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.
Sinishtaj Ready to End School Year by Putting Last Year's Finals Lesson into Play
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
June 4, 2026
School might be over or about to be done around the state, but Warren De La Salle Collegiate junior golfer Julian Sinishtaj hopes to heed one lesson learned a year ago at last year’s Lower Peninsula Division 1 Final.
Heading into this weekend’s championship tournament at Ferris State University’s Katke Golf Course, Sinishtaj reflected on the biggest thing he learned at last year’s Final after completing a 2-under-par round of 69 in a Regional at Twin Lakes on May 27 to qualify for this year’s event individually.
“Just that you’re really never out of it,” Sinishtaj said. “In the beginning of both rounds, I was a couple over (par) through five, six holes. Then I was able to shoot three and one-under. Kind of battled through. This year, I’ve got to get off to a hotter start. I think everybody’s having a good year so far, so (I’m) going to have to go low at states.’”
Sinishtaj is correct that several golfers competing at the event are having good years, but he also is having a strong spring and on the short list of individual contenders.
Named to the all-state Super Team last year as a sophomore, Sinishtaj finished third individually at last year’s Division 1 tournament, just two shots behind champion Ian Masih of Okemos, who was a freshman this year at Grand Valley State.
Sinishtaj hasn’t slumped at all this season, producing four rounds below 70 and winning the title at the Macomb County Championship.
De La Salle head coach Dennis Koch, an alumnus of the school who has coached basketball, football, baseball and golf throughout the Detroit area over the past 21 years, said Sinishtaj measures up to any athlete he’s coached in any of those sports.
“It’s very simple; he has one of the best work ethics I’ve seen in my 21 years of coaching,” Koch said of Sinishtaj, who also is a 3.9-GPA student. “That goes across football, basketball and baseball. He just puts in that much time. There’s not really a formula for it.”
Sinishtaj said since last year’s tournament, he made a change with his putting, and it’s made a world of difference to complement his length off the tee and steady iron play.
“At the end of last year, I changed to a spider (putter), like Scottie Scheffler’s putter,” he said. “I switched to left-hand low. I was right-hand low last year. It’s a little more comfortable.”
Sinishtaj said the golf bug bit him when he was young, as his father introduced him to the game when he was 5 years old, and then he “started taking it seriously around 8 or 9 years old.”
As he grew, his game took off.
“I was pretty small my whole life and never really hit it far,” Sinishtaj said. “I just kind of grew at like 12, 13. I started playing good. I’ve gained probably 20, 30 yards each year consistently from probably age 13 to now.”
As a result, Sinishtaj can regularly move the ball 280-290 yards off the tee, something Koch said was also a priority over the offseason for Sinishtaj in addition to enhancing his putting.
“He said that his emphasis was on ball speed,” Koch said. “He’s been trying to improve his swing speed and hit the ball farther. And if you can hit the ball a little further as a golfer, that makes life a little easier. Think of all the best golfers that hit the ball a mile. Their scores are a little better because they have shorter approaches.”
Sinishtaj will be busy this summer with junior tournaments and likely figuring out college opportunities as he enters his senior year in the fall.
In the meantime, he hopes he can take what he learned at last year’s season-concluding tournament and complete what’s been a little unfinished business on a Katke course with which he’s familiar.
“I don’t think the greens are hard,” Sinishtaj said. “They’re pretty flat and wide. But off of the tee there are a lot of blind shots. Being able to find the right target and commit to those swings will be key.”
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.