Watch Volleyball, Football LIVE
November 4, 2014
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
District and Regional Volleyball action will be featured over the next two weeks on MHSAA.tv, while Football Playoff coverage moves into its second round and will be available live via multiple online channels this weekend.
Coverage of Girls Volleyball includes District Quarterfinal/Semifinal Matches each evening for four straight. Football this weekend can be viewed Friday from Fox Sports Detroit and Saturday from MHSAA.tv.
Volleyball
Here’s the complete District schedule, with links to each game's page on the MHSAA.tv site (all coverage available with subscription):
Monday – Class C Quarterfinals at Hanover-Horton
East Jackson vs. Michigan Center, 5:30 p.m.
Napoleon vs. Vandercook Lake, 7 p.m.
Tuesday – Class C Semifinals at Calumet
Ironwood vs. L’Anse, 6 p.m.
Calumet vs. Hancock, 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday – Class B Semifinals at Frankenmuth
Frankenmuth vs. North Branch, 6 p.m.
Caro vs. Mt. Morris, 7:30 p.m.
Thursday – Class A Semifinals at Hudsonville
Jenison vs. Grandville/Holland West Ottawa winner, 5 p.m.
Hudsonville/Holland winner vs. Wyoming/Zeeland East winner, 7 p.m.
Regional Semifinal coverage takes place next Tuesday (Nov. 11) at two locations:
Class A at Mason
Okemos District winner vs. Dexter District winner, 5 p.m.
Holt District winner vs. Portage Central District winner, 7 p.m.
Class C at Morley-Stanwood
Shelby District winner vs. White Cloud District winner, 6 p.m.
Muskegon Western Michigan Christian District winner vs. Pewamo-Westphalia District winner, 8 p.m.
Football
It’s the fourth season for the popular PrepZone on FoxSportsDetroit.com, which will provide free live coverage of four Football Playoff games each week for the first four weekends of the tournament. Games to be covered this week are:
Division 1 – Lapeer at Clarkston
Division 4 – Saginaw Swan Valley at Lansing Sexton
Division 5 – Clare at Freeland
Division 5 – Almont at Marine City
All games will take place Friday at 7 p.m., with short-term archives available on FoxSportsDetroit.com and long-term archives and DVDs available through MHSAA.tv.
Football Friday Overtime is in its fourth season on FOX Sports Detroit, airing at Midnight each Friday and running for 13 weeks. Mickey York and Rob Rubick host this 30-minute highlights show. The show re-airs Saturdays at 11 a.m. and Sunday mornings – check your local listings (this week at 7 a.m.).
The following games are scheduled to be highlighted this week:
- Wyandotte Roosevelt at Brownstown Woodhaven
- Trenton at New Boston Huron
- Southfield at Oak Park
- Walled Lake Central at West Bloomfield
- Detroit East English at Warren DeLaSalle
- Detroit Cass Tech at Dearborn Fordson
- Plus coverage from the Prep Zone games
MHSAA.tv also will cover two Football Playoff games live each Saturday the first three weeks of the tournament, and 12 Semifinal games on Nov. 22. Here’s this week’s District Final schedule (all coverage with subscription):
Division 1 – Grand Ledge at East Kentwood, 1 p.m.
Division 7 – Pewamo-Westphalia at Hudson, 1 p.m.
A Day Pass subscription to MHSAA.tv is $9.95. A Month Pass subscription is $14.95, enabling purchasers to watch all of this week’s action plus two more weeks of coverage of the Girls Volleyball Tournament, weekly Football Playoff coverage, and the Preliminaries and Finals of the Lower Peninsula Girls Swimming & Diving Finals. All events become available for free on demand viewing three days after the date of the contest.
MHSAA Highlights: This week's package includes clips from the Okemos/East Lansing volleyball match and the Plainwell/Battle Creek Harper Creek and Watervliet/Niles Brandywine football games.
Best Practices
June 28, 2016
Two-thirds of concussions reported in Michigan high school football last fall occurred in games. Even though there are at least five times more hours of exposure during practices than games, there are half as many concussions during practice, according to the mandated concussion reporting requirement of the Michigan High School Athletic Association that is unmatched in the country in terms of its depth and breadth for a statewide requirement.
Michigan was among the handful of states to restrict contact in practice, in 2014, a full season prior to recommendations from the National Federation of State High School Associations and later action by most other statewide associations.
Some of those statewide organizations continue to operate without limitation on contact in football practices, while their counterpart organizations in other states have gone so far as to limit contact to a certain number of minutes in a day and/or week.
Entering mostly uncharted waters for high school football in early 2014, an MHSAA task force recommended that the number of practices be limited where collisions between players could occur – no more than one per day during preseason, no more than two per week after the first game.
This change was embraced by this state’s football coaches association and adopted by the MHSAA Representative Council. All parties liked the ease of administration of this policy, and all distrusted the idea of limiting the number of minutes of contact during practices.
If there is a 30-minute limit on contact in a day or a 90-minute limit on contact in a week, is it the same 30-minute or 90-minute period for all players, even if many are not involved in one or more of the contact drills? Or does the limit apply to each player individually; and if so, how is that tracked, and by whom?
These and other questions made coaches and administrators question how effective a limit on minutes might really be. Nevertheless, a 90-minute per week limit during regular season has been made an MHSAA recommendation for the 2016 season. This will provide an opportunity to address and possibly answer some of the questions that have been raised.
The MHSAA will survey schools this fall about their practice plans and the actual time spent in contact drills by players, assessing how that differs according to offense, defense, player position and grade in school, and determining best practices for how to track player contact minutes.
When Michigan acted in 2014 to limit contact in practice, it was one of the first states to do so. As Michigan takes additional steps to limit contact in practice, it will be one of the first states to do so after researching the best ways to actually do it.