24th WISL Conference Set for Feb 2-3
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
January 6, 2020
The first, largest and longest-running program of its type in the country, the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s Women In Sports Leadership Conference will take place Feb. 2-3 at the Crowne Plaza Lansing West.
The 24th edition of the conference again will feature three keynote speakers and a variety of workshops. The program annually attracts upwards of 500 participants, most of them high school female student-athletes. High school students, coaches and administrators are invited to find registration information on the MHSAA Website.
Cost is $50 for students and $60 for adults, not including lodging for those intending to stay overnight in Lansing. A registration form for lodging also is available on the MHSAA Website.
The theme for this WISL Conference is “The Courage to Lead” – and the opening address will be delivered by two-time Olympic women’s soccer gold medalist Lindsay Tarpley. She led Portage Central to the MHSAA Division 2 championship as a sophomore in 2000, was named college soccer’s National Player of the Year in 2003 after leading University of North Carolina to the NCAA Division I title, and played for the U.S. national team until retiring in 2011. She will speak on setting high standards and challenging one’s self to be a leader throughout life.
Michigan State University women’s volleyball coach Cathy George will challenge participants to embrace a growth mindset and believe in themselves and their potential while speaking at the WISL Banquet during the evening of Feb. 2. George recently completed her 15th season at MSU and 33rd overall as a college head coach. Her 288 wins at MSU are the most in program history, and she has a career record of 653-429 – counting also 11 seasons leading Western Michigan University, five at University of Texas-Arlington and two at North Dakota State. She has taken 15 teams to the NCAA Tournament, including MSU to the Elite Eight in 2017 and Texas-Arlington to the Final Four in 1989. As an athlete, George was a team captain and three-time all-league selection at Illinois State, helping the Redbirds to three NCAA Tournament appearances.
Michigan’s 43rd Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson will speak during the opening session Feb. 3 on expanding opportunities for girls and women as athletes, coaches, sport executives and leaders. She chairs Michigan’s Task Force on Women in Sports, which brings together local and national leaders to develop strategies that support and promote opportunities for girls and women in athletics, and is a founding board member and former CEO of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality. Benson is a graduate of Harvard University Law School and expert on civil rights law, education law and election law. As dean of Wayne State University Law School, she was the youngest woman in U.S. history to lead a top-100 accredited law school, and she became in 2015 one of the youngest inductees into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.
Workshops offered during the WISL conference include topics on coaching, teaching and learning leadership; sports nutrition and performance, and injury prevention; empowerment and goal-setting, and building team chemistry and program culture. A complete itinerary is available on the MHSAA Website.
The WISL Banquet will include the presentation of this year’s Women In Sports Leadership Award. The winner will be announced later this month.
Follow the #WISL hashtag on Twitter to learn more about the conference’s activities.
MHSAA Reveals Football Playoff Format
September 25, 2020
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
The Representative Council of the Michigan High School Athletic Association has approved an adjusted format for this season’s 11 and 8-Player Football Playoffs to accommodate the shortened regular season that began late due to COVID-19-related restrictions earlier this fall.
All teams this season are able to play up to six regular-season games before the start of the MHSAA Playoffs – down from the usual nine games because the first games this season weren’t played until the traditional Week 4. However, the playoff fields for both 11 and 8-player will be doubled this season, giving nearly every team in Michigan a guaranteed seventh game.
Changes to the football postseason are for the 2020 season only. Following are brief descriptions of the adjusted MHSAA Football Playoffs in each format:
11-PLAYER
· Field: 512 teams. (There are currently 507 playing 11-player football this season, so five teams are scheduled to receive first-round byes at this time.)
· Schedule: 3 District Rounds, Regional Finals, Semifinals, Finals. The host sites for the Semifinals and Finals will be pre-arranged and announced at a later time. Finals will be played the weekend of Dec. 4-6.
· Brackets: Teams have been placed in pre-arranged divisions based on enrollment. Teams in Districts will be seeded 1-8 based on playoff-point average, with the teams with highest averages hosting at the District and Regional levels. Because of a small number of teams opting to not play this fall, division lines were adjusted from what was released during the spring classification announcement, moving 20 teams to different divisions than previously published – those changes will be reflected next week on the playoff points page of the MHSAA Website. Click for District groupings.
8-PLAYER
· Field: 64 teams. (There are currently 78 teams playing 8-player this season. Those teams that finish the season but do not qualify for the playoffs will be allowed to schedule one more game against other non-qualifiers.)
· Schedule: 3 Regional Rounds, Semifinals, Finals. Finals will be played the weekend of Nov. 27-28 at site(s) to be determined.
· Brackets: Teams were placed in pre-arranged divisions based on enrollment during the classification process this spring. The top 32 teams in each division based on playoff-point average will qualify for the playoffs. Brackets will be drawn and announced Oct. 25. Teams with higher playoff-point averages will host Regional and Semifinal games. Additionally, there are six 8-player teams too large by enrollment to qualify for the playoffs; they will be allowed to schedule their own non-MHSAA playoff if they choose to do so after the regular season.
Further details will be provided soon on the Football page of the MHSAA Website.
The Representative Council is the 19-member legislative body of the MHSAA. All but five are elected by member schools. Four members are appointed by the Council to facilitate representation of females and minorities, and the 19th position is occupied by the Superintendent of Public Instruction or designee.
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.