Michigan court case over: MHSAA must join the 20th Century

Agreed. Complete bullshit. You won the case, bitch, as it was always very clear, legally, you were going to, so STFU.

 

I like the column by McCabe this morning. Starman won't because he thinks the switch was overdue.
But girls basketball is going to get screwed on this..

To be equal, girls face new hurdle
Court decision means major switches; boys could overshadow the girls' games

April 3, 2007

BY MICK McCABE

FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER

The party is over.

It ended Monday when the U. S. Supreme Court decided not to hear the Michigan High School Athletic Association's appeal. The group had maintained that it did not discriminate against girls because of when some of their sports seasons were scheduled.

So now Michigan will switch volleyball to the fall and girls basketball to the winter -- and shake up a few other sports -- and be like the other 49 states.

And that is a shame.

We had a good thing going in Michigan. Of course, it seemed weird if you were a high school girl in Illinois or Ohio or Montana. Whoever heard of playing girls basketball in the fall and volleyball in the winter, opposite of when they are played in college?

But it worked and it worked well, even for volleyball. For instance, Michigan ranks third nationally in the number of high school volleyball players.

I never believed that the MHSAA violated the law. It states that girls must have equal, but not identical, opportunity, which is exactly what they had in Michigan.

The biggest losers in this, of course, are the girls.

Despite what they say now, this legal battle was all about college scholarships, most notably volleyball scholarships. The belief was that because club volleyball begins nationally in January, our girls were handicapped because they played their high school season until March and were late getting into their club season.

The Grand Rapids-based Communities for Equity argued that all of the college scholarships were gone by the time our girls began their club season.

That may have been fairly accurate 20 years ago, but college recruiting is so sophisticated now, college coaches are offering scholarships to athletes before their senior years begin. And only a few high school athletes -- fewer than 1% -- actually earn scholarships.

The truth is, for years Michigan has been over-recruited. The easiest time for a college coach to recruit is when he or she isn't coaching his or her team. That meant college volleyball coaches were free to spend their winters recruiting in Michigan.

The same was true in basketball. Girls basketball will take the hardest hit of all in the switch.

One of the witnesses who testified against the MHSAA in 2001 said she wanted to experience March Madness. Well, with the change, the girls basketball state tournament most likely will seem like a rumor. The harsh reality is it will be lost amid the hoopla surrounding the boys tournament, not to mention the NCAA tournament going on at the same time.

Worse yet is what could happen if some leagues insist upon playing both boys and girls basketball on Tuesday and Friday nights, but at opposite sites. Can you imagine what will happen on the night Grosse Pointe North plays Grosse Pointe South? The gym where boys are playing will be packed while the only people at the girls games will be relatives.

Some leagues want to play boys and girls varsity games at the same site. If the girls play first, they will be viewed as the junior varsity game, and if they play second, the gym will be practically empty after halftime.

Leagues will have to look at using Saturday as a game day for boys and/or girls. And athletic directors' jobs just became a nightmare, trying to find gym time for all of the teams to practice and play.

Let's hope schools don't take the easy way out and begin eliminating teams like freshman boys and girls basketball.

The ruling also means a slew of coaching changes. No longer, for example, will some boys coaches be able to lead a girls team in the same sport, because their seasons will now overlap.

Finding qualified basketball officials was a chore before and now will become more complicated. Most of the top officials prefer to work boys games, so you can imagine who will be left to officiate girls games.

Yet, while school administrators will spend weeks wringing their hands and claiming the sky is falling, the fact is we will adapt.

Hey, 49 other states find a way to play boys and girls basketball during the same season, and so will we.

Still, I will bet anything that, years from now, we will be longing for the days when we played girls basketball in the fall and volleyball in the winter.

We will call them the "good old days."

 

A few rebuttals from one of the states that does basketball in the winter .

Good point, but the MHSAA can do what several other states do ... move the start of the girls season to begin 2-3 weeks ahead of the boys (in mid-November), play the state tournament in February and finish it before the boys (and the NCAA) begin. That isn't rocket science, but it could be a major problem if Michigan handles it poorly.

One state to the south, the boys regular-season games simply shift to Thursday night and Saturday afternoon during the first week of the girls tournament, and the girls take center stage (and people *do* pay attention -- attendance for girls tournament games is similar to attendance for boys regular-season games).

One suburban conference in Indiana does this for conference games (and that suburban conference's ringleader was also the most vocal supporter of Indiana's disastrous move to class basketball 10 years ago, so perceived equality is more important than common sense in these parts). It's nightmarish. The girls get *zero* media coverage, and the attendance at both sites is usually down.

The best way to handle scheduling is this ...
Boys play on Tuesday & Friday
Girls play on Wednesday & Saturday

Each team gets a weekend prime-time game. (and if the girls begin howling about having to play on Saturdays, just have them switch each week).

Does this happen? A bit. But girls basketball usually has enough of a fan base to be self-sustaining. At least one conference in Indiana does this for its league games. I've covered several doubleheaders -- they're nightmarish in a lot of ways (having to play JV games on a separate day, rationing locker-room space for 4 teams in some smaller schools, having to write 2 gamers on deadline). But from a coverage standpoint, they're great, because you can get two games covered in one shot.

Where support for girls basketball is low, the coaches love them ... the girls getting to run out to a live band, play in front of a bigger crowd. Where support for girls hoops is high, coaches tend to hate them because of the 6 p.m. starts, locker-room issues, the "JV" factor.

Isn't volleyball an indoor sport? The only "nightmare" for the ADs is going to be remembering to leave the baskets down for both practices now.

ADs have at least five schedules to juggle in the winter for gym time -- varsity/JV and freshman boys basketball; varsity/JV and freshman girls basketball and wrestling. If you have two gyms, the boys take one and the girls take the other for practice (with the frosh teams practicing after the V/JV or before school). The only issue is rationing competition dates, but one likely needs only to replace the scheduled volleyball times with basketball ones, and that shouldn't be a massive problem. In most states, basketball has *fewer* dates than volleyball anyway.

My experience is in Indiana, but many officials work both boys and girls. Boys tend to play on Friday & Saturday nights, while girls play one midweek game and then either play Saturday afternoon or Saturday evening. The only nights that are difficult to find decent officials for the girls are Saturday night games and the rare Friday-night game. I helped coach a girls team in Indiana this year, and we had several officials working our games who working deep into the boys state tournament.

If Michigan staggers its tournament (girls first, then boys, with little overlap) and staggers its game nights so boys and girls aren't playing on the same nights, finding officials won't be a massive problem.

 

The plan is to have a week overlap and, other than a week where girls' regionals overlap with boys districts, teams will have their own nights...

 

In my part of Ohio, girls play mostly on Mondays and Thursdays. A few non-league Saturday games and Friday night boy-girl doubleheaders are thrown in. Gyms are full. Media coverage is good. Not many complaints.

 

For a better idea what will happen in Michigan, I bring you this from the first page:

 

Pennsylvania was like that, though they changed it to allow the schools to give the girls some Tuesday and Friday nights. Then again, boys hoops is fairly lousy in PA.

 

Um, Grand Valley is a Division-II school, based in Grand Rapids. They are a part of the Great Lakes Intercolliegate Athletic Conference (GLIAC), just an FYI...

 

Glad I'm not in Michigan anymore, because this totally sucks for basketball referees.

In New York, I could only ref from December through February. In Michigan, I got the girls for three months, then the boys for three more. Double the work = double the money.

 

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. I don't think you're going to see as many all-day tournaments on Saturdays (would you want to be in a gym when the weather's fairly decent outside?)... instead, you'll see triangulars, quads, little five-team tournaments, etc.

It also sounds like girls will be played on different days than boys here, which is the smart thing to do. If you played the girls before the boys, the girls would feel like a JV contest because you'd have three-fourths of the crowd trying to get into the gym for the boys game. And heaven forbid if you played the girls after the boys... I would not want to be the coach that has to explain the reason to all the players why the fans are leaving.

As for coaches looking at players, the original suit said switching would give the players more looks from more colleges. HOW is this possible? Coaches will have to hire recruiting assistants or hope and pray their matches and games aren't on the same night as the college matches are.

I will agree with Mick. If there are major participation issues a few years from now, then we may have killed the golden goose. Then again, it might go much smoother. We'll see.

 

Never knew Michigan did the sports seasons any differently until now. This has been curious to read.