Half Empty or Half Full
December 11, 2012
After an absence of decades, eight-player football has been reintroduced to Michigan high schools during recent years. When enough schools sponsored the program, the MHSAA responded with a four-week playoff in 2011. The number of schools sponsoring the sport grew in 2012, and more growth is expected for the 2013 season.
Like almost everything that occurs in life, what has benefited some schools is not seen by others to be in their own best interests.
Advocates of the eight-player game include those schools whose declining enrollments couldn’t support the eleven-player game. Football has returned to some communities and has been saved from the brink of elimination in others.
However, as two and soon three dozen Class D schools opt for the eight-player game, the remaining Class D schools that sponsor football find themselves in disrupted leagues and forced to travel further to complete eleven-player football schedules; and they must compete against larger teams in Division 8 of the eleven-player MHSAA Football Playoffs.
In fact, the growth of the eight-player game among our smallest schools has resulted in more Class D schools qualifying for the MHSAA Football Playoffs than ever before. In 2012, an all-time high 44.0 percent of Class D schools that sponsor football qualified for either the single division eight-player tournament or Division 8 of the eleven-player tournament. This compares to 42.2 percent of Class C schools, 44.9 percent of Class B schools and 41.6 percent of Class A schools that sponsor football and qualified for the 2012 playoffs.
Some see the eight-player game as the savior of the football experience in Class D schools. Others see it differently.
Rethinking Spring
May 5, 2014
Those states that conduct high school softball in the fall of the year or conduct high school baseball during the summer months may be laughing at our attempts to force these summer games into the least hospitable season of all for school sports: spring.
After an extra-long winter, there has needed to be extra attention during early season baseball practices and games to assure that throwing arms have been brought gradually into condition for the rigors of a year that is likely to compress a full schedule of games into a shortened playing season.
While baseball pitchers continue to be protected during games by a rule that does not allow a student to pitch for two calendar days that follow the day when he pitched his 30th out, no other players are similarly restricted, nor are there any rules that apply to any players during practices, or to softball.
Meanwhile, Major League Baseball recently reported an increase in elbow injuries among its players. Some commentators, both inside MLB and out, were quick to suggest that at least part of the blame is that pitchers are throwing harder than ever, doing so on a year-round basis, and starting at an earlier age.
It could be, then, that long winters are not such a bad thing, provided we’re patient when spring finally arrives, and use common sense for all players all season long, in both practices and games.
We look forward to the culmination of this year’s reluctant spring when the MHSAA hosts the Semifinals and Finals of both baseball and softball at a new venue, Michigan State University. Hope you’ll join us June 12-14.