Jackson Area Efforts Net New Officials
February 16, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Recruitment of new high school officials to eventually take the reins from those currently conducting MHSAA events is a challenge faced all over Michigan.
The Jackson Area Officials Association is working to restock its ranks by recruiting directly from local schools and developing them with help from veteran mentors.
Eight new officials – ages 15 to 24 – who worked a series of youth and middle school games together earlier this month, are among those who have been introduced through a program that begins with a meeting at the end of the high school basketball season between JAOA official Bill Walker and local athletic directors, coaches, fellow officials and other young adults he’s made contact with over the course of a season. From that meeting, Walker builds a list of potential candidates to become officials and then invites them to the annual JAOA Legacy Camp in June.
The camp includes two days of scrimmages between local teams, plus classroom and mechanics teaching. Similar to the MHSAA Legacy program, new officials are paired with veterans, and clinicians evaluate their work during scrimmage play. Walker then keeps in touch with the new officials during the rest of the summer, plugging them in for local youth tournaments and scrimmages, and uses as many as possible while assigning officials for youth tournaments over the winter.
All eight officials who worked the event this month are part of the JAOA legacy partnering, and some of the group already are working games at the junior varsity level – with one, a 19-year-old, recently completing his first varsity game. They come from a variety of Jackson-area schools – Parma Western, Napoleon, Jackson Christian, Michigan Center, Concord and East Jackson. Walker said the recruiting effort has a 60 percent success rate so far. (This June’s legacy camp will be the third.)
“By next season, all (eight) will be official MHSAA registered officials,” he said, noting most currently are registered. “It’s great to have these schools support this program. We all benefit from added, good officiating.”
Passing it forward
Our Battle of the Fans trip to Charlotte on Friday included a conversation about a Feb. 2 game between the Orioles and Mason, which has a pair of athletes fighting cancer. The Charlotte student section dressed in blue that night in support of junior Storm Miller, and during halftime passed buckets to raise money for Miller’s GoFundMe account set up to help pay for his care.
Mason, in turn, provided support Friday to an Owosso alum, 2012 graduate Cody Greger, who remains hospitalized at University of Michigan’s hospital with injuries sustained during a house fire in November. Fans and students collected donations to assist Greger’s family with his care.
“This event was yet another example of the values that school sports teach young people,” Owosso athletic director Dallas Lintner wrote on the school’s website. “And it stands as a testament of the integrity of the young adults that represent our schools and the (Capital Area Activities Conference.)."
100 years of hoops
A decade before the formation of the Michigan High School Athletic Association, Eastern Michigan University – then known as Michigan State Normal College – hosted what is believed to be the first organized high school basketball tournament in state history.
EMU will celebrate this anniversary Saturday in conjunction with the Eagles men’s basketball game against Toledo. Game time is noon at EMU’s Convocation Center, and during a break in play the athletic department will recognize the 12 schools that took part in that 1916 tournament – Marine City, Dundee, Milan, Mancelona, Farmington, Elkton, Royal Oak, Middleville, Lansing, Mount Clemens, Wayne and Saline.
More history, courtesy of EMU:
The game of basketball was developed by James Naismith in 1891 at Springfield College in Massachusetts. As a means of promoting the game throughout the country, physical education professor and EMU's first athletic director Wilber Bowen asked his good friend Naismith to bring the game to the Michigan State Normal College (now known as Eastern Michigan University).
The first basketball game west of the Allegheny Mountains was played at Michigan Normal in 1894 to recognize the new physical education program and to dedicate the new gymnasium on campus.
Then in 1916, Bowen, along with instructors Elmer Mitchell and Lloyd Olds (who was also credited with the introduction of the striped referee jersey), organized the first high school basketball tournament in Michigan. A total of 300 invitations were sent out to all Class B schools in the state. Twelve schools responded, and the first high school boys tournament was held on the Ypsilanti-based campus on March 23-25, 1916.
Entrance to the tournament was free and (the event was) played at the Michigan State Normal School Gymnasium. However, expenses related to transportation, room, and board had to be provided by the participating schools. The MSNC's Physical Education Department made it easier for schools to participate by making arrangements with local residents to provide food at 20 to 25 cents a meal and lodging at 25 cents a night for each player.
That first tournament saw Marine City defeat Dundee in the championship game, 23-22.
The winning team was awarded a silver shield mounted on an oak base. Second prize was a silver cup, and the third place team received a banner. Individual participation awards to all players were also provided. The Ypsilanti Press at the time felt the Normal School "went first class with the awards."
For tickets to Saturday’s game and event, which will be followed by the EMU women’s team taking on Northern Illinois, call the EMU Ticket Office at (734) 487-2282 or visit EMUEagles.com/tickets.
Following up
• Second Half’s Chip Mundy this fall wrote a story on the emergence of Ida’s football team on the way to making the Division 5 Semifinals and finishing its best season ever. A theme of that story was Ida’s philosophy of building “brick by brick,” coined by defensive line coach Gary Deland, who himself was building back after emergency triple-bypass heart surgery.
“From that very first practice in the summer to the last game as a senior, everything is built brick by brick,” Deland said for that story. “I can draw a correlation between that and my recovery, what I’ve gone through. It’s the same thing. It’s brick by brick.”
Kim Farver sent along this photo of Deland holding up a brick after the team’s 43-20 Regional Final win over Buchanan.
• We released the last batch of this year’s MHSAA-Farm Bureau Insurance Scholar-Athlete Award winners today, and one of the highlights during the 27 years of the contest came two years ago when we caught up with some of our winners from the first 25 years – including Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood’s Abby Cohen, who has gone on to co-found a company and help develop a smartphone application, Wing, to help asthma patients monitor their lung function.
Here’s a look at a video describing the technology she’s helped create:
Dawson Dives Into New Sport, Quickly Rises in Ranks Among State's Best Off Diving Board
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
February 24, 2026
PORTAGE – Little did Von Dawson know that getting in trouble for doing backflips in the hallway as a freshman would lead him down a path he never imagined.
“After he got in trouble a couple of times for that, I said, ‘Hey, do you want to try diving?’” said Portage Central dive coach Madeline Woods.
That was a sport the current junior never considered.
It wasn’t until school principal Eric Alburtus noticed Dawson doing backflips on the field after a football game that diving was mentioned again.
"I remember exactly that night,” Alburtus said. “Von did this beautiful flip, and I hustled to him and said, ‘I don’t know who you are yet, but you’ve got to become a diver.’
“I can’t take credit for the amazing athlete and diver Von is but I’m very, very happy that I played a teeny, tiny piece of him doing amazing work around here. He’s such a great kid.’
Dawson knew nothing about diving.
“In middle school, I really didn’t know that diving was a thing,” he said. “I knew they had a swimming program, but where I was, it wasn’t really posted as much.”
He decided to try it – and saying he took to it like the cliché “duck to water” is an understatement.
“Von had never stepped foot on a diving board before, then made it to the state meet his freshman year,” Woods said. “It was a pretty fun turnaround. He’s an incredibly athletic kid.”
His freshman year Dawson finished 29th at the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Swimming & Diving Finals.
“Just being there as a freshman who had never dove before was impressive,” Woods said.
He took another step last winter as a sophomore, finishing eighth at the Finals. This season, his top reported 6-dive score ranks eighth statewide and sixth among Division 2 athletes, and his top 11-dive score is 14th statewide and seventh in his division.
Starting from scratch
Dawson was full of confidence from the first day of practice.
“The first week I got a list of dives, and I learned fairly quickly,” he said. “(Woods) explained a dive to me and I was like. ‘I can do that. I want to try it.’ She’d either let me or I’d bother her enough until she let me do it.”
Woods said Dawson is always trying to push the limits.
“With Von, we hit the ground running.” she said. “The first two seasons was me telling him ‘No’ a lot.
“Can I try this? No, not yet, Can I try that? No, not yet. Then he would wear me down and he’d do the (dive) and it would usually be one excellent one and he’d bomb the next one.”
Dawson said he was even more fearless back then but when it came to Regionals, the nerves started to show.
“Regionals are so much more stressful than state meet because you have to qualify,” he said. "States is you’re already there, you’re ready. It’s two days you’re with your friends on the swim team, you’re hanging out at a hotel. It’s pretty awesome.”
During his sophomore season, Dawson honed his skills and earned all-state status.
“From freshman year to sophomore year, I did a really good job on my kickouts especially,” he said. “I think that’s what got me to eighth. I was a little more polished.”
This season, Woods said she banished the word “No.”
“We’re going to do all the big dives, anything you want to try, we’re up for it,” she said. “Now he has the base, now he has the skills, we’re going to do it and it’s been really, really fun.”
Dawson has done some of the biggest dives Woods has ever coached: “He has the highest degree of difficulty of any diver I’ve ever coached and he’s only a junior, which is pretty awesome.”
Continuing to climb
Besides being an elite athlete, Woods said Dawson is an incredibly personable person.
“Other coaches will come up to me to say how much they enjoy chatting with him,” she said. “At some of the bigger meets, there are divers who remember him from previous years. He’s really, really, friendly, a great sport and highly competitive.”
But to get where he is today, Dawson overcame some obstacles early in life.
“I was in foster care for eight years of my life,” he said. “I kinda hopped around different places. Group homes, this place, that place.”
He was adopted at age 13.
“They had two of my siblings and I went to live with them for two years before they adopted me,” he said. “They come to watch me all the time. I have about eight foster siblings and they’re my biggest fans, always cheering for me.”
Dawson has expanded his water skills by playing water polo in the fall.
“I make the joke that he collects fall sports like Pokémon cards,” Woods said. “He did cross country his first year, football his second year and water polo this year. I’ve been the lucky one that he’s kept, diving all three years. He also does track.”
Dawson has already reached one goal this season – topping his coach’s personal-best record. Woods was a four-year all-Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association diver at Kalamazoo College and competed in the NCAA Division III Championships her senior year.
Woods said she challenged him this year.
“His highest score going into junior year was something in the 260s,” she said. “My personal best from my college years on 3-meter, which is easier to get a higher score on, was 282.
"So I challenged him in the first couple meets to beat my PR (personal record). I think he did it in our third meet. Our next goal was to break 300 and two weeks he got 299.9 and last week he got 306.9, a point less than the pool record at Loy Norrix.”
Using scores from his school meets, Dawson already has qualified for the AAU Nationals next summer.
His immediate goal is to qualify for the MHSAA LPD2 Finals to be competed March 13-14 at Eastern Michigan University along with fellow Mustang divers, junior Ryley Berns and sophomores Greyden Trevino and Drew Chenery.
“Diving is a hard sport and not for everyone,” Woods said of Dawson, “but when you find someone who is willing to do some crazy things and throw his body through the air and spin and flip and twist for fun, that’s usually a pretty special person.”
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) Portage Central’s Von Dawson begins a dive at his home pool. (Middle) From left: Dawson, Portage Central diving coach Madeline Woods and Portage Central principal Eric Alburtus. (Below) Dawson descends into the water during a dive. (Diving photos courtesy of Madeline Woods. Dawson and Woods headshots by Pam Shebest. Alburtus headshot courtesy of Portage Central High School.)