MHSAA Attendance Posts 6-Year High
September 21, 2017
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
MHSAA tournament events posted an increase in attendance for the second straight school year in 2016-17, drawing 1,492,469 fans – with eight boys sports enjoying larger audiences that the previous year.
Total attendance rose sixth-tenths (0.6) of a percent from 2015-16 to its highest total since 2010-11. Boys attendance rose to 1,034,625 (or 1.2 percent) to its highest total since 2011-12. Girls attendance was 457,844, continuing a trend that has seen the last three school years post the largest audiences for girls tournament events since the MHSAA began annually tracking data in 1990-91. Attendance is kept for all sports except golf, skiing and tennis, for which admission typically is not charged.
The second straight boys increase was keyed in part by a pair of records. Baseball drew 50,820 fans, breaking the previous record set during the 2009 season while also seeing a record turnout at the District level. Boys lacrosse, with 11,211 total attendance, broke the previous record set in 2010.
The boys basketball tournament, with 330,588 fans, enjoyed its highest turnout since 2010-11. Football attendance rose for the second straight year with 395,894 fans total, enjoying single-round increases at the Pre-District, District and Regional levels. Ice hockey, with 51,812 fans, also saw an increase from 2015-16, as did the boys swimming & diving tournament with 5,694 fans – its highest overall attendance since 2010-11.
Three more records contributed to the overall increase in 2016-17. Softball drew 47,364 fans total, breaking the previous record set in 1994-95. The bowling and cross country tournaments, which both include girls and boys competing at the same sites, both set records as well – bowling with 14,012 fans overall to set a record for the second straight year, and cross country with 20,671 fans, its most since 2011-12.
Two more girls sports also enjoyed increased attendance from 2015-16. The girls lacrosse tournament drew 5,691 fans, a 29 percent increase from the year before and with a record at the Regional level. Girls soccer drew 28,203 fans with increases at the District, Regional and Semifinal levels; the overall attendance was a 3.9 percent increase and the highest since the record 2006-07 season.
Also of note:
• Although girls basketball overall attendance was down half a percent to 168,674, both the Quarterfinals and Semifinal-Finals rounds saw increases from the previous season. The Semifinal-Finals weekend drew 24,120 fans, the most since the record was set for those rounds combined during the 1996 fall season (girls basketball moved from fall to winter beginning with the 2007-08 season.
• The boys basketball attendance increase was bolstered in part by the highest Semifinal-Finals weekend attendance (53,990) since 2008-09 and an increase that weekend of 14 percent from 2015-16.
• Boys Soccer Districts were watched by 15,048 fans, the most since 2008-09, and individual wrestling also enjoyed a bounce-back at its earliest rounds with a three-year high at the District level (10,792 fans) and a six-year high (8,488) at the Regional level.
• Girls gymnastics Regionals (1,146) drew their largest audience since 2002-03, while competitive cheer Regionals (7,333) enjoyed a nine-year high.
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.
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.