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.
Gull Lake Ready for Challenge of Adding to 2022 Finals Runner-up Finish
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
April 20, 2023
RICHLAND — Hank Livingston is a prime example of how fickle a golf course can be and why it is important not to give up.
The Gull Lake sophomore started last year’s MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Golf Championship carding an 11 on the first hole of the second round.
“He’s my No. 2 and makes an 11,” coach T.R. Walters said, shaking his head.
But Livingston shook it off and ended with a 79 for the round.
“He literally birdied the next two holes,” Walters said. “Flint Powers coach said to me, did you see what happened to your No. 2?
“I said, yeah, I was in the tall stuff with him.”
The Powers coach specified on the green.
“I was like, what?” Walters said. “He literally whiffed a putt that was two or three inches.”
Walters said he could not believe it. “(Livingston) said, ‘Coach, I just whiffed a putt for 10,” Walters said. “He goes, ‘I reached over to tap it in and I just bounced my club over it.’”
Neither Walters nor Livingston panicked.
“The way he said it to me, I was like, ‘This kid is absolutely fine.’ Then he birdied his last two holes,” Walters recalled. “You throw an 11 in as a freshman, and you don’t just quit. That’s a pretty good sign.”
It was a great sign.
The Blue Devils finished runner-up to Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice at the Final with Livingston tied for 18th individually with a 157 at The Meadows at Grand Valley State.
Things may be a bit tougher this year with the graduation of Bryce Wheeler, who won the medalist honor that weekend and was named Michigan’s Mr. Golf last spring.
However, the team is off to another successful start this season, winning the Greater Kalamazoo Tournament and the Coldwater Invitational.
Will Beardsley, who was part of a Division 2 championship in the fall with Gull Lake’s boys soccer team, said with Wheeler gone, everyone needs raise their games this year.
“Consistency is a big thing for us this year,” he said. “As long as everyone can play consistently and we all play as a team and have each other’s backs. If someone isn’t playing well one day, another guy can step up.
“Last year was a lot of a one-man show. This year, we’re definitely more balanced. Everyone’s contributing more this year rather than just one guy going 4-under.”
As the lone senior on the team, Beardsley, nicknamed “Will the Thrill” by his coach, said he feels like the “old man.”
“I see my role as having the experience,” he said. “If there are questions about rulings, I’ve had a couple more years experience, so I can usually answer those.
“I can tell them what a match day will look like and what we’re going to do on the range, what we’re going to do on the putting green, the ins and outs of what we do off the course.”
Beardsley got hooked on golf at age 5 from his grandfather, Bud Baldwin, who coached golf at Portage Northern High School.
Another Blue Devil with a bit of golf history is sophomore Chase Kosin, who is the great grandson of Letha and Darl Scott who started Gull Lakeview Golf Course in Richland in 1962.
Gull Lake does most of its practicing at the course, but Bedford Valley’s North Course is the team’s home course.
“Chase cracks me up,” Walters said. “I see so much of his grandpa in him. If there’s a piece of trash on the golf course, it goes in his golf bag.
“He’s an outstanding kid. He just gets better and better. His uncle (Casey Scott) played one PGA Tour, the Buick Open.”
Livingston also has a bit of golfing history. His uncle, Tom Harding, who played golf at Michigan State University, is in the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame.
Another returning golfer is junior Ben Szabo.
“Our No. 3 last year, he had an outstanding fall and played a bunch of junior tournaments,” Walters said. “He started playing significantly better golf. He’s also one of those kids who absolutely loves being on the golf course all the time.”
Walters is getting some help from an unexpected source. Junior Beau Carr, who was Plainwell’s No. 1 golfer last season, moved into the district.
“He’s amazing,” Beardsley said of Carr. “He’s fun to be around, a great player, hopefully will fill that missing spot that we lost this year.”
Carr also has some state tournament experience. As a freshman in 2021, he was on the Plainwell team that advanced to the LPD2 Final and finished 18th.
“Me and four seniors,” he said. “Once they graduated, the next year was a lot tougher.”
He added it was the first time that “Plainwell made it to state in 17 years. It was a big accomplishment for us.”
Walters, who teaches social studies in the middle school, is a Gull Lake grad whose main sport was baseball.
He did not take up golf until he suffered a knee injury playing basketball at Kellogg Community College.
“One of the first times playing golf was actually at Ballybunion Golf Course (in County Kerry,) Ireland,” he said. “I was over there playing basketball in a tournament and played Ballybunion and thought it was kind of fun.”
Once Walters found out he had the eye-hand coordination for golf, he was hooked.
He has worked the last 24 years at Bedford Valley Golf Course in Battle Creek and plays every day he can.
“I got to the point where I could qualify to play the Michigan Open and a few events like that … before kids,” he added.
Carr summed up the feelings of many golfers when he said, “It’s a challenge. You’re never going to figure it out.
“There’s one day you’re going to play great and the next day you feel like you haven’t hit a golf ball in two weeks. That sucks, but it’s all a part of the ride.”
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Gull Lake’s Ben Szabo tees off during last season’s LPD2 Final at The Meadows at Grand Valley State. (Middle) From left: Gull Lake boys golf coach T.R. Walters, Will Beardsley and Beau Carr. (Below) Beardsley works on his short game during a practice this spring. (Top photo by High School Sports Scene. All other photos by Pam Shebest.)