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New Football Practice Policies

March 25, 2014

Last Friday, the MHSAA Representative Council adopted the proposals of the Football Task Force revising practice policies that take effect this fall, helping Michigan schools keep pace with an advancing standard of care – a standard that is reducing head-to-head contact in football practice on every level and in every league.

Michigan’s Football Task Force proposal – the result of four meetings during 2013 and much research and work between them – reduces collision practices to one a day before the first game and to two per week after the first game.

A collision practice is one in which there is live, game-speed, player-vs-player contact in pads (not walk-throughs) involving any number of players. This includes practices with scrimmages, drills and simulation where action is live, game-speed, player-vs-player.

A non-collision practice may include players in protective gear. Blocking and tackling technique may be taught and practiced. However, full-speed contact is limited to players versus pads, shields, sleds or dummies.

The new policies also increase the acclimatization period at the start of fall practice from three days to four days – helmets only permitted on the first two days, helmets and shoulder pads only on the third and fourth days.

Click this link for the Complete policy and FAQs.

Moment: Eaglets Clinch on Late TD Catch

September 24, 2020

By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor

More than three months had passed since the last time Ky’ren Cunningham had lined up as a receiver for Orchard Lake St. Mary’s. 

But with one last desperate chance to win the Division 3 championship on the line during the 2016 Final, the Eaglets’ running back moved back into unfamiliar territory. 

Cunningham even switched spots in the alignment with teammate Clay Antishin, moving outside as St. Mary’s lined up from the Muskegon 18-yard line trailing 28-23 with 10 seconds to play. 

But Cunningham was in the right spot all along. 

Six seconds later he split a pair of defenders in the Ford Field end zone and hauled in Caden Prieskorn’s pass to give the Eaglets a 29-28 lead it wouldn’t relinquish.

“I play running back,” said Cunningham, a junior at the time. “It was one-on-one and the safety didn’t come over the top. Caden just threw it. He just made the read.

“My body felt so weak (when I caught it). I don’t remember much.”

Longtime Detroit sportswriter Tom Markowski described the play’s setup this way in his report for Second Half:

Make no mistake. This was desperation, and it was a makeshift play. Cunningham is a starting running back. The last time he lined up as a receiver was in the first game this season against Macomb Dakota. Coach George Porritt ditched that plan afterward. Cunningham would stay in the backfield.

“It was a pistol right,” Prieskorn said after the game. “All we knew was we were going to have man-on-man coverage.”

 St. Mary’s had entered the playoffs 5-4, running its record to 10-4 with the victory. The championship finished a string of three straight Division 3 titles for the Eaglets.



PHOTO: Orchard Lake St. Mary’s Ky’ren Cunningham rolls up with the ball tucked after scoring the game-winning touchdown in his team’s 2016 Division 3 championship victory over Muskegon.