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:
Martin Makes Home in Goal for Monroe St. Mary's Boys Lacrosse, Ice Hockey Teams
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
April 29, 2025
Lacrosse isn’t the best sport to choose if you don’t like coming home with bruises every once in a while.
For Chloe Martin, the bruises are just part of the deal.
“I love it,” Martin said of lacrosse. “It’s a fast game and a challenge. I love that.”
Martin is a senior on the Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central boys lacrosse team. SMCC doesn’t offer girls lacrosse, so she plays on the boys team. That’s nothing new to her, either. She was also a member, representing SMCC, of the Downriver Unified cooperative boys ice hockey team this past winter.
“I didn’t expect to enjoy (lacrosse) as much as I did, but once I started playing and started playing with the boys, I fell in love with the sport,” Martin said.
Martin picked up ice hockey at the age of 8 while a student at Triumph Academy, a K-8 school near Monroe. She was hooked, but under one condition – she wanted to be in the net.
“When I was younger, I played forward and defense, but I didn’t really enjoy it,” she recalled. “When someone on the team said they needed a goalie, I raised my hand right away. It’s a lot of fun. I don’t think I would be playing if I wasn’t playing goalie.
“I like getting shots coming at me. It’s fun.”
Martin, from Monroe, joined the SMCC lacrosse team as a high school freshman. She played ice hockey as a sophomore and again as a senior. “I played travel hockey my junior year and, to be honest, I kind of regret it,” she said.
As a sophomore, she was able to be teammates with her brother, Walker.
“He was one of my biggest inspirations playing hockey,” she said. “We had a strong connection, and I wanted to play with him and his friends. That was one of my favorite teams to ever play on.”
Her brother also got her started in lacrosse.
“The reason I joined lacrosse was because of my older brother,” Chloe said. “Our coach saw that I was a goalie for hockey and wanted me to be a goalie for lacrosse. I agreed and played lacrosse.”
Lacrosse – for both boys and girls – is played in the spring in Michigan. The sport involves a ton of running and highly-skilled passing and catching. It also takes teamwork.
Martin prefers the boys game over the girls game. She’s tried both.
“I love playing against the boys. I tried playing girls lacrosse, and it wasn’t my thing,” she said. “For girls, there are different rules and I don’t really like it. I’m trying to get into it because I want to play either college hockey or lacrosse.”
She’s not sure which sport she likes better: “It’s not that big of a difference. There is more padding for hockey and less for lacrosse. You have a crease, and you are moving in the same type of direction. Lacrosse is less wear-and-tear on my hips. I have bad hips.”
While lacrosse has a bigger field, Martin said there is more action.
“Lacrosse is quicker than hockey,” she said. “You can have the ball in the other zone but three seconds later they can be down shooting on me.”
This season has been a strong one for Martin in net.
Earlier this month she helped the Falcons to a one-point win over Jackson at Albion College, recorded her first varsity shutout April 16 against Brownstown Woodhaven and made a school-record 19 saves on April 4 against Ypsilanti Lincoln. That save total was high enough to make the MHSAA record book.
“Nineteen is kind of a lot of shots,” Martin said. “I’ve faced more than that in hockey. I’d say facing 19 shots in lacrosse is kind of like facing 50 shots in hockey.”
SMCC athletic director Jared Janssen said Martin has been a key factor in the team’s success and that she’s an inspiration to others.
“Chloe stands out as an excellent player with the boys and performs at a high level in both hockey and lacrosse,” he said. “She has been a leader for hockey and lacrosse, and that has led to more girls participation in both programs. Our girls lacrosse program has grown from only one girl to four this year.”
Goalie remains her favorite position.
“It’s a lot harder to be goalie than you think. You don’t expect the ball coming at you as hard and as quick as they are. You kind of get used to it. You don’t get used to getting hit, but you get used to seeing the ball and where the players are shooting from.”
The 17-year-old daughter of Alison and Nathan Martin loves mountain biking, fishing and baking. She has her sights on playing a sport in college and becoming a nurse. That stems from the time her dad got COVID and pneumonia at the same time.
“He was in the ICU for three months,” Martin said. “When that happened, I just decided I wanted to be a nurse and help people. That’s what I love doing.”
As for the bruises, Martin is getting used to them. She wears a chest plate, elbow pads, glove and mask. There are no shoulder pads in lacrosse and little other protection, especially for the legs.
After a recent game, she had a bruise the size of softball on her leg.
“It’s rough. I get a lot of bruises, but I love it,” she said. “It’s mostly on my legs. It hurts a lot, but after a few seconds it goes away. There are so many bruises I get in lacrosse. I’ve never gotten this bruised from hockey.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a news and sports reporter at the Adrian Daily Telegram and the Monroe News for 30 years, including 10 years as city editor in Monroe. He's written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. He is now publisher and editor of The Blissfield Advance, a weekly newspaper. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central’s Chloe Martin defends her team’s goal during a lacrosse game. (Middle) Martin, without a protective mask, which she wears for two sports. (Below) Martin monitors the puck while in net for Downriver Unified. (Action photos by Stephanie Hawkins; posed photo provided by Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central.)