Highlight Reel: Division 1 Semifinals
November 25, 2014
The Clarkston football defeated East Kentwood 35-13 and Saline defeated Detroit Cass Tech 30-15 on Saturday in Division 1 football Semifinals. Click the headings below for highlights:
WOLVES STRIKE DOWN THE MIDDLE - Clarkston got two first-quarter TD passes from D.J. Zezula against East Kentwood. Here's the first, a 40-yard streak down the middle to Jacob Fisher.
EK CONNECTS ON FOURTH DOWN - A key play in East Kentwood's first drive for points against Clarkston was a fourth-down pass from Kyle Friberg to Bret Patton.
SALINE'S SLATTERY SCORES ON A PICK SIX - Early in the final period, Saline's Stephen Slattery picked off a Detroit Cass Tech pass and returned it eight yards for a score.
HALL FINALS VANCE - Detroit Cass Tech pulled close midway through the fourth quarter on this 8-yard pass from Rodney Hall to Demetric Vance.
Watch the entire Clarkston/East Kentwood game and order DVDs by Clicking Here and the Saline/Cass Tech game by Clicking Here.
Attending to Football
November 29, 2013
The interscholastic football season comes to an end this weekend with the MHSAA Finals at Ford Field, but the most talked about sport in high schools today will continue to make headlines for many months into the future.
Some of the headlines will introduce topics that are merely footnotes compared to what is really most important, that being the efforts to keep school-sponsored football the safest and sanest brand of football in America.
At the center of these efforts has been a task force appointed by the MHSAA to work throughout 2013 to advance these two objectives: “To promote the value of interscholastic football and to probe for ways to make the sport safer in Michigan.”
The tangible results of the task force’s four meetings are these:
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- A proposal to the MHSAA Representative Council to revise football practice policies to improve acclimatization of players and to reduce head trauma. The proposal goes to the Representative Council Dec. 6 for discussion, then to the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association and MHSAA Football Committee in January and to the MHSAA League/Conference meeting in February, before returning to the Representative Council for action on March 22.
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Three proposals to the NFHS Football Rules Committee to modify playing rules to promote player safety.
- A variety of print, online and broadcast promotions on behalf of the value of interscholastic football and its safety record and to encourage healthier out-of-season activities by students in all sports.
MHSAA research informs us that participation in 11- or 8-player football in member high schools this fall was down 3.0 percent compared to 2012, and down 7.63 percent since the 2008 season. The biggest reasons cited by those surveyed are, in declining order, safety issues, declining enrollment, athletes playing other school or non-school sports, cultural changes and pay-to-participate.
It is important to note that participation is not declining everywhere, not even everywhere where enrollments are down and participation fees are up. It is important to note also that some other sports are in much greater decline than football in terms of high school participation.
It is difficult for me to imagine my life without football as a part of it. It’s difficult to imagine schools and communities without football. I very much doubt that the absence of football would have improved my life or the schools and communities I’ve been a part of. It’s a sport that needs our attention, not its extinction.