Today in the MHSAA: 11/24/15
November 24, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
With Thanksgiving only a few days away, the following are a pair of stories from communities thankful for special coaches.
Girls Basketball
Watersmeet is mourning the loss of former girls basketball coach Norm Ellenberger, who led the program the last four seasons – after a career that took him to the NCAA Tournament, NBA and WNBA before bringing him to this Class D school – Ironwood Daily Globe
Football
Good Morning America visited Benton Harbor High School on Monday to surprise football coach Elliot Uzelac and award the school $10,000 for a scholarship in his name – and give his players an expenses-paid trip to Disney World as part of its “Thank You America” series – Good Morning America
In Memoriam: Chip Mundy (1955-2023)
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
August 16, 2023
When the MHSAA took a significant step in telling the stories of school sports with the introduction of the Second Half website in 2012, Chip Mundy was a natural to lend his expertise after a career doing the same in the Jackson area.
He always took special care in searching out the human interest side of our “stories behind the scores” – and today we remember that dedication as we mourn his death Monday. He was 68.
Mundy was a graduate of Jackson Parkside and then served as sports editor at the Brooklyn Exponent and Albion Recorder from 1980-86. He then became a fixture in high school sports coverage as a reporter and later copy editor at the Jackson Citizen Patriot from 1986-2011.
Mundy was one of the original correspondents when Second Half took on a regional component beginning with the 2015-16 school year, thoughtfully providing biweekly features from the “Southeast & Border” area that includes Jackson, Ann Arbor, Monroe and the host of smaller communities north of the Michigan/Ohio line. Before the beginning of 2H’s “Region Reports,” Mundy also was among the first to begin producing coverage of MHSAA Finals for the site as Second Half started in part with a mission of covering all MHSAA championship events.
He admittedly ended up reporting on some sports he’d rarely or never covered before, and admittedly often wrote a little longer than he’d intended – but in his own words, because “there were so many stories” or “the story was so good.”
Click to read many of his features for the Second Half website.