4 Sports Streamed This Week on MHSAA TV
March 8, 2016
By John Johnson
MHSAA Communications Director
There’s lot of MHSAA Tournament action with live streaming video on the MHSAA.tv website this week, including Finals in Girls Gymnastics, Ice Hockey and Lower Peninsula Boys Swimming & Diving.
The streams will include a number of Basketball Tournament games from Boys District and Girls Regional play produced by participants in the MHSAA’s School Broadcast Program.
The championship live streaming begins Thursday at 5 p.m. with the first of two Division 2 Semifinal games in the Ice Hockey Tournament. Division 3 and 1 Semifinals follow on Friday (March 11), with the Finals on Saturday (March 12).
Here’s the complete Ice Hockey coverage schedule:
• Thursday – Division 2 Semifinals
Utica Eisenhower/Detroit U-D Jesuit Quarterfinal winner v. Saginaw Swan Valley/Detroit Catholic Central winner – 5 p.m.
East Kentwood/Brighton Quarterfinal winner v. Rockford/Grandville winner – 7:30 p.m.
• Friday – Division 3 Semifinals
Detroit Country Day/Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood Quarterfinal winner v. Hancock/Sault Ste. Marie winner – 11 a.m.
Grand Rapids Catholic Central/Saginaw Heritage Quarterfinal winner v. Gibraltar Carlson/Chelsea winner – 1:30 p.m.
• Friday – Division 1 Semifinals
Hartland/Birmingham Brother Rice Quarterfinal winner v. Livonia Stevenson/Trenton winner – 5 p.m.
Marquette/Ada Forest Hills Eastern Quarterfinal winner v. Romeo/New Baltimore Anchor Bay winner – 7:30 p.m.
• Saturday – Finals
10 a.m. – Division 2
2 p.m. – Division 3
6 p.m. – Division 1
Girls Gymnastics coverage begins at 2 p.m. Friday with Team Finals competition at Rockford High School and will be followed Saturday with the Individual Finals at Noon. This event will be produced by the School Broadcast Program at Rockford High School. There will be a dedicated camera on each apparatus (Bars, Balance Beam, Floor Exercise, Vault), with an announcer providing information on each channel regarding who is competing in each event at a given time.
Lower Peninsula Boys Swimming and Diving coverage begins at noon Saturday at three locations, with the consolation and championship heat in each swimming event, plus the final round of the diving.
The continued Gymnastics, Hockey and Swimming coverage is part of six straight weekends of live MHSAA Championship coverage on MHSAA.tv, and online viewers can catch every weekend of action for one low cost of $14.95.
A Month Pass on MHSAA.tv for $14.95 will give a viewer access to events over a 30-day period from the time it is purchased. Over the next two weeks of live winter championship coverage, the following events will be featured:
- Boys Basketball Regionals – March 14-16
- Girls Basketball Quarterfinals – March 15
- Girls Basketball Semifinals – March 17-18
- Boys Basketball Quarterfinals – March 22
- Boys Basketball Semifinals – March 24-25
A Day Pass is available for $9.95. All events will be available for free on-demand viewing by Wednesday the week following their initial live airing.
The MHSAA Championship Radio Network begins three straight weekends of winter tournament coverage this weekend at the Ice Hockey Semifinals and Finals. The audio stream is available at MHSAANetwork.com. Over the following two weekends, the MHSAA Championship Radio Network also will carry the Semifinals and Finals of the Girls and Boys Basketball Tournaments for distribution on an over-the-air network of radio stations, and on the internet.
The School Broadcast Program gives members an opportunity to showcase excellence in their schools by creating video programming of athletic and non-athletic events with students gaining skills in announcing, camera operation, directing/producing and graphics. The program also gives schools the opportunity to raise money through advertising and viewing subscriptions.
This week’s coverage of MHSAA Basketball includes a Class A Boys Basketball District featuring the No. 3 team – East Lansing High School, a Class A Girls Basketball Regional at Mason, a Class A Girls Basketball Regional at Hudsonville and a Class C Girls Basketball Regional at Marquette where two 2015 champions – Calumet (No. 3 – 2015 Class C champion) and St. Ignace (No. 6 – 2015 Class D champion), could square off in the Final.
Here’s the schedule of School Broadcast Program members planning to cover varsity competition this week for broadcast on MHSAA.tv (As of March 7):
March 8
• Class A Girls Basketball Regional Semifinals at Mason
Battle Creek Lakeview v. East Lansing – 6 p.m.
Jackson Northwest v. Kalamazoo Central – 7:30 p.m.
• Class A Girls Basketball Regional Semifinals at Hudsonville
Hudsonville v. Greenville – 6 p.m. – LIVE
Muskegon Mona Shores v. Grand Rapids Christian – 8 p.m. – LIVE
• Class C Girls Basketball Regional Semifinals at Marquette
Negaunee v. Calumet – 6 p.m. – LIVE
Iron Mountain v. St. Ignace – 8 p.m. – LIVE
March 9
• Class A Boys Basketball District Semifinal at East Lansing
Lansing Eastern v. Haslett-Grand Ledge winner – 5 p.m. - LIVE
DeWitt v. East Lansing-Lansing Waverly winner – 7:30 p.m. – LIVE
March 10
- Class A Girls Basketball Regional Final at Mason
- Class A Girls Basketball Regional Final at Hudsonville
- Class C Girls Basketball Regional Final at Marquette
March 11
- Class A Boys Basketball District Final at East Lansing
March 14
- Class C Boys Basketball Regional Semifinals at Flint Hamady - 6 & 7:30 p.m.
- Class D Boys Basketball Regional Semifinals at Negaunee - 6 & 8 p.m.
- Class D Boys Basketball Regional Semifinals at Mt. Pleasant Sacred Heart - 6 & 7:45 p.m.
March 15
- Class A Girls Basketball Quarterfinals at Fenton – 7 p.m.
- Class A Girls Basketball Quarterfinals at Fowlerville – 7 p.m.
- Class D Girls Basketball Quarterfinals at Negaunee – 7 p.m. (Dependent on match-up)
March 16
- Class C Boys Basketball Regional Final at Flint Hamady – 7 p.m.
- Class D Boys Basketball Regional Final at Negaunee – 7 p.m.
- Class D Boys Basketball Regional Final at Mt. Pleasant Sacred Heart – 7 p.m.
Schools interested in becoming a part of the School Broadcast Program should contact John Johnson at the MHSAA Office.
1975 Class D Football Film Finds Way Back to MHSAA for All to Enjoy Again
By
John Johnson
MHSAA Communications Director emeritus
April 11, 2023
Chasing history was one of the most enjoyable parts of serving at the MHSAA for nearly 34 years. Researching information, but especially what I considered for a long time to be talking to the “old guys” (now I’m one of them) and soaking up their verbal histories of our games.
It also involved chasing down old photos, broadcasts and game films – especially those which preceded our more modern video era beginning in the 1990s.
When I arrived at the MHSAA in 1987, there was a shelf of old 16mm film canisters of an assortment of Boys Basketball Finals from the 1950s to the 70s – certainly not a complete set. The Association would shoot some game action from each quarter and the trophy presentations. They’d be sent out to the participating schools to show to the students (I remember watching a Mt. Pleasant Sacred Heart game in 1967 when I was in fifth grade). Some would find their way back to the office – most would not.
Will Robinson, the legendary Detroit Public School League coach who led Pershing High School to the league’s first MHSAA titles (in 1967 and 1970) after a district-imposed hiatus from 1931-61 from statewide tournaments, would pull my chain every time we saw each other about those games featuring Spencer Haywood and Ralph Simpson, among others. We never found them.
So it became a project to try and track down as many old game films of state championships as we could.
Any conversation with someone with a history tone always included a question about the whereabouts of a game film or video. One of those recently bore fruit.
When Crystal Falls Forest Park played in the 8-Player Football Finals at the Superior Dome in Marquette back in 2017, I spent a lot of time talking with living legend Bill Santilli, who led the Trojans to the Class D crown in the very first year of the tournament in 1975, and who would later coach the school to a second state title (2007) and serve as athletic director. He said he had a box on his desk collecting dust that he didn’t know what to do with – that box contained an old video tape from that game.
I uttered four little words – “Send It To Me.”
After a while the tape arrived in East Lansing, and I got our video production friends at When We Were Young Productions/Rush Media in Wisconsin on it. This winter, they found someone who could convert it and sent me a file that was recently posted to the MHSAASPORTS Channel on YouTube. You can watch the Trojans play Flint Holy Rosary by Clicking Here or watching above.
There are all kinds of old game films/videos and artifacts in attics, closets, garages, etc., in every town. Two of our Muskegon historians – Ron Pesch, the MHSAA’s history guy; and the old broadcaster, Jim Moyes, who called games on the radio for years in the Port City – can tell stories of their own about discoveries they have made. Moyes found all kinds of mementos while working on his book on the history of high school track & field in Michigan, and sitting with Ron at this year’s Girls Basketball Finals, he told a story of finding the mother lode of photographs from one of his other historical passions – silent film star Buster Keaton – who spent ten summers in the Actor’s Colony in Muskegon.
Pesch found a listing for Eleanor Keaton, Buster’s widow, using a telephone book (remember those?), made a phone call and shortly thereafter, on a vacation to California, was in her living room where he was loaned a photo album and family scrapbook containing all kinds of images from their time in Muskegon. Many of those images appear in a soon-to-be-released documentary, while the album and scrapbook now reside in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library in Beverly Hills, Calif. You can preview the film by Clicking Here.
So if you think you have something of a state championship that could be utilized on a bigger platform and enjoyed by everyone, drop a note to [email protected]. If something needs to be converted to a more modern format, you’ll get a copy back, and the footage will be eventually viewable on the MHSAA’s YouTube channel.
To help guide your search, think in the following terms:
► Just about anything before 1990. But there are gaps during the 90s that need to be filled as well.
► Only Championship games and Semifinal games, unless something momentous occurred (like Richie Jordan’s 60-point game for Fennville against Bridgman in a Regional Semifinal in 1965, which is still an all-time tournament single-game record for boys basketball).
► For a list of what’s in the MHSAA archives prior to 2000 – Click Here. A long-term project is to get all of the games on the list and up to about 2010 uploaded to the YouTube channel. Most games from 2013-14 on can be viewed on the NFHS Network, and some games between 2010 and 2013 are available for purchase as DVDs from PrepFilms.com.
PHOTO Posing with the championship trophy after the 1975 Class D Football Final are (left to right): Forest Park tight end Bryan LaChapelle, quarterback Richard Mettlach, head coach Dick Mettlach and running back Bill Santilli.