Kick Off Your 2022-23 with MHSAA.com's New Look, Enhanced Experience
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
August 1, 2022
Welcome to what we hope will be your best – and most welcoming experience yet – on MHSAA.com.
As part of the kickoff of the 2022-23 school year, the Michigan High School Athletic Association is reintroducing this redesigned website filled with enhancements we hope better tell the ever-inspiring story of school sports – while making it easier for visitors to learn how they can be part of these stories as they unfold.
Driving this new fan-focused MHSAA.com are the following:
♦ An opportunity to tell your stories, front and center. You’ll see them immediately on the front page of the website and on pages for all of our sports and schools. After 10 years, our “Second Half” website is gone, with that coverage of schools all over Michigan now moved to MHSAA.com.
♦ The ability to make schedule and tournament information easier to find. The navigation at the top of the site is designed to get you places in fewer clicks. And our pages for every sport will be updated frequently throughout the season and especially at tournament time with information on how to attend and watch your favorite teams compete.
♦ The probability you’re connecting with the MHSAA on your phone. The majority of our web traffic – 70 percent, in fact – is via a mobile device, and our website will be much easier to navigate moving forward.
Much of this will look familiar – just different, and hopefully more organized and easier to navigate.
Are we missing anything? To answer that question in advance, “Yes.” We will be working throughout the coming months to backfill much of the historical data that has made MHSAA.com a home for high school sports, while also positioning those results, records and more in a way our millions of visitors will be able to better enjoy them.
So please, stop by frequently and stay a while. What’s the best place to start? Check out the “I AM …” link at the top of this page, and dive in.
Girls Basketball Finals Returning to Breslin
September 30, 2019
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
The Michigan High School Athletic Association’s Girls Basketball Semifinals and Finals weekend could return to the Breslin Student Events Center as quickly as this upcoming 2019-20 season, with Michigan State University hosting the event this winter and in future seasons when the Spartans women’s basketball team is not selected as an opening-round host for the NCAA Tournament.
Breslin hosted the Girls Basketball Semifinals and Finals from 2004-06 and 2010-17. However, the potential for a conflict with the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament led to the MHSAA moving the event for the past two seasons. The NCAA awards top-four seeded teams an opportunity to host the first two rounds of its Division I tournament, and the NCAA event falls almost annually on the traditional dates of the MHSAA girls basketball championship weekend – setting up the possible conflict of both events being scheduled to play at Breslin at the same time.
During an initial three-year contract beginning this winter, Breslin tentatively will be the host of the MHSAA Girls Basketball Semifinals and Finals. If, beginning in 2021, the Spartans are seeded fourth or higher for the NCAA Tournament and selected to host first and second rounds, the MHSAA Girls Semifinals and Finals will be played at Read Fieldhouse’s University Arena on the campus of Western Michigan University. Hope College’s DeVos Fieldhouse in Holland will serve as the alternative site if Breslin is not available in 2020, as Read is hosting the Mid-American Conference Gymnastics Championships during the weekend of the MHSAA Girls Semifinals and Finals.
“We are thankful for the graciousness of all parties involved to allow for this opportunity to bring the Girls Basketball Semifinals and Finals back to the Breslin Center,” MHSAA Executive Director Mark Uyl said. “From the Breslin Center staff, to coach Suzy Merchant and the MSU women’s basketball program, to MSU law enforcement, ticketing and hospitality and then Western Michigan and Hope College and their facilities people for agreeing to reserve their arenas for us in case it’s needed – this agreement happens only because of the immense cooperation by everyone involved.”
The MHSAA Girls Basketball Semifinals will be played this upcoming season March 19-20, 2020, with all four championship games March 21. The NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament’s opening weekend is March 20-23, with the bracket and seeds to be announced Monday, March 16.
The MHSAA Boys Basketball Semifinals and Finals traditionally are played at the Breslin Center the following weekend, this upcoming season March 26-28. All games for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament are played at neutral sites, and there is no possible conflict between the two events.
Read Fieldhouse, home to Broncos teams including the women’s and men’s basketball programs, unveiled a new basketball court at the start of the 2015-16 season among a variety of improvements to the facility over the last five years. The MHSAA Girls Basketball Finals were played at Read from 1983-85, and WMU also hosted the MHSAA Girls Volleyball Finals from 1996 through the 2007 winter season, the last before the MHSAA season for the sport moved to the fall.
DeVos Fieldhouse, the 2020 provisional site, is home to Hope’s hoops teams among other athletic programs and previously hosted the 2013 NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Final Four.