Logo

Let's Play 2 (or 3, or 4)

February 16, 2012

A few conversations I had at last week's Women In Sports Leadership conference further affirmed a point I've been making for years -- high school athletes, if they'd like, shouldn't hesitate to play multiple sports.

Doing so does not hurt, but might just help their chances at landing that prized college scholarship -- on top of adding another layer to the high school sports experience.

Reaffirming this for me last week was Michigan State softball coach Jacquie Joseph, who spoke on that subject at the WISL conference. She's heading into her 24th season as a head coach at the Division I college level -- so she's been around for some of the evolution of both high school sports specialization and college recruiting. Plus, she coaches a sport that sees its share of athletes playing just that one.

Later, I spoke with a high school coach who leads teams in three sports and also played one at the Division I college level. She's a believer in this as well. 

Some of the things I've been told over the years about playing more than one sport:

  • It allows an athlete to learn more skills and hone more parts of his or her athleticism.
  • Using another range of movement further helps condition an athlete's body and make it more resistant to injury.
  • It's hardly rare to see a college football coach watching a prospect's basketball game -- coaches like to see how athleticism transfers across sports, and sometimes will see something from an athlete playing basketball that he didn't show on the football field. (Football and basketball are used in this example, but the same applies to a number of similar situations.)
  • Athletes get an opportunity to play whatever they'd like only this once (unless they turn out to be that rare college athlete who takes on more than one sport at that level).

These are hardly new arguments. But they are always worth repeating -- especially when the people frequently making them (college coaches) are the ones single-sport athletes often are trying to impress.

Erik O. Furseth

In Memoriam: Erik O. Furseth (1930-2022)

By Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor

March 1, 2022

For 50 years, Erik O. Furseth’s voice chimed throughout MHSAA and Michigan State University athletic events. That voice surely will continue to live in the memories of the many who cherished listening to him, as he died Monday evening at the age of 91.

Furseth began as the public-address voice of MHSAA Boys Basketball Finals in 1968 and continued well into his 80s as those games moved from Jenison Field House to other locations across the Lower Peninsula and eventually settled into Breslin Center. He also was the longtime MHSAA football championship game voice going back to their days at the Pontiac Silverdome and provided the narration for MHSAA Baseball Finals for a decade. He announced his last MHSAA event in 2018.

An MSU basketball player during the early 1950s, the Cleveland Heights, Ohio, native played in the Spartans’ first Big Ten game in 1951. A forestry student initially, Furseth switched to communications. He later became a legendary rock-n-roll radio DJ in Lansing, and for a decade hosted Saturday night dances at the Lansing Civic Center that drew 1,000 teenagers a night – and a surprise performance by a young Stevie Wonder.

Furseth’s voice continued to be known particularly by Spartan fans as the homecourt voice for MSU basketball from 1968-2002 and MSU football from 1971-98. For more, see this feature from the MHSAA Basketball Finals programs written in 2013.

Furseth moved from East Lansing to Traverse City about 25 years ago. Click for his obituary and funeral arrangements.