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More than Fun and Games

September 24, 2014

Five years ago there were many skeptics when the MHSAA redesigned its website and included twice-weekly blogs by the executive director and active Facebook and Twitter pages as well as YouTube channels, and gave constituents and critics alike an opportunity to post comments. Some skeptics said we were being distracted with frivolous fun and games, and others said all this interaction would be a persistent source of problems.

In fact, for the MHSAA, this constituent engagement has been about much more than fun and games and it’s been a means to solve problems.

Our primary use of social media and other means of constituent engagement has been to drive people to high school events and to the MHSAA website where the distinctive messages of educational athletics would stand out.

Rather than creating problems, allowing the crowd to enter scores on MHSAA.com has led us to post more accurate scores more rapidly than when we depended on school coaches or administrators alone.

More recently we have been reviewing our event emergency plans and our office business continuation plans, which had been developed before social media became a fact of life; and now we are revising those documents to make social media the primary means of communication during such problems.

It is entirely through social media, primarily Facebook and YouTube – that the MHSAA has caused people to be talking about sportsmanship and inciting larger, more positive student and adult spectator sections at high school contests. That’s our award-winning “Battle of the Fans” that moves into its fourth year in 2014-15.

The Cool Thing To Do

November 9, 2012

Last year the MHSAA Student Advisory Council suggested the MHSAA conduct a “Battle of the Fans,” and under the supervision of Andy Frushour and assistance of Geoff Kimmerly, Andi Osters and other MHSAA staff, the campaign was a tremendous success.

Nineteen schools submitted applications, a process which required communication within the school district about what is and is not suitable behavior at school-sponsored events, and then a coordinated effort to produce a video of the school and its cheering section in action last winter.

These videos have been viewed on YouTube more than 25,000 times, and more than 8,500 voted on Facebook for the student section they most favored.

The result was not only better sportsmanship at these schools, it made being at the games the “cool” thing to do.  Student attendance increased, and student behavior improved.  A double win no matter what happened between the teams on the court.

With the attention being given to student cheering sections during the MHSAA’s 2012 regional sportsmanship summits – attracting 1,000 students from more than 100 schools at four sites during October and November – we expect dozens more schools to compete in the 2013 “Battle of the Fans” – building up student cheering sections, guiding students in positive ways and producing videos that try to convince Facebook voters and Student Advisory Council judges that theirs is the best student support group among MHSAA member schools.