Welcome to the Second Half

January 27, 2012

More than 750 high schools are members of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. And every team in every community has a story.

“Second Half” is our place to tell them.

Combined with our parent site MHSAA.com, and our broadcast home MHSAA.tv, “Second Half” completes our picture of the best Michigan high school sports have to offer.

With MHSAA.com, “Second Half” is the home of a growing number of schedules, scores, league standings and tournament information for our sports – but also much more.  Now, we’ll look to provide visitors with the stories behind the scores.

You’ll find the report of a rare feat or the achievement that rallied the town. Behind-the-scenes looks at what we do at the MHSAA and what goes into 28 Finals tournaments each school year. We tell the inspiring tales of overcoming large obstacles, and the simple ones of lessons learned just by being a part of school sports. They’re the kind of stories all of us can relate to and enjoy, no matter where we live and which teams we support.

Michigan is the 10th-largest state in the nation. There are more than 58,000 square miles of land, and by vehicle it’s 625 miles from Calumet High School near the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula to Bedford High on the southeastern border with Ohio. Nearly 10 million people live, work and play here. MHSAA tournament events alone attract 1.6 million spectators each year.

With “Second Half”, we aim to make our state a little smaller.

If you like something we’re doing, let us know. If you’d like to see something else, I’d love to hear about it. My contact information is at the right of this screen, and my e-mail address is [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you – and telling the entire state about the great things you’re doing.

--Geoff Kimmerly

Gwinn Nickname Featured by NFHS

September 24, 2020

By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor

It can be said that Gwinn is a model town when it comes to choosing a unique high school nickname.

The small Upper Peninsula community is the only one in Michigan with the school nickname Modeltowners, inspired by its birth as an iron mining community just more than a century ago.

Gwinn’s nickname was detailed as part of an “Unusual Nicknames” feature in this month’s edition of “High School Today” published by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). The full report is below.