Casting Lines for Future Tournaments
August 12, 2016
By Jack Roberts
MHSAA Executive Director
The MHSAA is best known to the public for the tournaments it conducts to conclude the fall, winter and spring seasons each school year.
These tournaments, the first and largest program of the MHSAA, have survived the Vietnam War, the Korean conflict and two World Wars. They have survived the technology bubble, the housing collapse, the energy crisis and the Great Depression.
MHSAA tournaments existed at the dawn of aviation and at the time of our nation’s lunar landing. Popes, presidents and governors have changed and changed again and again, and MHSAA tournaments roll on year after year.
But the sense of tradition and permanence and inevitability of MHSAA tournaments doesn’t dissuade us from asking questions about our tournaments, even some of the most basic questions. Here are two.
Question #1
I have long been and will always be an advocate for a Ryder Cup format for the MHSAA Golf Finals, and a team tennis approach to the MHSAA Tennis Finals; but 90 years of tradition is hard to overcome. Might this be a more exciting format? Could it be co-ed? Could it reverse the decline in boys tennis participation, and increase girls golf participation? Wouldn’t it be fun to try?
Periodically, the International Olympic Committee requires each of the designated Olympic sports to defend its status, to state its case why the sport should remain a part of the Olympic program. Then, after a series or votes that retain one sport at a time, the IOC drops the sport that makes the weakest case. It does so to make room for one of the previously unlisted sports that makes the best case for inclusion.
This would appear to keep the existing Olympic sports on their toes, and to keep the Olympic movement fresh and reflective of modern trends in sports.
While I would not enjoy the controversy, I can see the potential for some positive results if the MHSAA were to invoke the same policy for determining the 14 tournaments it will provide for girls and the 14 for boys.
This might cause us to consider more deeply what a high school sport should look like, or at least what an MHSAA tournament sport should stand for.
On the one hand, we might be inclined to drop tournaments for those sports that involve mostly non-faculty coaches and non-school venues, or require cooperative programs to generate enough participants to support a team, or resort almost entirely to non-school funding, or cater to individuals more than teams.
Or perhaps this process would cause policymakers to forget traditional thinking and ask: “In this day and age, should we shake off traditional notions of sport and consider more where modern kids are coming from?” That might mean fewer team sports and more individual sports, more “extreme” sports like snowboarding and skateboarding, and more lifetime sports, meaning not just golf and tennis and running sports, but also fishing and even shooting sports.
Currently, MHSAA policy states that the MHSAA will consider sponsorship of a tournament series for any sport which 64 member schools conduct on an interscholastic basis as a result of action by the governing boards of those schools.
Should the only question be how many schools sponsor a sport, or must an activity also have certain qualities and/or avoid certain “defects?” What should an MHSAA tournament sport look like and stand for?
Question #2
Bristling from criticism that his association is a money-grabbing exploiter of children, my counterpart in another state said, “If we were running our programs just to make money, we would do very many things very differently.” I knew exactly what he meant.
Because we care about the health and welfare of students, because we mean what we say that the athletic program needs to maximize the ways it enhances the school experience while minimizing academic conflicts, and because we try to model our claim that no sport is a minor sport when it comes to its potential to teach young people life lessons, we operate our programs in ways that make promoters, marketers and business entrepreneurs laugh, cry or cringe.
If money were the only object, we would seed and select sites to assure the teams that attracted the most spectators had the best chance to advance in our tournaments, regardless of the travel for any team or its fan base. If money were the only object, we would never schedule two tournaments to overlap and compete for public attention, much less tolerate three or four overlapping events. If money were the only object, we would allow signage like NASCAR events and promotions like minor league baseball games.
Those approaches to event sponsorship may not be all wrong; they’re just not all right for us. And we will live with the consequences of our belief system.
During a typical school year, more than 20 percent of the MHSAA’s 2,097 District, Regional and Final tournaments lose money. Not a single site in golf, skiing or tennis makes a single penny. In no sport did every District, Regional and Final site have revenue in excess of direct expenses.
In fact, in only three sports – boys and girls basketball and football – is revenue so much greater than direct expenses overall that it helps to pay for all the other tournaments in which the MHSAA invests.
That’s right: invests. When we present our budget to our board, we talk about the MHSAA’s investment in providing tournament opportunities in all those sports and all those places that cannot sustain the cost of those events on their own. How much is this investment worth to students, schools and society?
These two are core questions that require our focus far in advance of talk about scheduling, site selection, seeding and the myriad matters that too often hijack our time and attention.
Lapeer West 4-Time Finals Winner Set to Build Champions at Oklahoma
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
July 5, 2023
Roger Kish has a habit of accomplishing great things in a short amount of time.
He won an MHSAA Individual Wrestling Finals title as a freshman at Lapeer West, his first of four.
He was an NCAA finalist as a sophomore at Minnesota.
He was a Division I head wrestling coach at North Dakota State University at 27.
So, it should come as little surprise that before hitting his 40th birthday, Kish is now in charge of one of the nation’s most storied college wrestling programs.
Kish, 39, was recently named the head coach at Oklahoma, a program that has won seven national titles and produced 67 individual champions in its history.
“It’s something I’m very grateful for, and I’m certainly humbled to walk the same halls of some of the Oklahoma greats,” the 2003 Lapeer West graduate said. “Being able to lead this program is nothing short of a dream come true. The administration is great, and in terms of the support system that’s in place, what they have at Oklahoma is second to none.”
Kish takes over a Sooners program fighting to get back into the conversation as one of the nation’s best. His time at NDSU portends well for that, as he had the Bison as high as No. 12 in the country a year ago, the highest ranking in program history.
NDSU also defeated Oklahoma in a Big 12 dual meet, and finished 24th at the NCAAs, with a program record 25.5 points.
“Roger knows what it takes to build a championship-caliber program, and he’s done just that at North Dakota State, with many of his wrestlers having won conference titles and earning All-American honors,” Oklahoma Director of Athletics Joe Castiglione said in a release. “His coaching philosophy aligns with our approach at Oklahoma, and I know he’ll guide our wrestling program toward achieving the standards we’ve set for ourselves.”
Had you told a teenage Kish this would be his future as he was racking up the second-most wrestling victories in state history, he wouldn’t have believed it. Not because it was too ambitious, but because coaching wasn’t even on his radar.
In fact, it wasn’t something he was considering even as he was becoming a two-time All-American at Minnesota.
“I would be lying to say that I wanted to be a high school or college wrestling coach, career-wise,” Kish said. “I had other plans.”
Those other plans were to either continue wrestling beyond college, explore a career in mixed martial arts, or become a chiropractor.
It was all on the table for him as his collegiate career came to a close, but an injury and the long recovery process that followed opened up a new avenue for Kish.
“When I had my surgery, I was off the mats for a lot of time, but I was still able to be on the mats, not as a competitor, but in a way that I could help some of my younger teammates,” he said. “I wanted to be able to give back to those guys that had helped me. That’s where it all began.”
He had been accepted into the chiropractic program at Northwestern Health Sciences University in Bloomington, Minn. But he chose to put that off to continue his recovery for a possible mat return, and to serve as a graduate assistant for the Gophers.
The following year, he was asked to join Bucky Maughan’s coaching staff at North Dakota State, and his career as a coach took off.
“Throughout that year (at Minnesota), I really enjoyed helping out those young guys,” Kish said. “I took an opportunity from Bucky Maughan, because he needed a bigger guy to train with those bigger guys. It seemed like the best route in the moment, so I took it and never looked back. I was an assistant for two seasons, and built really good relationships with stakeholders in the athletic department. Following two seasons under Bucky Maughan, he retired after 46 seasons, and the position opened up. They did a national search, and I think the relationships I had built with stakeholders, and the immediate success of the program in the two seasons I was part of it, led to a great opportunity for me to take over at North Dakota State.”
Kish built a strong program in his 12 seasons at the helm, compiling a 108-70 record. During his time, the Bison moved from the Western Wrestling Conference to the Big 12 and didn’t skip a beat. NDSU is 33-26 in its time in the Big 12, including a 6-2 mark this past season, which was good enough for fourth place during the regular season.
NDSU has sent 21 wrestlers to the NCAA Championships over the past four seasons, with nine becoming All-Americans.
While it’s now in the corner and not in the center of the mat, Kish and wrestling success have long been synonymous.
Kish was 117-27 at Minnesota, placing second in the nation as a sophomore and third as a junior. He also won a Big Ten title at 184 pounds as a sophomore.
He was 252-2 in his high school career, with both losses coming during his freshman season. The 252 wins are second in MHSAA history only to 260 won by Justin Zeerip of Hesperia. Kish was unbeaten in his last 223 matches, placing him third all-time for consecutive wins behind Zeerip and Brent Metcalf of Davison (228).
In 2003, Kish became the 11th wrestler in MHSAA history to win four individual titles. At the time, nobody had won them at higher weights, as Kish won at 160, 171, 189 and 189.
“For me, it probably didn’t feel as big in the moment as it probably did for other people,” Kish said. “For me, it was the expectation to win it as a freshman. My own father said, ‘I don’t know if he’s going to get out of the Regional.’ I took it very personal and serious. But I didn’t think of how hard it was to do in the moment. I’m in awe of how talented these (more recent four-timers) are. Doing it today is seemingly a lot more challenging.”
Wrestling has long been a family experience for Kish, as his father, Roger Kish Sr., coached alongside Hall of Famer John Virnich at Lapeer West.
Kish’s older brother James was a two-time Finals champion who wrestled at North Carolina and amassed 215 career high school victories.
“I was fortunate enough to have a father who gave a tremendous amount of care to the sport and was always trying to keep my brother and I busy throughout our youth,” Kish said. “He always had us in some sort of activity. It probably also stemmed from having an older brother that was a couple years older than myself. I was always a little bit bigger, and he was a little more agile. We were always competitors – call it a brother thing. That allowed each of us to excel in sports, having one another to compete with.”
Kish also played football at Lapeer West and was a starting varsity linebacker as a freshman.
“Wrestling was my passion,” Kish said. “I loved playing football, but it was what I did to take a break from wrestling. It allowed some different facets to cultivate in terms of building relationships and recognizing different factors that helped motivate individuals. … Understanding being on a team, and relying on and trusting other people to help you succeed, whether that’s your teammates or your coaches.”
As someone who made the most of his time in high school athletics, and now remains close to them in a recruiting aspect, Kish is fully aware of how important they are for students.
“Having an outlet for young kids to be active and learn the traits that will help them later in life – the discipline and the humility of wins and losses, the work ethic that’s necessary, understanding what goals are and how to achieve those goals, dreaming a little bigger than what’s realistic – is good for kids,” Kish said. “Athletics is a great platform to do that. Wrestling is a great platform to do that. To help them grow as young men and women, that’s extremely important.”
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PHOTOS (Top) Roger Kish stands atop the MHSAA champions podium in 2003, and was hired as Oklahoma’s head coach in May. (Middle) Kish helps Lapeer West to the Division 2 team runner-up finish with this match against Mason as a senior. (Lapeer West photos from MHSAA archives; Oklahoma photo courtesy of University of Oklahoma athletic department.)