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.
Longtime Cheboygan Coach Stormzand Continues Giving to Game as Official
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
April 10, 2023
Twenty-five years ago, Cheboygan girls soccer started by storm.
Actually, “Stormy” is more accurate.
As another girls soccer season gets rolling across Northern Michigan this month, the pitch will frequently experience a storm, er Stormy, again.
Stormy is Mark Stormzand, and he may be joined often by his regular referee partner, Alan Granger. Stormzand, one of many members in his family nicknamed Stormy, got the Chiefs girls soccer program started in 1997 after one year as a club. At the time, he was also an assistant coach on the school’s boys team.
His career included 217 total victories, seven District titles, six conference titles, and eight players who went on to play college soccer. He spent two seasons assisting the boys.
But he started another career in 1999. He became a soccer referee. He is still doing it today, which is why the Chiefs definitely will see him on their home field or somewhere else nearby this season.
Like many officials, Stormzand started using the whistle because he really just wanted to be a part of the game.
“I started with just boys soccer because I was coaching the girls,” Stormzand recalled. “I just wanted to be part of the game when I wasn’t coaching.
“I love being around young athletes,” he continued. “And, I enjoy helping.”
Now at 69 years young, Stormzand plans to stay with officiating as long as most officials try.
“Like all of us, until my body won’t,” he says of his when he’ll leave the pitch. “Every year I keep thinking I am surprised I am still doing this.”
Stormzand is glad he started officiating. It has helped fill a void after coaching. It also helped fill a void in his personal life.
In 2015, his wife Gail died after battling breast cancer.
“We had been together since we were 15 years old,” said Stormy. “She was inspirational for my coaching … my kids loved her, and she was always a part of our team.”
Stormzand noted he’s had many great players and great teams over the years — all of which he credits with teaching him more than he taught — but the team from the spring of 2015 is at the top of the list. His wife’s passing came two months before the start of practice.
That team filled the greatest void in his life.
“I kept telling myself if I could make it to soccer season, I can make it,” Stormzand recalled. “They were my life ring by a long shot.
“The team that year was unbelievable with their sensitivity and concern and respect,” he continued. “I was just awestruck of how mature this group of 20 girls were dealing with me and my situation. … I will never forget them.”
Stormzand went on to coach the girls team three more springs as he officiated boys in the fall. He remarried in September of 2018, right after giving up the helm of the program he started.
“It was a dark day for Cheboygan girls soccer when Mark resigned,” said Jason Friday, Cheboygan’s athletic director. “He was one-of-a-kind.
“He just had a way of making every player, no matter what role they had, feel special,” Friday went on. “Year after year, the team chemistry and camaraderie was second to none.”
Stormzand also retired from 45 years in the forestry business. He’s seen a lot of changes in high school soccer, and he admits he picked up things officiating that made him a better coach.
“When I ref’d, I’d see stuff other coaches did and I’d incorporate that into my thinking and coaching,” he said. “Ref’ing made me a better coach, and coaching me a better ref.”
Among his favorite places to referee now are Cheboygan and Mackinac Island. He and Granger have taken the ferry to Mackinac Island for Friday evening and Saturday morning contests for about 10 years.
They’ve enjoyed the opportunity to get to know the Islanders on the pitch as well as the visiting team’s players. Many teams have middle schoolers on the roster, allowing the teams, coaches and referees to become more familiar with each other than they would during just the high school years.
Stormzand and Granger love the spirit of the game on the Island, especially when rivals are in town. Most all the games feature co-ed squads.
“It’s all the positive parts of sports,” Stormy said. “It is just fun — pure sport.
“You can learn the kids’ names, and you’re with them for six years and all their brothers and sisters,” he said. “It’s a very fun community place to ref, especially on a Friday night when they’re playing rivals like Beaver Island.”
Stormy admits he has enjoyed coaching more than officiating so far. But he doesn’t miss sitting on the sidelines in less-than-desirable spring weather. He recalls one season of wearing a raincoat for every match until the District Final.
Running on the pitch helps deal with the difficult weather. He’s seen many officials, players and coaches struggle with the weather conditions, especially when the Chiefs occasionally played at the Coast Guard Cutter Station field.
“We would play there periodically because the high school field had too much snow on it,” he said. “The Straits (of Mackinac) would still be frozen, and you’d have this mist coming off the Straits.
‘Some teams would show up without warmups, and it would be like 32 degrees and cold fog.”
Tom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Mark Stormzand talks things over with his 2017 team during his time leading the Cheboygan girls soccer program. (Middle) Stormzand, now with more than two decades as an official. (Below) The 2015 team always will hold a place close to Stormzand’s heart. (Top photo courtesy of the Cheboygan Daily Tribune; middle and below photos submitted by Mark Stormzand.)