports Leadership Award by the Representative Council of the MHSAA.
So much of what she learned on the college volleyball and basketball courts prepared her for later success, Mazzolini says.
"In athletics, you can't worry about what just happened," she says. "You control your emotions, you take a deep breath, you move forward."
Good advice on any day, she says.
"You learn that you don't always win, and you learn to take defeat gracefully," she says. "Later, in your business life, you're not going to win everything, either. Sports teaches you how to deal with setbacks, how to work hard and rearrange your goals so that you do better next time.
"You learn if you work together, you can achieve amazing things."
CMUChippewas.com is running a series of stories to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Title IX legislation. Click to see more of the series.
Michigan Again 7th for Participation
August 19, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
For the seventh straight year, Michigan ranked seventh nationally in high school sports participation, according to statistics for the 2014-15 school year released recently by the National Federation of State High School Associations.
That level of participation continued to best Michigan’s national ranking for total number of residents of high school age, which remained ninth for the third consecutive year, and Michigan also ranked ninth or higher in participation in 25 of 28 sports in which the Michigan High School Athletic Association conducts a postseason tournament.
Michigan’s participation ranking was based on a number of 295,660, with 124,633 girls and 171,027 boys taking part, and included sports in which the MHSAA does not conduct postseason tournaments. The totals count students once for each sport in which he or she participates, meaning students who are multiple-sport athletes are counted more than once.
The state’s girls participation remained seventh nationally for the fourth consecutive year, while the boys participation figure continued to rank sixth. According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau figures from 2014, Michigan ranks ninth in both females and males ages 14 through 17.
Two sports improved in national ranking this school year, while four sports dropped one or two positions. However, 13 sports bested the state’s overall national participation ranking of seventh, placing sixth or higher on their respective lists.
Michigan girls volleyball improved from fifth to fourth in the national participation ranking, and girls track and field from eighth to seventh. The four sports that ranked lower for 2014-15 were boys bowling falling from second to third, girls cross country from fifth to seventh, girls swimming and diving from ninth to 10th and wrestling from seventh to eighth.
The 11 other Michigan sports that ranked sixth or higher repeated their rankings from a year ago: football (11 and 8-player combined) at sixth, boys basketball at sixth, boys golf at sixth, boys ice hockey fourth, boys skiing fourth, boys tennis fifth, girls bowling fourth, girls competitive cheer fifth, girls golf sixth, girls skiing fourth and girls tennis also remaining fourth on its national participation list.
The other Michigan sports that equaled their 2013-14 national ranking were girls basketball at seventh, gymnastics at 12th, girls lacrosse at 13th, girls soccer at ninth, softball at seventh, baseball at seventh, boys cross country also seventh, boys lacrosse eighth, boys soccer ninth, boys swimming and diving ninth and boys track and field seventh on its list.
National participation in high school sports in 2013-14 set a record for the 26th consecutive year with 7,807,047 participants – an increase of 11,389 from the year before. Girls participation also set a record for the 26th straight year, increasing this time 20,071 participants to 3,287,735 total. Boys participation fell 8,682 participants from 2013-14, but still totaled 4,519,312 after passing 4.5 million for the first time a year ago.
Boys soccer saw the largest gain nationally with an additional 15,150 participants, and that sport ranked fifth among boys sports behind 11-player football, outdoor track and field, basketball and baseball. Football (1,083,617) remained the most-played high school sport overall. Track and field remained the most popular girls sport with 478,726 participants, with volleyball moving ahead of basketball for the second spot in the girls rankings. Soccer and softball followed at fourth and fifth, respectively, on the girls sports list.