Add, Subtract, Divide, Multiply: MHSAA Not Alone
July 25, 2017
By Rob Kaminski
MHSAA benchmarks editor
This is the third part in a series on MHSAA tournament classification, past and present, that will be published over the next two weeks. This series originally ran in this spring's edition of MHSAA benchmarks.
As the MHSAA faces its most recent classification task with 8-Player Football, and opinions continue to swirl about as to the method, timeframe, location and other procedures, a look around the country provides plenty of company among state association brethren factoring variables into their own equations.
In the Pacific Northwest, the Oregon School Activities Association Football Playoffs are under public scrutiny as leadership ponders a five or six classification format beginning with the 2018-19 school year.
The OSAA has crowned six champions on the gridiron since 2006-07. Many of the state’s smaller schools would like to keep it that way, while larger schools lean toward a five-classification system, citing larger leagues, ease of travel and credibility to state championships as the advantages.
Still others would prefer more than six classes, pointing to safety issues and the opportunity to increase participation numbers as positives.
Moving southeast of Oregon, the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association recently voted to hold serve on a classification proposal that was volleyed to the membership.
However, changes still could be forthcoming by as early as the 2018-19 season which would add a fifth classification in more populated southern Nevada while allowing northern schools to participate in four classifications. Such divisions could mean no state championship for the fifth class in southern Nevada.
Because of that, the NIAA wants equal numbers of schools in each classification on both ends of the state. Complicating the issue is the fact that the 24 largest schools in the state, by enrollment, are all in Clark County in Southern Nevada.
Across Nevada’s border into Arizona, charter schools are asking the Arizona Interscholastic Association to reconsider classification that was voted upon and approved in September 2015. That agreement called for the largest 33 percent of charter schools by enrollment to be placed in the state’s largest school classification, 3A, the middle 33 percent into 2A, and the smallest 33 percent into 1A.
Less than two years later the charter schools have had a change of heart and have asked to be considered the same as other Arizona public schools and be placed appropriately by enrollment beginning with the 2018-19 school year.
The situation in Arizona further illustrates how the public/private debate that all state associations have faced throughout existence now has the added dynamic of rapidly growing charter schools in today’s educational system, along with virtual school enrollment.
In the nation’s heartland, Nebraska has retooled its football classifications by using enrollment of boys students only in its schools rather than total enrollment. The Nebraska School Activities Association football-playing schools will kick off the 2018 season using this alignment.
Nebraska has three classes of 11-player football, with the smallest class divided in two, Class C-1 and C-2. The state also will have 8-player football for boys enrollments under 47, and the NSAA will sponsor a new 6-player tournament in 2018 for schools with 27 or fewer boys.
“This is a good proposal because some schools have a sizable imbalance between the number of boys and girls, and there’s a large gap (in enrollment) between the largest and smallest schools in Classes A and B,” NSAA executive director Jim Tenopir said. “I think this addresses both of those concerns.”
Swimmers in Georgia, meanwhile, will feel like they are moving with the current, rather than upstream in 2017-18, as the Georgia High School Association recently doubled the number of team championship events from two to four.
Swim enthusiasts can also count on longer days at the finals, as the top 30 finishers from the prelims will advance to the finals instead of 20, and all championship events will have three heats versus two.
Title IX at 50: Jaeger's 2004 Winter Run Created Lasting Connection
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
February 15, 2022
“Just like sports, life will not always result in triumph. We must learn from these losses. Thus sports have provided the fundamentals and experiences for how to deal with life. In the end it's not how much you have won or lost but the journey you took and the people you met along the way.”
Every February, the announcement of the MHSAA/Farm Bureau Insurance Scholar-Athlete Award winners include brief bios of the honorees and excerpts from essays they’ve written on sportsmanship.
The above passage was pulled from the essay written by 2004 Livonia Ladywood senior Sarah Jaeger, as she became the first from her sport to receive one of these prestigious awards. Less than a month later, she’d also become one of her sport's first MHSAA champions.
The Class B Bowling Finals championship she won March 5, 2004 – capping the singles portion of the first bowling season in MHSAA history – remains something that resonates with the now-mother of two small children and 13-year veteran of TV news along the I-75 corridor.
“It was just kind of a culmination of those four years,” Jaeger, now Sarah Dorow, recalled Tuesday. “From going to Ladywood and Dad starting the team from literally nothing my freshman year to seeing the sport officially a sport my senior year.
“Honestly,” she added, “I don’t think there could have been a better ending to the season and my high school bowling career.”
That 2003-04 season was the first for bowling as an MHSAA-sponsored sport, and Jaeger became one of its first state champions representing the program her father Dennis had started and her mother Judy took over after his death in 2001.
After qualifying 12th of 16 for Class B singles match play at Sterling Heights’ Sunnybrook Lanes, Sarah torched the bracket with four match wins, taking the decider against Montrose’s Anna Haggerty 231-183, 192-208, 264-244.
But her MHSAA Finals experience that winter wasn’t done just yet. Jaeger would be recognized with 26 other Scholar-Athlete Award winners on the Breslin Center floor during the Boys Basketball Finals later that March.
She went on to earn bachelor’s degrees in communications and criminal justice at University of Detroit Mercy, and then earned a master’s at Michigan State University in journalism and another master’s from Mercy in intelligence analysis. She also bowled on the Spartans’ club team during her time in East Lansing – and made time to stay in high school bowling as well.
Judy Jaeger continued to coach the Ladywood bowling program for a number of years, and Sarah assisted the Blazers from 2005-16. Judy also continues to serve as a tournament manager annually for one of the four MHSAA Finals sites, and Sarah has provided major assists at those events as well.
Near the end of her masters’ studies, Dorow began 13 years in TV news as an anchor, reporter and producer, most recently at multiple stations in the Saginaw/Flint/Bay City/Midland market before stepping aside from the camera to be home with her two children ages 6 and 3. But her stories continue – she blogs at “The TV Mommy” and “Mid-Michigan Moms” – and she can still bowl with the best of them.
She’s set to compete in the Michigan Women’s State Championship this weekend in Muskegon, and recently she shot a personal-record 777 series. She took a brief break while her kids were younger, but is back up to bowling in one league a week and one tournament a month. Her 6-year-old son has started bowling as well, and she likes to say he’s already rolled a 300 – because she did so when she was pregnant with him.
Judy Jaeger will be managing this season’s Division 2 Finals, and Sarah will try to make it over to Super Bowl in Canton. She brought her son to the 2019 Finals and they crowned that year’s champions together. That part is among the experiences she always enjoys, something of a handing down from a past champion to the next.
“It’s something I’ll definitely never forget,” Dorow said of her 2004 title run. “It’s stayed with me.”
Second Half's weekly Title IX Celebration posts are sponsored by Michigan Army National Guard.
Previous Title IX at 50 Spotlights
Feb. 8: Marian's Cicerone to Finish Among All-Time Elite - Read
Feb. 1: WISL Award Honors Builders of State's Girls Sports Tradition - Read
Jan. 25: Decades Later, Edwards' Legend Continues to Grow - Read
Jan. 18: Iron Mountain Completes Championship Climb - Read
Jan. 11: Harrold's Achievement Heralds Growth of Girls Wrestling - Read
Dec. 20: Competitive Cheer Gives Michigan Plenty to Cheer About - Read
Dec. 14: Evelyn's Game Had Plenty of Magic - Read
Dec. 7: Council Term Ends, But Leinaar Leaves Lasting Impact - Read
Nov. 30: Basketball Season Ready to Add to Rich Tradition - Read
Nov. 23: Marysville Builds Winning Streak Yet to be Challenged - Read
Nov. 16: Wroubel Has Championed Girls School Sports from Their Start - Read
Nov. 9: Pioneer's Joyce Legendary in Michigan, National Swim History - Read
Nov. 2: Royal Oak's Finch Leading Way on Football Field - Read
Oct. 26: Coach Clegg Sets Championship Standard at Grand Blanc - Read
Oct. 19: Rockford Girls Set Pace, Hundreds After Have Continued to Chase - Read
Oct. 12: Bedford Volleyball Pioneer Continues Blazing Record-Setting Trail - Read
Oct. 5: Warner Paved Way to Legend Status with Record Rounds - Read
Sept. 28: Taylor Kennedy Gymnasts Earn Fame as 1st Champions - Read
Sept. 21: Portage Northern Star Byington Becomes Play-by-Play Pioneer - Read
Sept. 14: Guerra/Groat Legacy Continues to Serve St. Philip Well - Read
Sept. 7: Best-Ever Conversation Must Include Leland's Glass - Read
Aug. 31: We Will Celebrate Many Who Paved the Way - Read
PHOTOS (Top left) Sarah Jaeger and her mother and coach Judy Jaeger celebrate Sarah's 2004 Class B bowling championship. (Top right) Jaeger today is a mother of two, veteran TV reporter, writer, and recently bowled her personal-high series. (2004 photo courtesy of Sarah Dorow; current photo by Amanda Shaffer Photography.)