Century of School Sports: MHSAA Blazes Trail Into Cyberspace
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
January 9, 2025
When the MHSAA took its first footsteps into cyberspace in 1996 – and then officially launched MHSAA.com on Aug. 15, 1997 – the jump into the internet revolution was to help characterize the MHSAA’s focus on the future, according to a Muskegon Chronicle report quoting then-executive director Jack Roberts.
Predicting how that future would quickly and continuously unfold may have been anyone’s guess. But over the next nearly three decades, MHSAA.com has grown, evolved, added a companion website and then united them into a single valuable landing spot not just for those who work to make our games happen, but the millions who cheer for them as well.
The first rendition of an MHSAA website reached the World Wide Web during Fall 1996 with an American Online (aol.com) URL and included rankings for the MHSAA Football Playoffs. The official version 1.0 of MHSAA.com launched just about a year later, anchored by what would be the website’s priorities for the next 15 years – an area titled “Administration” containing tools primarily for school administrators, a “Services” section highlighting sportsmanship, scholarship and safety; and “The Games” that included sport-by-sport details on rules changes, tournament assignments and historical information.
The MHSAA reported more than 12,000 visitors to its online home during October 1997 – about 400 daily, with the weekly football rankings the largest draw. A little more than a year later, in November 1998, the MHSAA enjoyed its biggest month to date with more than 2,500 visitors daily to climb past 850,000 since the launch of the website. More than 58,000 of those views came during the release of that season’s Football Playoff pairings, and another major draw was the “Games Wanted” page listing teams looking for opponents, which was athletic directors’ biggest ask when surveyed two years earlier on what they wanted most from an MHSAA website.
MHSAA.com already was pushing far ahead of the curve, especially when it came to state school sports associations. But that start was only slightly a sign of things to come. The website has taken on a life that far surpasses any “much has changed, much has stayed the same” scenario.
Truth be told, the goals for the website have not changed in several years – MHSAA.com has provided a place for member school administrators and coaches, and game officials, to do their daily MHSAA-related business. But that mission has been joined by a growing emphasis on telling the story of school sports to the growing number of fans paying us a visit.
What’s changed is how the MHSAA has delivered on those missions.
The website’s design evolved during the final years of the 1990s and first decade of the 2000s, following the fast-moving progression across the internet. Navigation – getting users where they want to go easily – became the buzzword, and adding more and more information to the site meant adding better avenues to find and organize it.
The MHSAA redesign carried out during the 2009-10 school year – the first built by now-longtime partner Gravity Works Design & Development in Lansing – propelled the website in a big way toward what you see today. Navigation menus now remained a static part of every page as users navigated within the site. A large action photo was placed at the top of the front page to bring it to life, as were feeds from the MHSAA’s well-followed social media accounts and a video player highlighting the growing broadcast and video presence.
And then came the largest leap. In late 2011, the MHSAA became one of two state associations nationwide at the time (along with Arizona) to begin creating its own fan-focused editorial content. In January 2012, the MHSAA launched its Second Half website as a home for feature stories, blogs, videos and coverage of MHSAA Finals, produced mostly by longtime media members operating as correspondents from their various regions of the state.
For the 2008-09 school year, MHSAA.com had attracted 19.2 million page views. For 2013-14, the count (including both the main and Second Half sites) totaled 22.5 million. That jumped to 27.2 million for 2018-19. And the most defining design change was still ahead.
While the Second Half’s article content had begun to draw nearly 1 million page views annually – a success considering the state has about 170,000 high school athletes – that content remained separated from an already-robust amount of schedules, scores, results and records data the MHSAA had published on its main site over 25 years, plus all the other postseason promotion and information fans had begun to seek.
So in 2022, the MHSAA made one more big jump to land at the website you’re visiting today.
Paying special attention to not disrupt the work of school people using the site for administrative purposes, the MHSAA closed down Second Half and brought all that content to the front of MHSAA.com – for the first time making the front page of the main website fan-focused. That emphasis on spectator experience continued with new, easier-to-understand navigation, and redesigns of sports pages to better promote MHSAA Tournament events and Michigan Power Ratings (MPR), ticket ordering and record book information fans seek. All of the tools school sports people relied on in the past remain, just flip-flopped with the stories and stats that tell our story to a growing audience.
This new version also is geared differently to better serve an audience that has moved significantly toward viewing on phones. Roughly 70 percent of MHSAA.com page views are coming on mobile devices, and this latest design was built to be responsive and best-serve that visitor preference.
The response to the most recent redesign indeed tells the rest of the story – 38.2 million page views during 2023-24, a 40-percent jump from five years earlier. The largest-drawing single day of the school year was March 1, 2024, with nearly 444,000 views as that year’s Winter tournaments began their final month. Team schedule pages in 2023-24 drew 13 million views, with 2.1 million views of tournament brackets and 1.7 million of the statewide scores page. The site’s editorial content – all of those features, game stories and more – were up to 1.65 million views.
MHSAA.com remains what it’s always been, but now it’s so much more – and no doubt, the best is yet to come.
Previous "Century of School Sports" Spotlights
Dec. 31: State's Storytellers Share Winter Memories - Read
Dec. 17: MHSAA Over Time - Read
Dec. 10: On This Day, December 13, We Will Celebrate - Read
Dec. 3: MHSAA Work Guided by Representative Council - Read
Nov. 26: Finals Provide Future Pros Early Ford Field Glory - Read
Nov. 19: Connection at Heart of Coaches Advancement Program - Read
Nov. 12: Good Sports are Winners Then, Now & Always - Read
Nov. 5: MHSAA's Home Sweet Home - Read
Oct. 29: MHSAA Summits Draw Thousands to Promote Sportsmanship - Read
Oct. 23: Cross Country Finals Among MHSAA's Longest Running - Read
Oct. 15: State's Storytellers Share Fall Memories - Read
Oct. 8: Guided by 4 S's of Educational Athletics - Read
Oct. 1: Michigan Sends 10 to National Hall of Fame - Read
Sept. 25: MHSAA Record Books Filled with 1000s of Achievements - Read
Sept. 18: Why Does the MHSAA Have These Rules? - Read
Sept. 10: Special Medals, Patches to Commemorate Special Year - Read
Sept. 4: Fall to Finish with 50th Football Championships - Read
Aug. 28: Let the Celebration Begin - Read
PHOTOS (Top) Clockwise from top left are images of the front page of MHSAA.com from the years 1998, 2005, this week and 2014. (Middle) This is the front page of the MHSAA's Second Half site from June, 16, 2017.
Century of School Sports: Upper Peninsula Helps Makes Michigan's School Sports Story Unique
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
May 27, 2025
From the parking lot of the MHSAA office in East Lansing, it’s a shorter drive to Kentucky than to Crystal Falls Forest Park High School on the far western border of the Upper Peninsula.
That little fun fact illustrates just a bit of what makes Michigan – made up of two large peninsulas surrounded by four of the world’s largest freshwater lakes and connected by one of its longest bridges – a fascinating place to live and serve as a statewide athletic association.
It also provides a little bit of context in explaining how Upper Peninsula athletics have occupied their own unique space both literally and figuratively in that statewide landscape dating back to well before the creation of the MHSAA in December 1924.
With time and technology, the world indeed has become smaller – and Michigan with it. And over the MHSAA’s 100-year history – with help from achievements like the Mackinac Bridge – the Upper and Lower Peninsulas have come to a place of competing together in most sports, during most of the same seasons, but still with some exceptions to accommodate notable differences that remain.
Consider first these two:
• There are 53 MHSAA-member high schools in the Upper Peninsula, located across roughly 16,000 square miles of land. That’s compared to 701 Lower Peninsula member high schools spread over about 40,000 square miles.
• There is only one high school with more than 1,000 students in the Upper Peninsula – Marquette, with an enrollment of 1,021 this school year to rank as the state’s 127th-largest overall. Escanaba, Sault Ste. Marie and Kingsford are the only other high schools with at least 500 students.
With those comparisons as conversation starters, it’s easy to understand how schools above the Bridge face increased travel time, distance and expenses compared to most of their downstate friends – during both the regular season and MHSAA postseason – and not to mention frequently shorter fall and spring outdoor sport seasons because of winters that start sooner and end later.
To make competition as equitable and worthwhile as possible amid those challenges, the MHSAA has settled on a mix of statewide and U.P.-only championships – and with the Upper Peninsula taking the lead on devising its championship schedules.
This week alone will see Boys Tennis, Girls & Boys Golf and Girls & Boys Track & Field Finals competed in U.P.-only divisions. Upper Peninsula girls tennis, girls and boys cross country, and girls and boys swimming & diving programs also operate their postseason tournaments separately from the Lower Peninsula.
Among other sports, boys basketball played separate tournaments by peninsula from 1932-47, wrestling was contended in separate tournaments from 1967-87, girls volleyball was separate from its first season of 1975-76 until unifying in 1999-2000, and girls gymnastics also was separated by peninsula from 1972-73 until unification in 2003-04.
The Upper Peninsula’s voice in these matters goes back to the MHSAA’s predecessor organizations – beginning in 1904 when Ironwood’s first superintendent Luther L. Wright served on the Michigan State Teacher’s Association’s Committee on High School Athletics. Howard S. Doolittle – formerly representing Saginaw Eastern before becoming principal of Calumet High School – played a major role in bringing Upper Peninsula schools (and the then-Upper Peninsula Association) into the fold with the Lower Peninsula schools under the MHSAA’s predecessor Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Association.
With the creation of the MHSAA and its Representative Council in 1924 came an elected member representing the Upper Peninsula – Escanaba superintendent R.E. Cheney during that first school year. A second representative was added a short time later so both the largest and smallest schools from that region had a vote. Gwinn’s Leo P. McDonald (1930-52) and Escanaba’s Dan Flynn (1988-2010) are among 11 Council members who have served at least 20 years, and as recently as 2014 the Council president hailed from just south of Lake Superior’s shores as Negaunee superintendent Jim Derocher finished his final term. Kingsford’s Chris Hartman and Calumet’s Sean Jacques currently serve as the U.P. reps.
The Upper Peninsula Association ceased when the MHSAA was created, but in 1933 the Council authorized the formation of the Upper Peninsula Athletic Committee, which from the start has taken a leading role in organizing the U.P.-only championships and continues as well to serve as an advisory board providing U.P. input on statewide topics of the day. Among its most memorable actions, the U.P. Athletic Committee played a large role in Upper Peninsula schools’ return to a statewide boys basketball tournament after 15 seasons of separation.
The most recent U.P. Athletic Committee meeting occurred April 24 and included members Hartman, Jacques, Mike Berutti (West Iron County), Vince Gross (Paradise Whitefish Township), Jack Kumpula (Lake Linden-Hubbell), Sam Larson (Menominee) and Paul Jacobson (Negaunee) along with Jim Bobula (Ontonagon), Don Gustafson (St. Ignace) and Dale Hongisto (Gladstone) in advisory roles.
They recommended and/or confirmed tournament sites for this spring’s Upper Peninsula Regional and Finals championships, some 2025-26 U.P. Finals and hosts for the U.P.’s Districts, Regionals and Quarterfinals in both girls volleyball this fall and girls and boys basketball for next winter. Committee members also discussed coaches education opportunities for this fall and the possibility of further U.P. involvement in future L.P.-only tournaments, among other topics.
Previous "Century of School Sports" Spotlights
May 20: From Nearly A to Z, Schools Repped by 221 Nicknames - Read
May 13: These Record-Setters were Nearly Impossible to Defeat - Read
May 6: 200+ Representatives Fill All-Time Council Roster - Read
April 29: MHSAA Programs Prioritize Health & Safety - Read
April 23: Patches Signify Registered Officials' Role in MHSAA Story - Read
April 16: Student Advisory Council Gives Voice to Athletes - Read
April 9: State's Storytellers Share Spring Memories - Read
April 2: Sharp Leadership Synonymous with MHSAA Success - Read
March 25: Athletic Directors Indispensable to Mission of School Sports - Read
March 18: 2025 Finals Begin Next Half-Century of Girls Hoops Championships - Read
March 11: Boys Basketball's Best 1st to Earn MHSAA Finals Titles - Read
March 5: Everything We Do Begins with Participation - Read
Feb. 25: Slogans & Logos Remain Unforgettable Parts of MHSAA History - Read
Feb. 19: MHSAA Tickets Continue to Provide Fan-Friendly Value - Read
Feb. 11: We Recognize Those Who Make Our Games Go - Read
Feb. 4: WISL Conference Continues to Inspire Aspiring Leaders - Read
Jan. 28: Michigan's National Impact Begins at NFHS' Start - Read
Jan. 21: Awards Celebrate Well-Rounded Educational Experience - Read
Jan. 14: Predecessors Laid Foundation for MHSAA's Formation - Read
Jan. 9: MHSAA Blazes Trail Into Cyberspace - Read
Dec. 31: State's Storytellers Share Winter Memories - Read
Dec. 17: MHSAA Over Time - Read
Dec. 10: On This Day, December 13, We Will Celebrate - Read
Dec. 3: MHSAA Work Guided by Representative Council - Read
Nov. 26: Finals Provide Future Pros Early Ford Field Glory - Read
Nov. 19: Connection at Heart of Coaches Advancement Program - Read
Nov. 12: Good Sports are Winners Then, Now & Always - Read
Nov. 5: MHSAA's Home Sweet Home - Read
Oct. 29: MHSAA Summits Draw Thousands to Promote Sportsmanship - Read
Oct. 23: Cross Country Finals Among MHSAA's Longest Running - Read
Oct. 15: State's Storytellers Share Fall Memories - Read
Oct. 8: Guided by 4 S's of Educational Athletics - Read
Oct. 1: Michigan Sends 10 to National Hall of Fame - Read
Sept. 25: MHSAA Record Books Filled with 1000s of Achievements - Read
Sept. 18: Why Does the MHSAA Have These Rules? - Read
Sept. 10: Special Medals, Patches to Commemorate Special Year - Read
Sept. 4: Fall to Finish with 50th Football Championships - Read
Aug. 28: Let the Celebration Begin - Read