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Story Power

January 12, 2015

I spend time every day surfing the MHSAA’s family of websites – MHSAA.com, Second Half and MHSAA.tv. My counterpart in another state was astounded that I do this, and incredulous that I could find the time to do this. But it makes perfect sense to me.

More people visit our websites on a typical day than visit our office in East Lansing during an entire year. We have more visitors to our websites during a typical month than attend all of our postseason tournaments combined during a typical year.

We have more opportunity to make first impressions through electronic entry than tournament turnstiles; and for the large majority of people who make contact with the MHSAA, electronic media may provide the only impression they will ever get of the MHSAA.

This is why we have styled the MHSAA’s websites in a manner that is visually pleasing and easy to navigate on both desktop and mobile devices. And this is why we have stuffed these websites not only with schedules, scores and stats but also with stories; and it’s why the stories are presented in text, audio, pictures and video streaming.

We know that those who share the stories of school sports most effectively will shape the message of school sports most persuasively.

Our job is not merely regulation of school sports, but communication about school sports – not merely event management, but content management – managing the message and meaning of school-sponsored sports.

Early Results

May 17, 2016

On May 3 we released a preliminary summation of results of winter season concussions reported by Michigan High School Athletic Association member schools. It was reported that 48 percent of the concussions reported were to female athletes, who make up only 38 percent of all winter season participants.

We will be digging deeper into the reports and providing a more comprehensive summary for all three seasons – fall, winter and spring; but we already see one suspected theme is being confirmed: more concussions reported for girls than for boys.

Even though girls’ participation in basketball is 36 percent lower than boys in MHSAA member high schools, there were 88 percent more concussions reported for girls than boys in that sport this past season.

We hope that researchers will step forward to inquire into the physiological, psychological, social and other reasons for the significant disparity in concussions reported by males and females; and perhaps they will be able to suggest what administrators, coaches, rule-makers and others might do in response to that research.

We expect that other themes suggested by the data from this first-year reporting requirement and then year-over-year comparisons will create interest in other research, all of which will help make school sports an even healthier experience for boys and girls than it already is.