Parade of Champions 2014-15
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
June 22, 2015
A total of 90 schools won one or more of the 127 Finals team championships awarded by the Michigan High School Athletic Association during the 2014-15 school year – with five programs winning the first MHSAA team titles in any sport for their respective schools.
The Detroit Western International boys basketball, Armada boys bowling, Detroit Loyola football, Birmingham Roeper boys soccer and Romeo girls volleyball teams all brought home the first MHSAA team championships in their schools’ histories.
A total of 32 teams won their first MHSAA titles. A total of 48 champions were repeat winners from 2013-14 – and 16 of those won for at least the third straight season. The Birmingham Brother Rice boys lacrosse team has the longest title streak of 11 seasons, while the Battle Creek St. Philip volleyball team has won ninth straight titles for the second-longest streak overall and longest among girls programs.
Marquette claimed the most championships, seven, winning in Division 1 boys skiing, Upper Peninsula Division 1 boys cross country and girls cross country, Upper Peninsula boys swimming & diving and girls swimming & diving, and Upper Peninsula Division 1 boys track & field and girls track & field. Three schools won four titles apiece – Birmingham Seaholm, Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood and Ishpeming – and four schools won three titles apiece: Birmingham Brother Rice, Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central, Orchard Lake St. Mary’s and Rockford.
Sixteen of the MHSAA's 28 championship tournaments are unified, involving teams from the Upper and Lower Peninsulas, while separate competition to determine titlists in both Peninsulas is conducted in remaining sports.
For a sport-by-sport listing of MHSAA champions for 2014-15 - Click Here (PDF)
PHOTO: The Romeo volleyball team hoists its Division 1 championship trophy, the first MHSAA Finals trophy won by the school in any sport.
MHSAA's Roberts Elected to NFHS Board
July 12, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
MHSAA Executive Director John E. “Jack” Roberts has been elected to serve a four-year term on the Board of Directors for the National Federation of State High School Associations, the national governing body for high school athletics and activities.
Roberts has served as executive director since 1986 and is the longest-tenured active state association executive director among NFHS members. The MHSAA is one of the nation’s largest state associations with more than 1,400 high schools and junior high/middle schools. The NFHS, in its press release on new officers and board members, called Roberts "one of the nation’s most articulate advocates for education-based activity programs."
After graduating from P. J. Jacobs High School in Stevens Point, Wis., and Dartmouth College and attending graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, Roberts taught English and coached football at high schools in Milwaukee and Denver until 1973, when he joined the staff of the NFHS, which at that time was located in Elgin, Illinois.
From 1973 to 1980, Roberts developed the NFHS’ volleyball, swimming & diving and ice hockey rules programs, and re-codified the Soccer Rules Book. Later, as assistant director, he was in charge of public, legislative and judicial affairs for the NFHS.
Roberts joined the staff of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) in 1981 and was named executive vice president of the FCA in 1984. He served in that capacity until 1986, when he was named executive director of the MHSAA.
Roberts served a previous term on the NFHS Board of Directors from 1996 to 2000 and has been chairman of the NFHS Network Board of Directors since 2013. He also has served on two previous NFHS Strategic Planning Committees and is past chair of the board of directors of the Michigan Society of Association Executives.
PHOTO: MHSAA Executive Director Jack Roberts congratulates an MHSAA/Farm Bureau Scholar-Athlete Award winner at the Breslin Center.