Class in Session: A History in Classification
July 24, 2017
By Rob Kaminski
MHSAA benchmarks editor
This is the first part in a series on MHSAA tournament classification, past and present, that will be published over the next two weeks. This series originally ran in this spring's edition of MHSAA benchmarks.
Conversation and discussion at the March 2017 MHSAA Representative Council Meeting leaned heavily toward the subject of 8-Player Football and how to properly balance its tournament with the growing number of schools sponsoring the sport.
While the proposal to split the tournament into two divisions beginning with the 2017 school year was adopted, the MHSAA then faced questions such as when to set the divisions, how to determine qualifiers and where to host the championship games.
The topic continues to create a buzz in Class D schools across both peninsulas, and likely will do into the start of school this fall.
Likewise, the lone holdouts still conducting tournaments by class – MHSAA Boys and Girls Basketball and Girls Volleyball – took center stage at the May Council discussion, and following the 2017-18 school year, class is out for good. Both genders of basketball, and girls volleyball, will move to divisional formats thereafter.
There is much to be decided to be sure; but as those in education are well aware, history is the best teacher.
Fortunately for the sports in flux and for all sports under the governance of the MHSAA, the Association more or less wrote the book on the subject of sport classification. Following is a history lesson, with a little advanced division thrown in.
Class structure
Credited with being the first state with multiple tournament classifications, Michigan’s attention to trends and shifts in philosophy aimed at fair play and equal tournament opportunity can be traced from 80 years ago to the present.
In the earliest years of the MHSAA, there were four classifications for elections and tournaments – Classes A, B, C and D. Classes C and D had far more schools than Classes A and B. For example, 80 years ago (1937), there were only 58 schools in Class A, 94 schools in Class B, 297 schools in Class C and 253 schools in Class D.
Gradually through the years, as Michigan’s major cities spawned suburbs, there was a shift in the other direction to the point 30 years ago (1987) when school size became more balanced: 173 Class A schools, 178 Class B schools, 179 Class C schools and 182 Class D schools.
Up until 1987, the MHSAA published the dividing line between each classification, after which schools submitted their enrollments. Then, for 1988 and thereafter, the MHSAA adopted the plan of gathering all enrollments first and then placing 25 percent of the schools in each of four classes. This completed the equalization of the number of schools in each class for elections.
However, the change for 1988 did nothing to equalize the number of teams actually entered by each class in each sport. And unlike the early years of the Association when there were many more Class C and D teams than A and B teams, there were more Class A and B teams than C and D teams entering MHSAA tournaments decades later.
Moreover, the difference in number of teams entered in the different classifications for a sport continued to increase as many small schools, the fastest growing portion of the MHSAA's membership, sponsor only a few sports, or they sponsor no sports at all but enter into cooperative programs with other schools.
Because of these differences, Class A or B schools sometimes had to win twice as many games as Class C or D schools to reach the MHSAA Finals in a sport. At times, the larger classifications had District Tournaments, even rat-tail games, and/or a Quarterfinal game, and the smaller classifications did not. Most Class D Districts have had four teams (some only three), while Class A Districts often had seven or eight teams. In Regional levels of individual sports, the number of entries in the larger classification once greatly outnumbered those in the smaller classifications of the tournament for the same sport.
Over the years, these dividing lines between classes escalated gradually, as did the differences in enrollments of largest and small schools in each class. In 1937 the dividing lines were 700, 300 and 100 between Class A and B, B and C, and C and D, respectively. By 1987, the dividing lines were 1,129, 571 and 298, respectively, leading to the current method of collecting enrollments and then setting the classification.
With the pendulum swinging well past center by the late 1980s, coaches associations, MHSAA sport committees, tournament managers and school administrators began discussion and offered proposals to correct what many believed had become a flawed system of MHSAA tournament classification.
At the 1996 MHSAA Update Meetings, ¾ of 858 respondents to that year’s annual survey indicated they favored a system that would divide schools which actually sponsor each sport into two, three or four nearly equal divisions.
Problem solving
At its meeting May 4-6, 1997, the Representative Council defeated a motion that would have adopted in one action a coordinated plan of reclassification for all sports to equalize the number of schools in each tournament for each respective sport. Instead, the Council discussed and voted on each proposal that had been presented from sport committees.
This resulted in the Representative Council adopting four equal divisions for baseball and softball, four equal divisions for boys and girls tennis, four equal divisions for boys soccer and three equal divisions for girls soccer, effective with the 1997-98 school year. Helping in the decision was the success of the 1995-96 MHSAA Wrestling season, which saw the sport move to four divisions for its tournament structure
The Council delayed action on similar proposals for football and boys golf at that time to glean additional input. The same decision was made with respect to a proposal from the Ice Hockey Committee that would have split the Class A schools in two divisions and left the Class B/C/D Tournament unchanged.
“The gist of the move from classes to divisions was to equalize the path to championships for students of all schools, regardless of the size of those schools,” said MHSAA Executive Director Jack Roberts.
While the restructuring accomplished that goal for the majority of competitors, opposition exists now as it did then. The primary argument in opposition to the changes is that, in some sports, it increases the range between largest and smallest schools in the division for smallest schools, even as the range is usually reduced for other divisions.
Larger schools offered a counterpoint.
“The larger schools suggested that while they may have more students, they also attempt to sponsor more sports than the smaller schools, in some cases spreading the enrollment as thin as a much smaller school with fewer sports,” Roberts said.
“Even today, the idea of four equal divisions can be unpopular among some Class D schools which feel especially burdened by the equal division concept,” Roberts said. “There was enough opposition in 1997 that equal divisions were rejected for boys and girls basketball and girls volleyball, and some of that opposition remains.”
The numbers of schools sponsoring each MHSAA tournament are still close to the totals today, with the exception of soccer in both genders, which has enjoyed substantial increases. This spring, 466 girls teams were scheduled to compete in the MHSAA Soccer Tournament, while 473 boys teams will suit up this fall.
Since the beginning of MHSAA divisions in 1996 with wrestling, 147 additional team champions have been crowned and countless individuals have known the thrill of victory due to an extra level of Finals in various sports. Girls soccer has seen the most growth in opportunity, moving from two classes in 1987 to three divisions the following year, and then four divisions in 2000. Boys soccer had enjoyed four classes for two years prior to the new four-division format, and it was the sport of soccer that helped to create a caveat in the nearly equal division movement.
Lower Peninsula boys and girls swimming & diving expanded from two to three divisions in 2008, while boys and girls bowling are the most recent sports to enjoy increased tournament opportunity, adding a fourth division in 2010.
“Fairness is in the eye of the beholder. While having the same number of schools in each division is one kind of fairness, holding in check the enrollment range between the largest and smallest schools in Division 4 is another kind of fairness that is dear to a great number of people,” Roberts said. “Because more schools sponsor basketball and volleyball than other sports, Class D schools would have been least affected by the equal divisions concept in those sports; but that, and ‘tradition,’ did not dissuade the opponents in the 1990s.”
The shift to divisions not only paved the way for student-athletes, but also assisted administrators and schools hosting tournaments. MHSAA tournament mangers looked to equal divisions to more closely equalize the number of schools in District or Regional Tournaments and to better equalize the length of day required for these rounds of tournaments, both for management and participating teams and individuals.
Pinning down an answer
Wrestling became the first MHSAA Tournament to be conducted in nearly equal divisions when team and individual champions were crowned in Divisions 1, 2, 3 and 4 rather than Classes A, B, C/D for the 1996 winter championships.
The movement was well received, as schools saw more opportunity for success: four champions where there once were three at the District, Regional and Final levels, and a smaller range of enrollment between the smallest and largest school in all four tournaments, leading to the impetus for the Fall 1996 Update Meeting Survey of schools regarding similar movement in other sports.
Team champions that year were Holt (D1), Petoskey (D2), Middleville Thornapple Kellogg (D3) and Dundee (D4).
Getting their kicks
When the "equal divisions" concept was approved by the Representative Council for most MHSAA Tournaments for the 1997-98 school year, there was opposition from the smallest schools which, under the equal divisions, are forced to play against larger schools than reside in Class D. Compelling arguments were made – and still are – that an enrollment difference between schools with smaller enrollments (e.g., Class D) is more difficult to overcome in athletic competition than an even larger enrollment difference between schools with larger enrollments (e.g., Class A).
The opposition was most intense in soccer because of the number of students needed to field a team and the physical nature of the sport. As a result, from 2000-01 through 2010-11, soccer operated with a “20-percent modification.” This placed 20 percent of all schools that actually sponsored soccer in Division 4, and the remaining 80 percent were placed equally in Divisions 1, 2 and 3.
At the time the 20 percent modification was adopted, it was also established that soccer would return to four equal divisions when the largest Division 4 soccer school had an enrollment equal to or smaller than the mid point for Class C schools. That occurred in 2010.
Last class on the schedule
In the same volume of “history being the best teacher,” one can also find the adage, “times change.” While the division format was a welcome change in some sports, others were left to hold class without change.
In the sports of boys and girls basketball, and girls volleyball, the number of schools sponsoring the sports were so close to the overall membership of the MHSAA that divisions were not necessary; the enrollment breakdowns themselves were enough to delineate equal opportunity for tournament success.
That is no longer the case, according to MHSAA membership. The last move from classes to divisions occurred for the 2006-07 school year following Council action. Before this May, that is. Action at the most recent Representative Council meeting, May 2017, called for the shift to divisions for MHSAA Boys and Girls Basketball, and Girls Volleyball, beginning with the 2018-19 season.
“Because the MHSAA Volleyball Committee had requested this change several times a number of years ago, and because the Council felt the change inevitable, there should not be further delay,” Roberts said. “It is an important detail that the Class D maximum has dropped 50 students over the past decade so the objection that much larger schools would be competing in Division 4 isn’t very strong now.”
Using the 2017-18 enrollment figures, just eight Class C schools would be competing in Division 4 for boys basketball, 11 for girls basketball and 14 for girls volleyball.
Good things came of the previous most-recent switches in 2006-07. Competitive Cheer was re-classified from Class A, B and C-D into four equal divisions assisting in the rapid growth of sponsoring schools (approximately 80 schools per division). Alpine skiing was changed from Class A and B-C D to two equal divisions.
At that time, the MHSAA Basketball Committee had recommended to the Council the study of increased classifications, but status quo remained.
Back on the grid
As such, MHSAA Basketball and Volleyball remained the only holdovers of the MHSAA class structure. Discussion resurfaced periodically during the last two decades to bring those tournaments in line with the other MHSAA sports.
Regular-season football-playing schools are separated by class, then are reshuffled by divisions for the playoffs. Football, as we know, underwent a significant postseason facelift in the late 1990s.
While MHSAA Football also remained a class sport through 1998, it had expanded from four to eight classes from 1990-98, becoming the first MHSAA sport to crown more than four team champions. Member schools were asked to consider a pair of options in November of 1997. One called for eight equal divisions, and the second would leave Class D by itself as division 8, and split Class A, B and C schools into seven nearly equal divisions.
After much discussion, retooling, and crunching of formulas, the MHSAA unveiled its revised Football Playoff model that continues to roll today, nearly 20 years later. It was determined that 256 teams would qualify for the tournament based first on a minimum of six wins, then by Playoff Points determined by formula. From there, the field would be divided into eight divisions, with the field being filled out by a nearly equal number of five-win teams in each division as needed to reach 256.
Eight championships would indeed be enough, until football sponsorship among the MHSAA’s smallest schools – some with rich football traditions – began to trend downward. The MHSAA again went to the drawing board, examining the viability of 8-player football. After an experimental year in 2010 without a tournament, the 8-player game was playoff-ready for 2011, with a field of 16 qualifiers embarking on a four-week tournament.
Not only did the 8-player option restore recently canceled programs, but it also created teams in schools which previously had none, and convinced some 11-player schools that this new division was the best path to take.
What did this do for the Class D holdovers staying in the traditional 11-player game? Well, a couple of things, positive and negative. As two and three dozen Class D schools opted for the 8-player game, the remaining 11-player Class D schools at times found themselves in disrupted leagues and had to travel further to complete schedules. They also competed against larger teams in Division 8 of the 11-player MHSAA Football Playoffs.
However, the growth of the 8-player game among the smallest schools also resulted in more Class D schools qualifying for the MHSAA Football Playoffs than ever before. In 2012, an all-time high 44 percent of Class D schools sponsoring football qualified for either the 8-player tournament or Division 8 of the 11-player tournament. That compared to 42.2 percent of Class C schools, 44.9 percent of Class B schools and 41.6 percent of Class A schools which qualified for the 2012 playoffs.
Much is to be determined in the most recent chapter of MHSAA Tournament expansion as the 8-Player Football Playoffs welcome a second division. As the past illustrates, there will be pluses and minuses. History also shows that the MHSAA has received maximum input from its constituents, researched all possibilities, and will find solutions to questions still in the balance before an additional group of athletes hoists a new trophy in November.
Through the Years
A chronology of when which sports moved from Class to Division in the MHSAA.
1995-96: LP Wrestling
1997-98: Baseball, Boys Soccer, Girls Soccer, Softball, LP Girls Tennis, LP Boys Tennis
1998-99: LP Boys Golf, LP Girls Golf
1999-2000: Ice Hockey, LP Boys Track & Field, LP Girls Track & Field
2000-01: LP Boys Cross Country, LP Girls Cross Country, UP Boys Cross Country, UP Girls Cross Country, UP Boys Golf, UP Girls Golf, UP Boys Tennis, UP Girls Tennis, UP Boys Track & Field, UP Girls Track & Field
2002-03: LP Girls Swimming & Diving, LP Boys Swimming & Diving
2005-06: Boys Bowling, Girls Bowling
2006-07: Girls Competitive Cheer, Boys Skiing, Girls Skiing
2018-19: Boys Basketball, Girls Basketball, Girls Volleyball
Note: Boys and Girls Lacrosse has been a divisional sport since it began in during the 2004-05 school year.
'Trail-Blazing' Girls Make Convincing Case, Earn Deserved Due on Basketball Court
By
Ron Pesch
MHSAA historian
March 31, 2022
After two years of pandemic uncertainty, with the completion of the MHSAA’s annual Girls Basketball Finals, it is time for a glance back to 50 years ago and the state’s first girls basketball tournament.
The 2022 weekend was a delight, with fans, student sections, and pep bands returning to cheer and motivate. With a half-century of perspective, a deeper dive into the history of the girls tournament shows those first years were truly trailblazing times. It’s easy to forget that things we take for granted today, like in-season ranking of the state’s top teams, Miss Basketball Awards, season-ending all-state squads, and college scholarships for female scholars/athletes weren’t always a part of the prep world, or even that prep athletics for girls as we know them today didn’t exist before the early 1970s.
“Before the passage of Title IX in 1972, fewer than 300,000 females participated in athletics nationwide, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations,” noted Geoff Kimmerly of the MHSAA.
“During the 2019-20 school year – the most recent not affected by the COVID-19 pandemic – nearly 76,000 girls competed in athletics in Michigan alone, filling more than 120,000 spots on teams for 750 high schools statewide.”
A Changing World
In December 1971, Allen W. Bush, state director for the Michigan High School Athletic Association, spoke to a group of about 600 athletic directors and principals at the Civic Auditorium in Grand Rapids. There he advised schools to prepare their budgets for girls sports in the coming years.
“I anticipate there will be a fairly wide program for girls next year run on state level competition,” he explained.
Brice Durbin, the executive secretary of the Kansas State High School Activities Association, and today remembered as the “father of girls high school sports in Kansas,” was the event’s principal speaker. Kansas had already made the moves Michigan would soon embark upon.
“Girls want to participate in sports and, you know, they’re pretty doggone persuasive,” said Durbin, telling the story of one school official who stated a girls athletic program would never happen in his school. A year later, the individual called Durbin, asking how to start a track program.
“It seems one girl who was about to become a ninth grader had been traveling around the country and doing well in meets. And it also turned out that her father was the head of the board of education.”
At the time, skiing was the only sport with sponsorship for girls at the statewide level in Michigan. Gymnastics came next in March of 1972.
That same month, Pat Murphy of the Lansing State Journal wrote, “Another bastion of male chauvinism may be crumbling. High School basketball – long dominated by the boys – is attracting girl cagers in ever growing numbers.
“A state tournament for girls teams may even be in the future, according to Lonnie D. Lowery, assistant state director of athletics for the (MHSAA).”
Administration Challenges
The MHSAA understood sponsoring postseason championships for the girls would present challenges, seen and unforeseen.
One of the immediate issues to surface with the sponsorship of athletics for girls was a shortage of coaches. According to MHSAA regulations, only women could serve as coaches for the girls, but in May of 1972, the MHSAA removed the restriction. It would take a couple of years, but the state would see a broad shift.
Another issue, stated Vern L. Norris, associate director of the MHSAA, was there weren’t many women officials. The Association’s list – spanning all sports – included just 160 names in July of 1972. The Association hoped the sponsorship of girls tournament games would inspire additional interest. “…(W)e’d be tickled to have them,” said Norris.
In October 1972, the first girls tennis tournament was conducted. Next up was swimming, first held that November. Golf followed in May of 1973, then track.
On May 31, 1973, details appeared in the State Journal announcing final approval of an MHSAA sponsored girls basketball tournament, scheduled to begin in late November. Just two years prior, 296 schools stated they sponsored girls basketball in Michigan. According to report, the number now totaled 507.
Like the boys tournament, which dated back to 1917 in Michigan, there were to be four champions christened with the title games played in December at four high school gymnasiums around the state. The schedule was chosen for the event, said Norris, “because most schools start girls basketball early in the fall since the girls do not compete in football. Many girls then compete in volleyball after Christmas, and a state girls’ volleyball tournament will be staged in the spring, starting in 1974,’ he added.
That scheduling decision would be challenged, and ultimately, changed.
Changes on the Court
Girls basketball had been played in Michigan as far back as 1898. The traditional girls’ rules known to most prior to the 1970s – six players on the floor, three stationed at each end of the floor – were established in 1938. With the announcement of a postseason, those rules were replaced. Action on the court across Michigan would now be nearly identical to the boys’ game.
“Many girls teams were already using the boys rules,” said Bush. Standardizing to five-player ball, many felt, made girls basketball easier to understand. “The rules we’ll be using were written by women coaches and adopted by the National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations.”
By June, the number of schools that indicated they would sponsor girls basketball teams that coming fall had swelled to 629.
Money-wise, the MHSAA expected that the girls postseason would operate in the red, but the Association’s focus was long-term. At the time, financial support for the Association came solely from profits derived from the annual boys basketball tournament. Then, as now, no government funds or tax dollars supported the MHSAA, a private, not-for-profit corporation of voluntary membership.
“Only two years ago it cost the MHSAA $25,000 over and above ticket receipts to conduct the state wrestling tournament,” noted Jim DeLand in the Benton Harbor Herald-Palladium in 1973, “but last year, because of greatly increased fan support, the deficit was down to only $3,000. The state baseball tournament initiated two years ago has been much more successful in all respects than anticipated, although it still is not operating in the black.”
“The potential is here (for girls basketball) to be a very popular event,” Norris said, adding that the Iowa girls tournament (where the coaches were “almost all male,” and six-player basketball would continue through the 1993 season) nearly overshadows the boys tournament.
That first year of MHSAA postseason sponsorship, there was flexibility in when the girls opened and ended their season. Most schools started their season in September. However, the Detroit Catholic League chose November to begin play.
Changes in Sports Coverage
Back in early November of 1972, another State Journal article entitled “Michigan Closing the Gap in Girls Sports” had appeared in print. The article had compared Michigan’s “attitudes toward girls’ high school sports to Iowa. This one acknowledged the effects of pressure being brought by the state’s athletes and physical education teachers, as well as the success of club sports programs found in many of the more affluent areas of Michigan.
“Substantial numbers of them have come to feel, in the last few years, that intramural activities simply aren’t enough – that girls’ sports should be carried the next logical step into the interscholastic arena, as boys’ athletics were many decades ago. There was really nothing that prevented it from happening before, except the disinterest of prep girls themselves. Rightly or wrongly, the vast majority of them believed (or were taught to believe) that true competitive athletics were no place for proper young women.”
A few days later, in the same paper’s “Letters to the Editor” column, reader Christine Convissor cut through the rhetoric, and asked, “If Michigan is closing the gap on girls sports, why not report on some of the games?”
Concluding, she wrote, “On behalf of the girl cages in the Lansing area alone (as I know there are many more around the state) I would say we have the talent. Now, how about some publicity?”
Convissor, as it turned out, was a senior basketball player at Lansing Catholic Central at the time but had noted the gender disparity in coverage. Recalling the moment five decades later she mentioned, “My dad got a kick out of this letter. He was a real estate agent and worked nights, so when he arrived at the games it was something special! Even more so now.”
Convissor’s father died unexpectedly of a heart attack just a few months after the letter’s publication.
When the light switch was flicked on, it was unrealistic to expect instant parity with boys’ sports programs. But the push for equality was certainly a challenge for many people.
The state’s sports prep administrators would wrestle with the changes. As illustrated by the growth in sponsorship by schools of girls athletics, the arrival of a basketball program was completely new in many districts. In quite a few areas, where the girls’ game had all but disappeared or evolved into intramural play decades before, attracting fans to games was a task.
For many newspapers and their sportswriters, interscholastic athletics for females, and the resulting demand for column inches in the sports section, was an unwelcome invasion.
Some coaches were quick to recognize the challenges the athletes faced, on the court and off.
At St. Joseph, in southwest Michigan, the “first season girls varsity basketball, comparable to boys varsity sports, began” with a team during the 1972-73 school year, according to the school’s yearbook. The first team did well, finishing with a 10-1 record. But newspaper coverage of the season is all but nonexistent.
Coach Fred Knuth took over the girls team at St. Joe the following year but had only four days between being hired to coach the squad and establishing his roster.
Knuth came from a family of 11 kids. “Most of us all played sports,” he recalled, 50 years later. “We were a family that loved competition.” (Kim Knuth of St. Joseph, Fred’s niece and daughter of his brother Dan, was named Michigan’s Miss Basketball in 1994.)
Among those Fred coached that first year was his sister, 6-foot center, Chris. His top player was guard Melanie Taylor, a senior who possessed a jump shot, unusual among girls at the time.
“The girls haven’t had the organization and training like the boys and their game experience is very limited,” Knuth told the Benton Harbor Herald-Palladium in an October article that summarized activity among the area’s girls cage teams.
Knuth was coaching girls for the first time. “Their biggest problem is that they don’t know how to react under pressure. And the only way they can get this kind of experience is through programs in the lower grades. That’s something we are working on now and it will pay off in the future.”
“We did not get much coverage at all (during the season) until we got to the tournament,” recalled the 82-year-old Knuth. “In the (Regional Semifinals), the newspaper picked us up.”
The Bears were an impressive 16-0 and scheduled to play Adrian in the Thursday night doubleheader, played at Kalamazoo Central High School. According to the postgame article, written by Herald-Palladium sports editor Jim Deland, Chris Knuth “plucked off 27 rebounds … with star guard Melanie Taylor tossing in 13 first-half points,” as St. Joseph led Adrian, 32-10 at the intermission.
“Substitutes carried most of the load the rest of the way,” noted DeLand. “All told, 12 different girls scored for St. Joe,” in the team’s 55-34 win.
“They talked about all the girls, and what we were trying to accomplish,” remembered Knuth, his pride on display in the memory. “That was pretty nice.”
The Bears fell to East Lansing, 50-48, in the Regional Final. St. Joe led, 48-47, with 50 seconds remaining to play. Taylor finished with 26 points, including all the team’s points in the first quarter.
“That was my biggest regret, that we couldn’t win that one,” said Knuth, who was the only male coach in the tournament at Kalamazoo. His girls finished 17-1 on the year. “I had a very good rebounding team, but the ball didn’t seem to bounce our way. But that’s sports.”
“Sex bias in the local newspaper? The girls varsity basketball team was mean; but, except for their opponents and the relatively sparse crowds that turned out to see them, no one seemed to know about it. Very little newspaper coverage was lent to the undefeated team,” stated the St. Joseph High School annual at the end of the school year.
Opportunity
The complaint about lack of coverage was common. In March of 1973, a new magazine debuted. “The Sportswoman,” a bi-monthly launched by 26-year-old Marlene Jensen, broached the “male-dominated World of sports.”
Nationally, there were very few women reporting sports. Occasionally, Michigan papers included a few column inches from female stringers, but it would take more time before one of the state’s major dailies hired a woman for the sports staff.
“I started covering sports in 1977 as a stringer for The Grand Rapids Press,” recalled Ruth Butler, “mostly prep.”
“I did not aim at sports for a career. A friend was working as a stringer, mentioned they wanted someone to take scores and game info on the phones. I wanted a summer job. After a couple weeks on the phones, I was assigned a feature, and then another.
“In ’78, a new sports editor made it a priority for The Press to cover girls sports. Perhaps not at the same level as the established boys, but seriously and visibly. One of his first moves: Hiring the first female for a newspaper staff in Michigan. I was that person and managed high school sports coverage.”
Eventually, more females would follow.
Tournament Time
With the opening of the Districts, some were quick to proclaim the tournament a “failure.”
“Crowds reported to UPI by tournament managers Saturday night, ranged from a near invisible 60 at Muskegon Oakridge to 1,000 who showed up at Gladwin and Battle Creek Lakeview,” wrote United Press International’s Richard Shook. “Most of the districts sampled had turnouts ranging from 200 up to 600 – and most of the tournament directors managed a wan ‘we hope to break even.’“
Only 86 people attended the Class A District championship between St. Joseph and Niles, according to the Herald-Palladium. Played at Benton Harbor, the game, unfortunately, was scheduled against season-opening boys basketball games at the two schools.
“‘Two hundred persons showed up to watch Hudsonville Unity Christian nip Hudsonville, 55-52, and… Roger Borr (athletic director at host Holland West Ottawa) was ‘crying the blues,’” continued Shook.
But not all reports were downbeat.
“’We drew 800-900 for three games,’ said Tom Eaton, principal at Mason Country Central, of that school’s Class C District. ‘We’ll make a profit.’
‘’’We broke even of maybe even made a little money,” Joan Shirkey reported of her Harper Woods Bishop Gallagher District. ‘We had crowds of 300-400.’
“We had 347,” football coach and athletic director Dick Soisson said of his Kalamazoo District title game. “We drew just under 1,000 for the three nights.”
Soisson was among those who could see the bigger picture and envision the potential of the tourney.
“’I can see how this thing can grow,” he told Shook. “Parchment had never won a boys district game – now their girls have won a district title.’”
Before the opening of the Quarterfinals, Hal Schram of the Detroit Free Press reported that some tournament contests in greater Detroit “drew as few as 70 or 80 spectators a game,” and that “there wasn’t a single crowd that hit 800 fans,” in the area.
At East Kentwood High School, “just outside of Grand Rapids where the Class B finals will be staged,” athletic director James Czanko told Schram that he couldn’t understand the apathy. “The parents don’t even come to the games.”
“The small schools, the Class C and D squads, are drawing the biggest crowds,” noted the veteran prep writer.
“That’s easy to understand,” says William Bupp of Alma, tournament director of the Class D Semifinals and Finals. “Girls’ basketball belonged to the small towns long before you saw it in the big cities.”
The Class A Semifinal and championship games were played at Grand Blanc. East Kentwood hosted the Class B contests, while Class C was scheduled at Owosso. Alma High School welcomed the Class D games. All the final championship games kicked off on Saturday, Dec. 15 at 2:30 p.m.
More Than Missed Shots and Dollars and Cents …
Behind closed doors – but occasionally in print – some mocked the changes happening in the world of sports.
“The Class A battle at Grand Blanc ‘lured’ 635 fans and Owosso ‘packed in’ 270 for the Class C tilt,” wrote Bruce Johns in a column in the Flint Journal following the tournament. “Each of the boy’s championship games last March at Ann Arbor drew 13,609 spectators.
“Why the low turnouts? Because it’s the first year? I think the reason is because it’s boring. Before you want to fry me, hear me out. I covered only two tournament games but came up with these statistics: 130 turnovers, or, 32½ per team per game and 65-for-251 shooting for a .358 average.
“Female coaches claim their teams play good defense. That’s easy to say when the other team can’t handle the ball or shoot. Ballhandling and shooting form the offense in basketball. Maybe some parents and a few school loyalists will cheer their locals on but the average fan doesn’t care to watch mediocrity.
“But you girls should be proud because you finally got this thing off the ground,” concluded Johns. “And, in the future, it should really go over big with development of basketball programs.”
… Rather, it’s About What Came After
The tournament was about more than numbers. The perspective of Detroit Cass Tech coach Shirley Burke put the existence of the postseason into proper perspective.
“The tournament has definitely increased interest in girls’ basketball,” she told Luther Keith of the Detroit News, “from the spectators point of view and given girls more incentive. In the past, nobody cared if we won or lost, and the tournament gives the girls something to shoot for after the regular season.
Dominican coach Sue Kruszewski concurred: “The tournament has been very exciting for the girls. It’s just a thrill meeting different teams from outside the city. The tournament has been overdue, and I’m just glad it’s finally here.”
Parents, brothers, sisters, and some 500 fans greeted the Ewen-Trout Creek girls upon their return from their 1,200-mile round trip to Alma.
“A welcome-home celebration with all the trimmings, including a motorcade of automobiles to greet them at Kenton (21 miles away) and a huge pep rally in the high school gymnasium finished off a perfect weekend for the all-conquering undefeated Class D State champion Pantherettes … here Sunday night,” declared the Ironwood Daily Globe.
“We thought we had seen everything when our boys brought home the state championship a year and a half ago, finishing unbeaten in 26 straight games but now our girls have won a state title too, by finishing undefeated in 23 straight games, said Superintendent Ray Rigoni, Jr.”
Veteran basketball official Ben Manning of Trout Creek also celebrated the moment.
“The father of Sandy Manning and former stars Jim and Bob Manning, he beamed like a proud father would, saying, “I cheered harder and longer for these girls than I did for the boys. … It seemed that our family wouldn’t have anybody left to cheer for when the boys got through at Trout Creek High School, but we hadn’t counted on our girl getting a chance to play.”
At Unity Christian, “the Championship Crusaders were given a parade in their honor from Jenison to Hudsonville,” wrote Dave Bos in the Grand Valley Shoppers Guide, “and at a special assembly Monday, the big State Title Trophy was given to the school by coach (Sue) Constant.”
(Bos, boys JV coach and varsity assistant, would later serve as athletic director at Unity Christian. His daughter, Jane, would later play sports at Unity, then work for 27 years at The Grand Rapids Press, serving as Preps Editor in later years for the paper.)
Two of the schools, Dominican and St. Lads – would repeat as state champions in 1974. And, in both cases, their coaches would move up.
At Dominican, Kruszewski’s teams had won 303 of 366 basketball games. In May 1977, she left the school, recruited to start the women’s athletic program at the University of Detroit.
After nine years at Hamtramck St. Ladislaus, coach Gloria Soluk moved to Wayne State as head coach for three seasons, then on to the University of Michigan in September of 1977. At Michigan, she replaced Carmel Borders, who had guided Ann Arbor St. Thomas to the MHSAA Class D Semifinal round in 1973.
“It’s been one of my dreams for years,” Soluk told the Michigan Daily. An alum, she had earned a master’s degree in counseling and guidance at Michigan. “I love U-M both for its academics and its athletics.”
Standing Ovation
One player from this first tournament - Melanie Megge – altered the opinions about girls basketball for many people, by illustrating what would be coming their way in the future.
A 5-5 guard, Megge broke the Class A championship game wide open for Dominican, scoring 16 points in the fourth quarter on her way to a tournament-high total of 38. With sensational outside shooting, “she smashed forever the myth that girls can’t play basketball as well as boys,” stated The Associated Press story on the title game. “She seemed equally at ease driving the baseline for twisting layups with either hand, hitting jumpers from the top of the key or playing defense in the Dominican press. Leading 26-23, the senior combined with backcourt teammate, junior Lynn Chadwick (16 points), to bust open the game against Grand Rapids Christian.”
“She could do it all – dribble, pass, play tight defense, and most of all, shoot,” wrote Bob Cooper of the Livingston County Daily Press and Argus, one of the harshest critics of the girls’ game prior to the contest. (Earlier in the same article, Cooper had expressed shock that “tournament officials were actually going to entrust half of this game to the judgement of a female” referee.) “Melanie … received a standing ovation when she left the game. I’m proud to say this reporter was one of those standing.”
“Girls high school basketball, at least at the championship level, is of good quality and highly entertaining. Even the referee with the dress did a nice job.”
Ron Pesch has taken an active role in researching the history of MHSAA events since 1985 and began writing for MHSAA Finals programs in 1986, adding additional features and "flashbacks" in 1992. He inherited the title of MHSAA historian from the late Dick Kishpaugh following the 1993-94 school year, and resides in Muskegon. Contact him at [email protected] with ideas for historical articles.
PHOTOS (Top) Melanie Taylor (42) from St. Joseph was one of the first stars after the MHSAA began sponsoring girls basketball. (Middle) Vern Norris, left, and Allen Bush hold the 1974 boys basketball championship trophies. (Below) Hudsonville Unity Christian girls basketball coach Sue Constant shows the Class B championship trophy won by her team. (Photos collected by Ron Pesch.)