Assistant Director Mazzolini to Retire
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
November 23, 2015
Gina Mazzolini, a pioneering athlete, former high school and college coach, and one of the longest-serving current assistant directors for the Michigan High School Athletic Association, will retire from her post at the end of this school year, effective July 31, 2016.
Mazzolini has served the MHSAA since 1993 and is the administrator for girls volleyball, swimming and diving, alpine skiing and tennis. She also handles the sanctioning of out-of-state competitions and serves as the MHSAA’s point person on foreign exchange and international student issues.
After standout basketball and volleyball careers at St. Johns High School and Central Michigan University, Mazzolini taught and coached multiple sports during the 1979-80 school year at Ovid-Elsie High School. She then spent two years teaching and serving as an assistant volleyball coach at Michigan State University, where she also earned her master’s degree in physical education. Mazzolini then left to teach and serve as assistant volleyball coach and interim women’s Sports Information Director at the University of Texas.
In 1982, Mazzolini became an activities director with the University Interscholastic League, the service organization to high school activities in Texas. She became an assistant athletic director at the UIL in 1988, and five years later she returned to Michigan as a member of the MHSAA staff.
Mazzolini will receive a Citation from the National Federation of State High School Associations next summer and was the 2010 recipient of the MHSAA’s Women in Sports Leadership Award. She has served on NFHS rules committees for soccer, swimming and diving, and volleyball (chairing that sport’s rules committee from 2004-08). She also has served on NFHS advisory committees for athletic directors and sports medicine.
“Gina’s accomplishments from her days as a pioneer on the court to those as administrator have truly been local, statewide, national and global,” MHSAA Executive Director John E. “Jack” Roberts said. “She has shaped the rules for the games in which our children compete and helped maintain not only a level playing field with her work with eligibility and foreign exchange rules, but a safe field with her national committee work in sports medicine.”
Mazzolini was named the first Female Athlete of the Year at St. Johns High School, graduating in 1974 after an accomplished career that included leading the Redwings to a District title in the first MHSAA Girls Basketball Tournament in 1973. She also played softball and ran track for her high school.
She went on to star in both basketball and volleyball at Central Michigan University; she graduated in 1978 as the leading scorer, rebounder and shot-blocker in CMU history and still ranks among the Chippewas’ leaders in multiple statistical categories – ninth in career field goal percentage (.496), tied for sixth in career rebounds (880), second in career rebounding average per game (10.5), fifth and sixth in season rebounding average per game (11.5 and 11.1) and tied for first for rebounds in one game (24). She was inducted into the CMU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1992.
In addition to her work at the MHSAA, Mazzolini has provided a long list of contributions at the national level. Along with those mentioned above, she has served as the NFHS representative on the board for the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel, which identifies, promotes and supports international youth exchange programs, and has sat on several CSIET committees. She’s currently serving on the NFHS Annual Meeting Planning Committee.
Scholar-Athlete Awards Finalists Named
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
January 25, 2012
The 120 finalists for the Michigan High School Athletic Association's Scholar-Athlete Award for the 2011-12 school year -- including three each from three schools -- have been announced.
The program, which has been recognizing student-athletes since the 1989-90 school year, will honor 32 individuals from MHSAA member schools who participate in at least one sport in which the Association sponsors a postseason tournament. Farm Bureau Insurance underwrites the Scholar-Athlete Award, and will present a $1,000 scholarship to each recipient. Since the beginning of the program, 544 scholarships have been awarded.
Scholarships will be presented proportionately by school classification, with 12 scholarships to be awarded to Class A student-athletes, six female and six male; eight scholarships will be awarded to Class B student-athletes, four female and four male; six scholarships will be awarded to Class C student-athletes, three female and three male; and four scholarships will be awarded to Class D student-athletes, two female and two male. In addition, there also will be two at-large honorees which also are part of the general judging process, may come from any classification, and are designated by their school at the time of entry.
Every MHSAA member high school could submit as many applications as there are scholarships available in its classification, and could have more than one finalist. Marlette, Northville and Rochester Adams each have three finalists this year, while 20 schools have two: Bay City Central, Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice, Birmingham Groves, Dearborn, Delton Kellogg, East Lansing, Frankfort, Hillsdale Academy, Hopkins, Jenison, Kinde-North Huron, Midland, Midland Dow, Pontiac Notre Dame Prep, Rochester, Spring Lake, Springport, Tecumseh, White Lake Lakeland and Williamston.
Multiple-sport participation remains the norm among applicants. The average sport participation rate of the finalists is 2.58, while the average of the application pool was 2.13 – both within a tenth of last year’s rates in those categories. There are 66 three-plus sport participants in the finalist field, and all but three of the 28 sports in which the MHSAA sponsors postseason tournaments are represented.
Of 386 schools which submitted applicants, 51 submitted the maximum allowed. This year, 1,636 applications were received. All will be presented with certificates commemorating their achievement. Additional Scholar-Athlete information, including a complete list of scholarship nominees, can be found on this MHSAA Website link.
The applications were judged by a 62-member committee of school coaches, counselors, faculty members, administrators and board members from MHSAA member schools. Selection of the 32 scholarship recipients will take place in early February. Class C and D scholarship recipients will be announced on February 7; Class B scholarship recipients will be announced on February 14, and Class A scholarship recipients will be announced on February 21. All announcements will be made on the MHSAA Web site.
To honor the 32 Scholar-Athlete Award recipients, a ceremony will take place during halftime of the Class C Boys Basketball Final, March 24 at the Breslin Student Events Center in East Lansing.
To be eligible for the award, students must have a cumulative grade point average of 3.50 (on a 4.0 scale), and previously have won a varsity letter in at least one sport in which the MHSAA sponsors a postseason tournament. Students also were asked to respond to a series of short essay questions, submit two letters of recommendation and submit a 500-word essay on the importance of sportsmanship in educational athletics.
Farm Bureau Insurance, one of Michigan's major insurers, has a statewide force of more than 400 agents serving more than 380,000 Michigan policyholders. Besides providing life, home, auto, farm, business and retirement insurance, the company also sponsors life-saving, real-time Doppler weather tracking systems in several Michigan communities.
The MHSAA is a private, not-for-profit corporation of voluntary membership by more than 1,600 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 approximately 1.6 million spectators each year.
2011-12 Scholar-Athlete Award Finalists
BOYS CLASS A
Matthew Alexander Beem, Traverse City West
Brendon Clover, White Lake Lakeland
Ryan Denison, Dearborn
Saeed El Saghir, Bay City Central
Steven Alexander Fox, Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central
Christopher Robert Hagan, East Lansing
Alexander Hassan, Ann Arbor Huron
Joshua M. Heinze, Plymouth
Knute Hoffman, Midland
Hunter Holtrop, Okemos
Josh Hoogendoorn, Jenison
Nick Iacobellis, DeWitt
Jeremy Kozler, Livonia Stevenson
Conrad Arthur Lather, Midland Dow
Alec Latta, Northville
Gabriel Martinez, Livonia Franklin
Robert Paul, Bay City Central
Andrew Poterala, Northville
Nick Rao, Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice
Christopher Sesi, Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice
Blaine Stannard, Birmingham Groves
Alex Taylor, Rochester Adams
Daniel Tzou, Midland Dow
Garret Zuk, White Lake Lakeland
GIRLS CLASS A
Kelsey Adamski, Richland Gull Lake
Ellery Alexander, Caledonia
Kortnie L. Bush, Southgate Anderson
Jaymie Dyer, Hartland
Bethany Easom, Saline
Yara Nidal Fakhoury, Dearborn
Heather Smith, Farmington Hills Mercy
Amanda Marie Fodera, Fraser
Alexa Giovanatti, Rochester Adams
Morgan Hawver, Grand Haven
Hannah Marie Howarth, Gibraltar Carlson
Kelsey Kerin, St Clair
Hannah Lee, Rochester Adams
Maria Lepore, Rochester
Kelly Lunghamer, Birmingham Marian
Nicole McDermott, Mason
Gina Marie McNamara, Northville
Katelyn Alexandra Pekala, Midland
Abigail Rawling, Rochester
Dana Schrauben, Lake Orion
Alexis Stanton, Jenison
Alexandra Trecha, East Lansing
Jessica Turner, Birmingham Groves
Abigail Wilson, Trenton
BOYS CLASS B
Jordan S. Daley, Grand Rapids Christian
Griffin Dean, Grayling
Nathaniel P. Gaynor, Pontiac Notre Dame Prep
Mason E. Geno, Essexville Garber
Jeffrey John Gregory, Kingsford
Nathaniel Ferris Iveson, Middleville Thornapple Kellogg
Andrew Kelley, Allegan
Nathan Kossey, Tecumseh
Joseph Longstreet, Hastings
Dan Macalka, Comstock Park
Dillon McCarthy, Whitehall
Jacob Mineau, Marysville
Nick Huston Parnell, Spring Lake
Caleb Pung, Portland
Craig Zebell, Dowagiac
Alan Zhen, Livonia Clarenceville
GIRLS CLASS B
Sara Marie Barron, Pontiac Notre Dame Prep
Kathryn MacDermid Bollman, Williamston
Julie Buursma, Holland Christian
Kristin Gilbert, Hopkins
Hannah Grischke, Williamston
Sarah Hartley, Birch Run
Emily Kendro, Spring Lake
Nathalie Kenny, Manistee
Keara Kilbane, Hopkins
Laurin Masnari, Three Rivers
Erin Moser, Midland Bullock Creek
Rachel Neumann, Flint Powers Catholic
Brianne Nowak-Scott, Tecumseh
Emily Oren, Hamilton
Miranda Scott, Charlotte
Kaitlyn Stevens, Ovid-Elsie
BOYS CLASS C
Zachary French, Ishpeming Westwood
Dakota M. Hard, Quincy
Jonathan Andrew Harper, Clare
Ryan Hook, Delton Kellogg
Kolby Lange, Marlette
Trevor Lewis, Elkton-Pigeon-Bay Port Laker
Gregory Long, Sand Creek
Sean McBrayer, Unionville-Sebewaing
David Powers, Jr., Michigan Center
Benjamin Rebertus, Negaunee
Dirk E. Stoneman, Breckenridge
Ryan Watson, Delton Kellogg
GIRLS CLASS C
Brandy Bowers, Springport
Cayla Broton, Hesperia
Emily Crick, East Jordan
Lauren Dietrich, Gobles
Megan Kangas, Norway
Rachel Leightner, Springport
Lena Madison, New Buffalo
Rachel McEwen, Marlette
Karley Sauder, Marlette
Elyse Ann Louise Starck, Morley-Stanwood
Kelcey Stauffer, Sandusky
Isabella Yzerman, Bloomfield Hills Academy of the Sacred Heart
BOYS CLASS D
Evan Chalker, Buckley
Evan Dhyse, Kinde-North Huron
Seth Kintigh, Jackson Christian
Timothy Logghe, Peck
Joseph Nugent, Frankfort
Adam Plumstead, Frankfort
Sabeek Pradhan, Hillsdale Academy
Benjamin Ross, Lawrence
GIRLS CLASS D
Haley Buckey, Caseville
Kelsey Butcher, Morrice
Quinnlin Daily, Kingston
Natalija Galens, Watervliet Grace Christian
Haley Moore, Kinde-North Huron
Margaret Aileen Ryan, Hillsdale Academy
Jamie Lyn Seppanen, Eben Junction Superior Central
Alexandria Whitman, Fulton