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.
Schools Approve 6th-Grade Membership
December 7, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
By a vote of 561 in favor and 87 opposed, the membership of the Michigan High School Athletic Association has approved an amendment to the MHSAA Constitution that for the first time in 2016-17 will permit schools to join the MHSAA at the 6th-grade level.
Currently, MHSAA membership is open to schools at the 7th- and 8th-grade level as junior high/middle schools and at the 9th through 12th grades at the high school level. The MHSAA’s total membership of 1,458 schools consists at this time of 705 junior high/middle schools and 753 high schools.
The revision in the MHSAA Constitution does not require school districts to become member schools at the junior high/middle school level and does not require school districts to sponsor any interscholastic 6th-grade programs. If a school district’s MHSAA Membership Resolution lists a junior high/middle school as an MHSAA member school, and if the school sponsors a 6th-grade team in any sport or permits a 6th-grade student to participate with 7th- and/or 8th-grade students in any sport, then all MHSAA Regulations apply to all 6th-graders in all sports involving 6th-graders on teams sponsored by that school. If the school does not allow any 6th-graders to participate in a sport, MHSAA rules do not apply in that sport.
“There are a variety of reasons school districts so overwhelmingly supported this change,” MHSAA Executive Director John E. “Jack” Roberts said. “Some wanted the change so they could better market school sports to younger students. Some districts have their 6th-graders in the same buildings and even classrooms with 7th- and 8th-graders and see the natural fit. Some of our smaller junior high/middle schools need 6th-graders to fill out teams.”
MHSAA services, including catastrophic accident medical insurance and concussion care gap insurance, will be provided without charge for 6th-graders whose districts secure MHSAA membership, beginning with the 2016-17 school year.
The MHSAA is a private, not-for-profit corporation of voluntary membership by more than 1,400 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.