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:
South Haven Celebrates Program Pioneers to Begin 50th Season, Aspires to Add to Tradition
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
August 26, 2025
SOUTH HAVEN — When the call went out for volleyball players, a whopping 115 students showed up at South Haven High School.
That was 50 years ago, and the daunting task of whittling down those numbers fell to coach Dene Hadden.
From that group of hopefuls, he kept 13 on varsity and 13 on junior varsity.
The biggest problem was that neither the girls nor the coach had ever been involved in the varsity sport.
That sure has changed.
Fifty years ago, when the MHSAA debuted girls volleyball as a varsity sport, 462 schools fielded teams, with 12,012 athletes. Last season, 16,679 players took the court for MHSAA high schools, and this season 697 teams are slated to play.
Those first years were tough, Hadden said.
"We tried to use some athletic skills, jump height, jump distance, some other tests that I read about and heard about,” he said.
Things got easier for Hadden the second year after he attended a volleyball camp in Chicago.
“I spent seven days and nights of intensive volleyball training and learned so much about the game from key ‘grandfathers,’ you’d have to say now, about volleyball and came back much more confident in what I knew, how to teach skills and what skills to look for. It made a huge difference.”
That huge difference made an impact on the South Haven program. In 1977, the Rams made it to the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Class B championship match and, in 1985, won the title. They also reached the Finals in 1980 and 1991.
Fourth-year Rams coach Wendy Spencer said today’s players do not realize how much they owe to those pioneers.
“I think so many of these girls take for granted all the battles that women had to fight for to just be an athlete,” she said. “Isn’t that such a blessing that this next generation doesn’t have to realize the struggle?
“We don’t take for granted how special it is. I think for (current athletes) to see on a board their (photo) next to someone who’s 50 years older than them can put it into perspective sometimes.”
The current athletes also got a taste of those trailblazing players two weeks ago during an alumni game celebrating 50 years of MHSAA volleyball.
Diane (Sherman) Skuza was one of the alumni. She joined the volleyball team her junior year in 1977.
“I was playing basketball and softball,” she said. “I tried out, had never played volleyball before. Dene saw something in me as an athlete.
“One of my strong points was my serving. He would often bring me in just to serve. My senior year I actually played quite a bit and was all-conference.”
The Rams won the Wolverine Conference her final two years (1977, 1978), finishing both seasons with identical 26-1 records.
At the alumni game, Skusa, who at 64 was the oldest player there, joined the other women in competing against current varsity players.
“When I played in the alumni game, they said, ‘OK, we’re gonna do whatever,’ and I didn’t know what they were talking about,” she laughed. “They said do you want to be a middle hitter or an outside hitter.
“We really didn’t do that. We had our positions. If you were on the left side, you hit from the left side. It’s a lot more involved now. But we had some really strong players, and Dene was a great coach.”
The alumni actually won the game, but they had a few ringers, according to Hadden.
“You have to remember the alumni had Hayley Kreiger, an All-American at Davenport a couple years ago playing that night,” he said. “We had some all-conference players, so there was some talent on the alumni side of the net.”
The alumni team also included former players from the 1985 championship team.
Hadden said that when organizers started planning the 50th anniversary celebration, “We wanted to recognize the 318 varsity letter winners who have contributed to the sport at South Haven.”
Rams return experience
For this year’s team, Spencer will rely on three returning seniors, including four-year varsity player Charlotte Knox, who already owns three school records.
She is first in career digs (742) and aces (28). She also has the single-season record in kills (365 set last year).
Her single-season achievements also include ranking fifth with most blocks (62 in 2022), second in most digs (298 in 2023) and tied for fourth with most aces (98 in 2023).
She is third in career blocks with 126 heading into this season.
In her second year as captain, Knox is “a kid who shows up for her teammates before she shows up for herself,” Spencer said. “She can keep that high level of expectations without coming down on people.
“Charlotte has consistently had the best stats in our region in kills, digs and aces. As a junior, she is already in the top five of all of South Haven history for season and for career.
Other seniors on the team are Charlotte Grzybowski, Areanna Wabanimkee-Gluck, Nevaeh Cooper and Kaitlin Moore. Juniors are Ly’nique Cunningham and Trinity Sistrunk, while sophomores are Kiersten Chalupa, Julia Wiley and Piper Allen.
Spencer noted that most players today hone their skills on travel teams outside the school season.
“Club sports have taken a huge role in athlete’s development, but I think there’s something missing if kids don’t want to play high school athletics,” she said. “School sports are important; club sports are important if you have bigger goals.
“These (school teammates) are the people you will remember, the ones you will show up at 50-year reunions with, not your club team. We’re trying to keep that going, and Dene’s the reason for that.”
Hadden, who coached the Rams for 19 seasons, still keeps active.
“He announces all our home games, he still shows up at all our tryouts,” Spencer said. “He’s just someone who loves our district and loves volleyball so much.
“He really keeps our traditions alive. He’s the only coach who won a state championship and runner-up twice. The question is, how do we learn from that?”
The reigning Southwestern Athletic Conference champ started the season repeating as champ at the Coloma Tournament last Saturday with Knox recording 74 kills to reach 1,000 for her career.
The Rams continue Wednesday against Constantine with one goal in mind: “The team works every year at Battle Creek’s Kellogg Arena (during the MHSAA Tournament),” Spencer said. “This year we’d like to be playing there, not on the sidelines.”
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) Senior Charlotte Knox reaches out toward a ball during South Haven’s alumni match earlier this month. (2) Dene Hadden, then and now, was the program’s first coach and remains an active supporter. (3) Alums Sarah Washegesic (right) and Megan Sollman share a laugh. (4) Knox is celebrated by her teammates after reaching 1,000 career kills Saturday. (Alumni game photos by Micah Jones. Knox 1,000-kill photo submitted by Wendy Spencer. Hadden photo courtesy of Hadden.)