2020-21 Classifications Announced
April 20, 2020
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Classifications for MHSAA elections and postseason tournaments for the 2020-21 school year have been announced – including football divisions determined preseason for the first time since 1998 – and with enrollment breaks for postseason tournaments posted to each sport’s page on the MHSAA Website.
Classifications for the upcoming school year are based on a second semester count date, which for MHSAA purposes was Feb. 12. The enrollment figure submitted for athletic classification purposes may be different from the count submitted for school aid purposes, as it does not include students ineligible for athletic competition because they reached their 19th birthday prior to September 1 of the current school year and will not include alternative education students if none are allowed athletic eligibility by the local school district.
All sports’ tournaments are conducted with schools assigned to equal or nearly equal divisions, with lines dependent on how many schools participate in those respective sports.
For 2020-21, there are 752 tournament-qualified member schools. Schools recently were notified of their classification, and sport-by-sport divisions were posted to the MHSAA Website today (April 20). MHSAA Executive Director Mark Uyl said schools may not subsequently lower their enrollment figure. However, if revised enrollment figures are higher and indicate that a school should be playing in a higher division, that school would be moved up.
Football will undergo a significant classification change for the 2020 season, with teams in both 11 and 8-player assigned their divisions before the season for the first time since 1998; from 1999-2019, divisions for the 256-team 11-player field (and later the 8-player tournament) were determined after the regular season. A hard enrollment limit also will take effect this fall for teams to be eligible for the 8-player tournament – all schools with 215 or fewer students are eligible for the 8-player playoffs if they play that format during the regular season.
Two 11-player football champions will play in different divisions in 2020 than those they won a year ago. Grand Rapids Catholic Central will move to Division 5 after winning the Division 4 championship last season, while reigning Division 6 champion Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central will play in Division 7 this upcoming season. Also, 2019 Division 2 runner-up Detroit Martin Luther King will play in Division 3 this fall. In 8-player football, the reigning champions will trade divisions – 2019 Division 1 winner Colon moving into Division 2, and Division 2 champ Pickford moving into Division 1 for this fall.
A number of 2019-20 champions will be playing in different divisions in 2020-21. Grand Rapids Forest Hills Northern’s boys soccer team will move into Division 1 after winning the Division 2 title in 2019. The East Grand Rapids girls swimming & diving team will move back into Lower Peninsula Division 2 – which it won in 2017 – after earning the last two championships in Division 3. Bridgman’s girls cross country team will move into Lower Peninsula Division 3 after winning Division 4 last fall, and Grass Lake’s boys bowling team will move into Division 3 after winning the Division 4 title this winter. The Allegan boys tennis team will move into Lower Peninsula Division 3 after sharing the Division 4 title in the fall, while the Ishpeming Westwood girls tennis team will move into Upper Peninsula Division 1 after winning the Division 2 title the last four seasons. (NOTE: MHSAA Finals in five Winter sports and all Spring sports were canceled in 2019-20 due to COVID-19.)
Visit the respective sport pages on the MHSAA Website to review the divisional alignments for all MHSAA-sponsored tournament sports.
Traditional classes (A, B, C, D) – formerly used to establish tournament classifications – are used only for MHSAA elections. To determine traditional classifications, after all counts are submitted, tournament-qualified member schools are ranked according to enrollment and then split as closely into quarters as possible. For 2020-21, there are 188 member schools in each class.
Effective with the 2020-21 school year, schools with 831 or more students are in Class A. The enrollment limits for Class B are 392-830, Class C is 182-391, and schools with enrollments of 181 and fewer are Class D. The break between Classes A and B decreased 32 students from 2019-20, the break between Classes B and C decreased three students, and the break between Classes C and D is seven students fewer than the 2019-20 school year.
The new classification breaks will see 18 schools move up in Class for 2020-21 while 15 schools will move down:
Moving Up from Class B to Class A
Fowlerville
Harper Woods
Ionia
Moving Down from Class A to Class B
Battle Creek Harper Creek
Eastpointe
Moving Up from Class C to Class B
Blissfield
Canton Prep
Dearborn Riverside Academy West
Detroit Pershing
Detroit Edison
Ecorse
Moving Down from Class B to Class C
Adrian Madison
Detroit Jalen Rose Leadership Academy
Grand Rapids Wellspring Prep
Menominee
Otisville-LakeVille Memorial
Perry
Pinconning
Moving Up from Class D to Class C
Birmingham Roeper
Detroit Academy of the Americas
Detroit Southeastern
Detroit The School at Marygrove
Eau Claire
Genesee
New Buffalo
Painesdale Jeffers
Moving up from Class D to Class B
Detroit Cornerstone Lincoln King Academy
Moving Down from Class C to Class D
Benton Harbor Countryside Academy
Deckerville
Detroit Douglass
Detroit Public Safety Academy
Indian River Inland Lakes
Mayville
New Postseason Eligible Tournament Schools in 2020-21
Bay City Academy
Boyne City Concord Academy
Detroit Cornerstone Lincoln King Academy
Lansing Martin Luther
Detroit Collegiate
Redford Westfield Prep
Enrollment Breaks by Classes – 2020-21
(Number of schools in parentheses)
Class A: 831 and above (188 schools)
Class B: 392 – 830 (188)
Class C: 182 – 391 (188)
Class D: 181 and below (188)
The MHSAA is a private, not-for-profit corporation of voluntary membership by more than 1,500 public and private senior high schools and junior high/middle schools which exists to develop common rules for athletic eligibility and competition. No government funds or tax dollars support the MHSAA, which was the first such association nationally to not accept membership dues or tournament entry fees from schools. Member schools which enforce these rules are permitted to participate in MHSAA tournaments, which attract more than 1.4 million spectators each year.
Multi-Sport Participation Holds Steady in 2023-24, Continuing Increases Found Over Entirety of Study
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
January 16, 2025
The MHSAA’s sixth Multi-Sport Participation Survey, conducted last spring for the 2023-24 school year, showed for the third-consecutive year that nearly 45 percent of athletes at member high schools participated in more than one sport, while the entirety of the study continues to show that percentages of multi-sport athletes for all four Classes (A-B-C-D) have grown during the six years this topic has been studied in this way.
Early and intense sport specialization has become one of the most serious issues related to health and safety at all levels of youth sports, as overuse injuries and burnout among athletes have been tied to chronic injuries and health-related problems later in life. In early 2016, the MHSAA appointed a Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation as part of a continued effort to promote and protect participant health and address the issues leading to early sport specialization. The annual Multi-Sport Participation Survey was among results of the task force’s work.
The 2023-24 Multi-Sport Participation Survey received responses from 63.7 percent of member high schools and showed 44.8 percent of athletes at those MHSAA member high schools participating in two or more sports, a tenth of a percent increase from survey results in 2022-23 and half a percent increase from two years prior.
For 2023-24, 47.6 percent of male athletes and 41.4 percent of female athletes played multiple sports. Class D has enjoyed the highest percentage of multi-sport athletes over all six years of surveys, this time at 63.1 percent, followed by Class C (59.4), Class B (48.0) and Class A (38.2).
Over the six years of this survey, data also has shown slight increases in multi-sport participation in all four classes. Class A has risen from 35.9 percent in 2017-18 to 38.2 in 2023-24. Class B has risen from 46.7 to 48.0, Class C from 55.2 to 59.4 and Class D from 58.1 to 63.1 over those six years.
The MHSAA Task Force also recommended measuring multi-sport participation in MHSAA member schools to recognize “achievers” – that is, schools that surpass the norm given their enrollment and other factors that affect school sports participation.
Battle Creek Harper Creek, Detroit Cody and Grand Rapids Northview have appeared among the top 10 percent of their respective Classes five of the six years the survey has been conducted. Five more schools have appeared among the top 10 percent of their Classes four of the six years: Decatur, East Grand Rapids, Manton, Parma Western and Warren Michigan Collegiate.
In Class A, Macomb L’Anse Creuse North (94.7 percent) and Battle Creek Harper Creek (72.4) posted the highest percentages of multi-sport athletes for 2023-24, with Grand Rapids Northview (68.1), Berkley (65.0) and Kalamazoo Loy Norrix (64.3) also reporting reaching at least 60 percent. In Class B, four schools reached at least 65 percent multi-sport participation – Parma Western (78.0), Constantine (75.4), Clare (65.7) and Reed City (65.4).
Class C saw six schools reach 80 percent this past school year – Warren Michigan Collegiate (91.7 percent), Flint Beecher (91.3), LeRoy Pine River (89.5), Cass City (84.3), Decatur (83.3) and Manton (81.4). Four Class D schools responded at higher than 90 percent multi-sport participation – Gaylord St. Mary (92.9), Lake Leelanau St. Mary (91.7), Wyoming West Michigan Lutheran (90.9) and Deckerville (90.7) – followed by Marcellus Howardsville Christian (88.9), Morrice (86.8), Ewen-Trout Creek (85.7), Vestaburg (85.5) and Alanson (85.0).
Click for the full summary report on the Multi-Sport Participation Survey.