Rep Council Wrap-Up: Spring 2012
June 28, 2012
In addition to authorizing a vote of its membership to allow for waiver of its maximum age rule under certain circumstances, the Representative Council of the Michigan High School Athletic Association also approved a variety of regulations and sports activities policies during its annual Spring Meeting, May 6-7, in Gaylord.
The Spring meeting of the 19-member legislative body of the Association’s over 1,500 member schools is generally the busiest of its three sessions each year. The Council considered 33 committee proposals and also dealt with a variety of eligibility rule, post-season tournament and operational issues.
A couple of the most visible changes will take place in ice hockey beginning with the 2012-13 school year, which will see longer games in the MHSAA post-season tournament and the addition of a regular-season contest. Tournament games will now have 17 minute periods, something which had been allowed by local adoption for regular season games previously. The regular season game limit was also raised, as the Representative Council approved a Hockey Committee recommendation to reduce the number of scrimmages to one in exchange for the addition of a 25th contest.
Here is a summary of other actions taken at the Spring Representative Council Meeting which will take effect during the 2012-13 school year:
Handbook/Administrative Matters
- By prior mutual consent of competing teams, schools may agree to vary the color of game uniforms to commemorate events or causes important to those schools, provided all other uniform specifications are followed. The wearing of pink and camouflage uniforms, for example, to show support for breast cancer awareness or members of our armed forces wounded in action, among others, have become popular; but previously required advanced approval from the MHSAA.
- The Council approved a revision of the sections of the MHSAA Handbook addressing the sanctioning of meets conducted by non-school organizations or individuals and large interstate meets. They now reflect the requirements of the National Federation of State High School Associations, as well as previously unstated policies and procedures of the MHSAA.
- In junior high/middle school matters, the Council revised the Handbook so that schools may decide to allow student-athletes in the 7th and 8th grades to be members of an interscholastic team in more than one sport at the same time; and to allow a student who will exceed the maximum age limit as a 7th or 8th grader to apply for “Eligibility Advancement” while in 6th grade to begin a maximum of two years of junior high/middle school participation.
Sports Matters
- Responding to situations where celebrations by student-athletes and spectators have resulted in property damage at MHSAA post-season tournaments, the Council approved the following language for inclusion in participating team and tournament managers materials addressing team and spectator conduct.
- During contests, officials will penalize under applicable sportsmanship or playing rules those student-athletes or coaches who leave the field of play and contact or approach spectator areas for celebration.
- Each tournament manager or the MHSAA Staff may determine an acceptable number of crowd supervisors necessary for each school, dependent on the situation, including inappropriate celebrations and other crowd control issues.
- The cost for repair of replacement to facilities damaged as a result of participant and/or spectator conduct shall be paid by the school involved directly to the host facility within 30 days of the bill being submitted to the school. MHSAA reimbursement or revenue sharing will be withheld until paid by the offending school. Future tournament hosting privileges or school reimbursements to offending schools may be withheld if payment is not made.
- In Golf, the Council approved a committee recommendation to allow coaching contact for one designated coach during MHSAA tournament competition on all areas of the course, except when players reach the green. The school designated coach must be identified and approved by the school prior to the MHSAA tournament. Coaching privileges may not be transferred to persons not approved and designated by school administration. A committee recommendation to exempt one qualifying round of the Michigan Amateur Tournament from the limited team membership rule beginning in 2013, replacing the exemption approved in 2010 for the two U.S. Open qualifying stages, was adopted.
- In Boys Lacrosse, a committee recommendation to limit entry in the MHSAA post-season tournament beginning in 2013 to those schools that play no fewer than 50 percent of their regular season schedule against other MHSAA member school teams was approved.
- In Soccer, the Council did not adopt a National Federation rule adoption that eliminates a substitution for a player who receives a second yellow card. This action affects the 2012-13 school year only during which the Soccer Committee will consider this rule change further and its impact on Michigan’s ten-minute sit-out rule following a yellow card.
- A second day of weigh-ins will take place at the MHSAA Team Wrestling Finals, which will be independent of the previous day’s weigh-in, and all competitors would be given a one-pound growth allowance for consecutive days of weigh-in. The Council also approved a Wrestling Committee recommendation to permit wrestling practice to begin two Mondays before Thanksgiving. The first day of competition does not change.
The Council also reviewed reports on membership, with 763 senior high schools and 768 junior high/middle schools in 2011-12; eligibility advancement applications, which totaled nine for the year; the use of Educational Transfer Forms, which was stable this year; school violations, which declined significantly; attendance at athletic director and coaches in-service workshops; officials’ registrations, topping the 12,000 mark again; rules meeting attendance; and officials reports submitted for the past three sports seasons. The Association’s $9.8 million budget for the 2012-13 school year was also approved.
The Representative Council is the 19-member legislative body of the MHSAA. All but five members are elected by member schools. Four members are appointed by the Council to facilitate representation of females and minorities; and the 19th position is occupied by the Superintendent of Public Instruction or designee.
2023 Forsythe Award Celebrates Leinaar's 40 Years Dedicated to School Sports
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
March 8, 2023
Few people in Michigan have had a longer-lasting influence on the rules and policies of educational athletics than Frankfort’s Karen Leinaar, who has served in several roles locally, statewide and nationally over more than 40 years contributing to the school sports community.
Thank you, Bill Baker.
The longtime teacher, coach, principal and superintendent during a career that stretched across multiple schools – including Leinaar’s growing up, Delton Kellogg – made an impression on the standout multi-sport athlete before she graduated from high school in 1977. Baker’s philosophy and work led Leinaar to study education at Michigan State University and then brought her back as Delton’s athletic director to begin four decades of making the same impact on children in her hometown and eventually in hometowns all over Michigan and beyond.
Baker died in 2009, but not before continuing to mentor Leinaar through many good times and tough ones.
“The man had two daughters that I grew up with, his wife was a teacher, and he demonstrated to all of us – he never missed an event – that we were important to him. That even though we weren’t his kids, we were his kids and athletics was a way to help kids become better people – and for some kids it was the only thing that they had positive in their life,” Leinaar said. “And he made it known just to that individual kid how important their participation was and their involvement, and how that helped them become the person that they were.
“That to me was such an example of how to help people be good people, that I just took that role on.”
It’s a role in which she continues to serve. Leinaar began her career as an athletic administrator in 1982, and as the interim athletic director currently at Frankfort High School is serving her fifth district in that position. Since June 2019, she also has served as executive director of the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (MIAAA), the professional organization for school sports administrators in the state with a membership of nearly 700.
To recognize that longtime and continuing impact, Leinaar has been named the 2023 honoree for the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s Charles E. Forsythe Award.
The annual award is in its 46th year and named after former MHSAA Executive Director Charles E. Forsythe, the Association's first full-time and longest-serving chief executive. Forsythe Award recipients are selected each year by the MHSAA Representative Council, based on an individual's outstanding contributions to the interscholastic athletics community.
Leinaar also served 22 years on the MHSAA’s Representative Council and a four-year term from 2009-13 on the Board of Directors for the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), and just last week was named to the 2023 class of the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA) Hall of Fame.
“It is impossible even to estimate the number of students, coaches, administrators and others who have been affected by the work Karen Leinaar has done to make school sports the best they can be – not only in her communities, but across Michigan and throughout the country,” MHSAA Executive Director Mark Uyl said. “There are few who have equaled her dedication and her support and promotion of the ideals of school-based sports. She has always placed an emphasis on being in the room, on the field or at the arena, actively participating in her leadership roles, and our programs are better for it.”
Leinaar first served as athletic director at Delton Kellogg for nearly 17 years, from March 1982 through October 1998. She spent three years at Gaylord, then 8½ at Benzie Central before taking over at Bear Lake in November 2010 and spending the next decade organizing athletic programs for students in grades 5-12 before retiring in January 2021. She came out of retirement to return to the athletic director’s chair this past fall as interim AD at Frankfort. She has completed nearly four years as MIAAA executive director, moving into that position after previously serving nine years as an assistant to the executive.
Leinaar began her service on the Representative Council in Fall 1999 and completed her last term as a statewide at-large representative at the Fall 2021 meeting.
She has been honored several times for her contributions. She received the MHSAA’s Women In Sports Leadership Award in 1998, a Citation from the NFHS in 2000, and she was named MIAAA Athletic Director of the Year in 2001. She received an MHSAA’s Allen W. Bush Award in 2014 – recognition given for work done generally behind the scenes and with little attention.
“This is the top of the mountain, per se. This one does mean so much,” Leinaar said of the Forsythe Award. “The names that are associated with this over the years, I never thought I’d be put in that group.”
Leinaar remains a continuous source of support at a multitude of MHSAA championship events, and during her time on Council was one of the most frequent representatives handing out trophies and medals to champions and runners-up at Finals events. She began while athletic director at Delton Kellogg hosting the MHSAA Volleyball Finals in Class B and Class C and continues to assist with those championships now played at Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek.
She also hosted Competitive Cheer Finals at Delton Kellogg in 1996 and 1997, Ski Finals while at Gaylord, and many more championship events across the Lower Peninsula. She continues to assist at the MHSAA’s Lower Peninsula Cross Country and Track & Field Finals.
After attending Delton Kellogg High School, Leinaar earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education, health and recreation, with a minor in driver education, from MSU in 1982. She completed a master’s in athletic administration from Western Michigan University in 1994.
Leinaar has been a member for 40 years of both the MIAAA and NIAAA, and has served as chairperson of the MIAAA Annual Conference and awards chairperson for both the state and national bodies. She’s also served as chairperson of the MIAAA’s Exemplary Athletic Program.
Past recipients of the Charles E. Forsythe Award
1978 - Brick Fowler, Port Huron; Paul Smarks, Warren
1979 - Earl Messner, Reed City; Howard Beatty, Saginaw
1980 - Max Carey, Freesoil
1981 - Steven Sluka, Grand Haven; Samuel Madden, Detroit
1982 - Ernest Buckholz, Mt. Clemens; T. Arthur Treloar, Petoskey
1983 - Leroy Dues, Detroit; Richard Maher, Sturgis
1984 - William Hart, Marquette; Donald Stamats, Caro
1985 - John Cotton, Farmington; Robert James, Warren
1986 - William Robinson, Detroit; Irving Soderland, Norway
1987 - Jack Streidl, Plainwell; Wayne Hellenga, Decatur
1988 - Jack Johnson, Dearborn; Alan Williams, North Adams
1989 - Walter Bazylewicz, Berkley; Dennis Kiley, Jackson
1990 - Webster Morrison, Pickford; Herbert Quade, Benton Harbor
1991 - Clifford Buckmaster, Petoskey; Donald Domke, Northville
1992 - William Maskill, Kalamazoo; Thomas G. McShannock, Muskegon
1993 - Roy A. Allen Jr., Detroit; John Duncan, Cedarville
1994 - Kermit Ambrose, Royal Oak
1995 - Bob Perry, Lowell
1996 - Charles H. Jones, Royal Oak
1997 - Michael A. Foster, Richland; Robert G. Grimes, Battle Creek
1998 - Lofton C. Greene, River Rouge; Joseph J. Todey, Essexville
1999 - Bernie Larson, Battle Creek
2000 - Blake Hagman, Kalamazoo; Jerry Cvengros, Escanaba
2001 - Norm Johnson, Bangor; George Lovich, Canton
2002 - John Fundukian, Novi
2003 - Ken Semelsberger, Port Huron
2004 - Marco Marcet, Frankenmuth
2005 - Jim Feldkamp, Troy
2006 - Dan McShannock, Midland; Dail Prucka, Monroe
2007 - Keith Eldred, Williamston; Tom Hickman, Spring Lake
2008 - Jamie Gent, Haslett; William Newkirk, Sanford Meridian
2009 - Paul Ellinger, Cheboygan
2010 - Rudy Godefroidt, Hemlock; Mike Boyd, Waterford
2011 - Eric C. Federico, Trenton
2012 - Bill Mick, Midland
2013 - Jim Gilmore, Tecumseh; Dave Hutton, Grandville
2014 - Dan Flynn, Escanaba
2015 - Hugh Matson, Saginaw
2016 - Gary Hice, Petoskey; Gina Mazzolini, Lansing
2017 - Chuck Nurek, Rochester Hills
2018 - Gary Ellis, Allegan
2019 - Jim Derocher, Negaunee; Fredrick J. Smith, Stevensville
2020 - Michael Garvey, Lawton
2021 - Leroy Hackley Jr., Byron Center; Patti Tibaldi, Traverse City
2022 - Bruce Horsch, Houghton
PHOTOS (Top) Karen Leinaar, left, awards the 2022 Division 4 volleyball finalist trophy to Indian River Inland Lakes coach Nicole Moore. (Middle) Leinaar accepts the MHSAA's Women In Sports Leadership Award in 1998.