Highlight Reel: Mona Shores/Caledonia
November 5, 2014
The Muskegon Mona Shores football team defeated Caledonia 42-14 on Saturday in a Division 2 District opener. Click the headings below for MHSAA.tv highlights and the final link to watch the game in full.
ROBERSON TAKES IT DOWN THE SIDELINE - Muskegon Mona Shores struck first in this Division 2 playoff game. Darece Roberson took a swing pass from Tyree Jackson down the near sideline for 52 yards.
CALEDONIA STRIKES BACK - Caledonia pulled to within a TD in the second quarter when quarterback Tanner Christian scored form eight yards out to make it 14-7 Mona Shores midway through the second period. The Sailors, however, scored four of the next five TDs.
BOMBS AWAY! SCHUITEMAN SCORES! - Muskegon Mona Shores increased its lead to 42-14 in the third quarter when Jackson hits Matt Schuiteman in stride for a 39-yard score. The Sailors went on to post a 49-14 victory over Caledonia in this Division 2 Pre-District game.
Watch the entire game and order DVDs by Clicking Here.
Football Scheduling
December 23, 2014
The major complaint about the MHSAA Football Playoffs is not that too few teams qualify or too many, or that a five-week playoff is too long or should become six weeks, or that some worthy teams miss out while some less worthy teams get in. No; most people find a five-week, 11-player tournament after a nine-game regular season is the best that our late start to fall classes and our early start to winter weather will allow us in Michigan.
Many people appreciate being able to complete our 14-week season in the warmth of Ford Field on the Friday and Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. Most people think that nearly 45 percent of 11-player schools is a sufficient tournament field. Many people like the excitement that the six-win threshold creates for teams that had been eliminated earlier from league championships.
The most serious and legitimate complaint about the season-ending playoffs is the stress it has placed on conferences and the struggles many schools have in building nine-game regular-season schedules. Some critics want to mess with the Football Playoffs because of the mess they believe it makes for regular-season schedulers.
Having the MHSAA provide every school a nine-game regular season schedule of the most nearby teams of the most nearly equal enrollments would shift scheduling headaches from the local level to the MHSAA.
I’m not suggesting that this solution to local problems doesn’t create new, large headaches for the MHSAA. But in fact, that is the tradition of school sports: when an issue is large enough in scope and common enough among member schools, the state high school association is asked to be the problem-solver. That’s how we got transfer rules, defined sports seasons and competitive cheer tournaments, for example. Just about every policy and procedure and program of the MHSAA arises from a common local problem looking for a statewide solution.
The 2014 Update Meeting Opinion Poll indicates that 70 percent of responding administrators do not favor the solution of the MHSAA making all schools’ regular-season varsity football schedules. Maybe the question should be narrowed to having the MHSAA complete member schools’ non-conference scheduling.
Meanwhile, we will keep watching as high school associations in other states move to statewide scheduling. For if scheduling is the problem, then scheduling itself needs to be the focus of the solution.