With the 2022-2023 school year recently concluded, 9&10 Sports made a trip to Lansing to sit down with the Executive Director of the Michigan High School Athletic Association Mark Uyl for a wide-ranging conversation about the state of high school sports in the Michigan, especially three years after the Covid-19 pandemic upended high school sports statewide.
The 2022-2023 school year was a banner one for schools from northern Michigan, with 16 teams from 14 different schools in the 9&10 coverage area winning state championships:
Hart - Division 3 Boys Cross Country, Traverse City St. Francis - Division 3 Girls Cross Country, Johannesburg-Lewiston - Division 4 Girls Cross Country, Mt. Pleasant Sacred Heart - Division 4 Volleyball, Gladwin - Division 5 Football, Traverse City West - Division 1 Boys and Girls Skiing, Petoskey - Division 2 Boys Skiing, Glen Lake - Division 4 Girls Basketball, Cedarville-DeTour - Upper Peninsula Division 3 Girls Golf, Benzie Central - Division 3 Boys Track & Field, Pickford - Upper Peninsula Division 2 Boys Track & Field, Hart - Division 3 Girls Track & Field, Buckley - Division 4 Girls Track & Field, Gaylord - Division 2 Softball and Beal City - Division 4 Baseball.
Uyl took over as Executive Director of the MHSAA in the summer of 2018, replacing long-time director John E. “Jack” Roberts. Below is a lightly-edited transcript of his conversation with 9&10 Sports.
9&10 SPORTS: As we’re a few weeks removed from the 2022-23 school year, and we have time to reflect, our Northern Michigan teams had a great year. Tell me about the talent that you see our smaller northern communities having up there.
MARK UYL: You know, our tournaments last school year, first of all, it felt as normal as anything has really since the pandemic. So, we continue to see signs that each year things are really getting back to normal. And part of that normalcy has been, the great north having just a great year last year. Not only our northern lower peninsula teams, but we had good representation from the U.P. And, it’s great to see that many of our state championship events truly are a state championship, with a lot of success that our northern schools had last year.
SPORTS: You bring up things feeling normal since the pandemic. I guess kind of what trajectory is the MHSAA on? Three years post Covid?
UYL: So it continues to get better. You know, we’ve had record crowds the last two years, so it really shows that coming out of Covid that people were ready to get out and get back to events. We’re seeing participation levels from our kids being at pre-pandemic levels, which has been exceptional. And you’re really kind of seeing that community spirit again. And I think it’s almost stronger than before Covid, just because I think there is more of an appreciation that, you know what, we really shouldn’t take this for granted that, you know, a great run like Gaylord softball for example. We really saw the entire community and really that whole area really get behind that group of young women. So I do think that the experience of the pandemic, with the pauses and not being able to play, I do think there’s a little greater appreciation for what kids are able to do right now.
SPORTS: I think something that the pandemic kind of brought to light was what’s happening with our referees. I feel like that’s when we really started talking about the shortages that we’re having, and obviously the MHSAA has been good about pushing for hiring and things like that. How is that going and how are you kind of working to combat that?
UYL: I’ve been in education for 27 years, and probably the first 23 or 24 years the biggest issue was always money. The last four years really since Covid, the biggest issue for schools are people. It’s referees. It’s umpires. It’s teachers. It’s coaches. It’s bus drivers. We’re in a real personnel crunch right now, and certainly when Covid hit, we knew we were going to have a bubble of referee retirements coming. And Covid really kind of hit the fast forward button on that. And so really it’s us making folks aware of the opportunity to become an official. And even if, your viewers don’t want to become an official themselves, the one way that they can help us is the next time you’re at a game and you see that call or decision by the umpire or referee that you don’t agree with, just count to 20 and say nothing. Just that common decency, that basic respect of just agreeing to disagree and just move on to the next play or the next pitch, for example. That’s really a way that everybody can play their small part in supporting, at least helping in this battle of officials and officials’ numbers.
SPORTS: Have you seen any progress when it comes to the numbers since you guys have been kind of pushing people to maybe think about becoming a ref?
UYL: So, our numbers have been up. This past school year we did see an increase of 300 officials from where we were in ‘21-’22. So while we would’ve hoped that number jump would’ve been greater, before the pandemic, we were right around 10,000 officials, and as we sit here today, we’re at about 8,300. So, we did lose a little over 2,000, but we’re starting that slow climb back up the mountain. And, the folks that are interested, mhsaa.com, hit the official button and we’d love to get you started.
SPORTS: While we’re talking about officials and things like that, we’re going to see some game changes when it comes to basketball. Can you kind of walk me through what we’re going to see next year when it comes to the free throw, free throw line, and why you guys came to that?
UYL: So we’re part of the National Federation (of high schools). So, the National Federation out of Indianapolis. All 50 states are a member and they write the playing rules for the country. So, the basketball playing rules that we’ll use next winter in Michigan are the same that are used all over the country. And what basketball fans will recognize is the biggest change is the team fouls. What it will be is to start each quarter, the fouls are at zero, and after the fifth team foul, the opponents will now shoot two free throws. So a one-and-one is disappearing from the high school game. And the unique part about the rule change is at the end of the first and the third quarter, the team fouls reset. So to start the second and fourth quarter, everybody starts out with zero team fouls again. So it’s now by quarter rather than halves of how the team fouls will be tracked. That’s what college women have been using in their rules for the last handful of years. And we’ll see what that looks like at the high school game this coming winter.
SPORTS: Other states have started to implement things like shot clocks, pitch clocks. Do we see that coming to Michigan anytime soon or have there been any talks about that?
UYL: There’s conversation within our basketball community about the shot clock. We did take data in the 24 games that we played at Breslin for our girls’ semis and finals and boys’ semis and finals. And the reality is the data showed us that teams are getting up their first shot in a possession 17 seconds into the possession. So, the argument that we’re in need of a shot clock because teams are holding the ball and we’re not seeing enough shots and enough action, again, the data, it’s only 24 games I realize, but 17 seconds that data would lend you to believe that maybe the shot clock isn’t needed.
You know, the pitch clock, in my opinion, is saving major league baseball this season. It’s making that game watchable. At the high school level, it’s a little more unique to where we have, I believe, the greatest pitch clock, and that’s our weather. So many of our games in April and May are played in cool temperatures, which I think encourage us to play faster. So, the pitch clock in baseball or softball really hasn’t become an issue yet in our state.
SPORTS: I’m going shift to football here. We’re seeing an expansion when it comes to eight-man. It’s getting really popular, especially up north. Do you see anything changing there? Or why do you think it’s becoming so popular?
UYL: I think eight-player football’s been important to keep football in many communities. It’s even opened the door for football to return in some communities. So that’s overall been a good thing. We’ve got two divisions now of eight-player and the thing is, over the last almost 10 years, every good thing that we’ve done for eight-player football has really hurt our small school 11-player programs. So what our focus with our board is going to be this year is what are some ways that we can better support our division seven and eight 11-player programs? How can we, is there anything that we can do to incentivize maybe some of our bigger schools that are playing eight-player to make the transition back to 11, as their numbers continue to rebound? Would we ever, for example, say if your school has 250 or less students, you’ll automatically be in division eight? Would that be appealing for some of our smaller schools to be able to keep playing 11-player? So, those are some things that we’re discussing and looking at. So yes, eight-player has been good, but I really think the group that needs to move to the front of the line for some help are our division seven and eight 11-player schools.
SPORTS: Still on football, MSU moving their game against Penn State to Ford Field. That obviously shifted the dates for the state championships. What was that conversation like? Were you in on that when it came to dates at Ford Field?
UYL: The Big 10 Conference signed a new media rights deal and part of that was with nbc. And NBC now needs to find a certain number of prime time games. While one of the moves that NBC made was to take Penn State-Michigan State, move it to Black Friday, that evening in prime time. So, I give the folks at Michigan State and Ford Field lot credit, they brought us into the conversation right away. The key for us is this is a one-year issue. Some would say, well wait a minute, every other year Michigan State is going to host Penn State as the last game of the year. You’re always going to have this problem. Well two years from now when the College Football Playoff expands, the Big Ten regular season will actually end the weekend before Thanksgiving. So, when you fast forward two years, we’ll get Thanksgiving weekend back all to ourselves, no longer will be having to compete with Michigan-Ohio State or Michigan State-Penn State. The only thing that we’ll maybe have to work around is the Big Ten Championship. So, this year it’s inconvenient with us having to go Saturday and Sunday, but it’s kind of a one-year thing.
SPORTS: Any complications or benefits you see from it being Saturday and Sunday this year?
UYL: We’re getting creative with our scheduling. We’re not announcing game times until our tournament starts, just because we have some schools that have a ‘no Sunday’ policy and we’re going to try to use some good common sense to try to put together a schedule that is going to accommodate travel for schools who have a Sunday policy. And the one thing we learned from Covid is that you can put the puzzle together, and you can put it together with a pretty tight turnaround. That’s what we’ll do this year, and I’m sure it’ll be eight great games in Detroit. The bottom line is for those that have been critics, the alternative here is we could’ve stayed on Friday and Saturday, but those games would’ve had to have been outdoors some place, and I think when you ask our kids and our communities, the kids in the marching band, those parents, we’d much rather adjust by one day and be indoors than perhaps being outdoors in Mt. Pleasant or at Western Michigan, or someplace like that.
SPORTS: Outside of the state, whether it’s the Catholic League in Detroit, joining with those Toledo teams, we’ve got a Mount Pleasant team that’s inviting a Canadian team in. What does that say about what our groups here are trying to do when it comes to improving their team?
UYL: I think what it’s showing is that when it comes to football scheduling, you have to be creative. It’s been fairly common for schools to play some Canadian schools, whether it’s the Detroit area going across the river into Windsor, or up in the Eastern U.P., in the Sault Ste. Marie area or even a case like Mount Pleasant in the middle of the state, getting a team from Canada to come in and, you know, the Catholic League has had a hard time finding opponents as well. So, they’ve actually connected with some Catholic schools in Toledo and now kind of have a cross border football conference. And it just shows you that to find those nine football games and to fill out those schedules, sometimes you have to be creative. And creative sometimes means looking beyond your borders. We’ve even got some western U.P. schools that are always looking for options in Wisconsin and even Minnesota and that’s something I think will continue.
SPORTS: When it comes to, I guess then, on your guys’ end, is there like a weight to those teams or it’s just all regular season games are as such?
UYL: They are. And so what it does require our staff to do is whenever you play a Canadian team or an out-of-state team, we have to know what their enrollment number is because we have to know what division they would be, in terms of playoff points. And then the other thing that we have to follow is that team’s schedule because obviously bonus points with how many games your opponents end up winning. So, it does require some more work of our staff, pulling more data, pulling more scores. But, again, it’s what we do. It’s part of the job. And, come selection Sunday, we’ll have all those playoff points in and, we’ll go forward.
SPORTS: Also being added to and kind of shuffled around are the different conferences. We’re seeing it with the Jack Pine, as well as some others. Are there guidelines for the schools when it comes to these realignments from you guys?
UYL: League realignment is really an individual process with schools. Schools determine what league I’m going be in, what conference I’m gonna be in. And as enrollments of schools have really changed in Michigan over the last 10 to 15 years, we’re seeing the faces of leagues and conferences changing as well.
At the place I went to high school in the Grand Rapids area at Caledonia, which when I was there, quite a few years ago, it was an 800-student high school. Well, today Caledonia is 1,800 students. So, a jump of more than a thousand kids. There are dozens of examples of schools that have gone the opposite direction. So, whenever you have fluctuating enrollments, you’re going to have fluctuating leagues. Everybody wants to try and find that right fit, not just in terms of enrollment, but also competitiveness of programs and those things. And unfortunately, again, I’m a traditionalist and you know, some of the old rivalries and matchups that we saw in conferences for a long, long time, unfortunately, as conferences continue to evolve and change, that’s just kind of the nature of the beast.
SPORTS: I’m glad you brought up kind of the competitiveness of these leagues and people trying to find the right ones. When it comes to public versus private schools with fans, with parents, there’s kind of a perceived either disadvantage or an advantage based on what side you’re on. Do you ever see there being a way that we can kind of soften that curve that people are seeing?
UYL: I think that perception is not based in data. We have 750 high schools. Our membership is approximately 76% traditional public high schools. We run the numbers. We award 131 state championships during a school year. In our rolling three-year average, the number of state championships over that three years, 72% of our state champions are also traditional public high schools. So it’s only a difference of four percentage points of our membership versus that. I think we’re where the public-private may get some attention is if the private schools have a good year in say the football finals or perhaps in basketball. But by that same token this year in softball, all eight of our finalist teams in softball were public schools. All four were champions. In team wrestling, 31 of the 32 schools that made it to our team wrestling finals were public schools. All of our bowling champions year after year are public schools. So, the thing that does give me a little bit of heartburn is, I think when folks point to that, it’s very selective. It’s sport by sport, and it’s not taking a step back and looking at the data and looking at the big picture.
SPORTS: You said you’re coming up on six years now on the job. What have you learned, what are kind of the biggest things that you’ve kind of grown in, in this position?
UYL: I think that, now starting my sixth year as the director, the covid experience has forever changed me. In terms of leadership, my biggest takeaway is that you have to have extremely thick skin. That, you know, what Twitter or the internet may or may not be saying usually isn’t accurate, not even close to being accurate. And I think, a good lesson in leadership is at the end of the day, you have to do what you believe is right. You have to do what you believe the data is telling you is right, and then you’ve gotta have the backbone and conviction to follow through on some of those things. So we continue to be membership-driven. We listen to our member schools. We listen to our school people. In terms of COVID, it showed if you’re going to start listening to the outside noise and all of the outside opinions, I’m not sure a whole lot of productiveness comes out of that.
SPORTS: From hearing from some other fellow directors in other states. Have they kind of had the same experiences? Do you feel like Michigan is maybe ahead of maybe some other states in the recovery post-covid?
UYL: I meet with my colleagues in other states all the time and it makes me feel good because I get asked an awful lot of questions on a number of our programs. What are we doing? How are we doing it? So the MHSAA, we’ve always been kind of a national leader and I really think, post-covid, we’ve even become more so, just for some of the innovative things that we had to do out of necessity that we even realized might be a little bit better way of doing business than kind of the old way, pre-pandemic. So, I’m a firm believer organizations are either getting better or you’re getting worse. You don’t stay the same. And that’s something each day we put into the building. Our staff, we continue to try and push and continue to keep getting better and better, because at the end of the day, we’ve got to serve the kids in our state. And, another 180,000 high school kids, will be ready to go for another great year in just about a month.
SPORTS: As the director, you get to be at so many of these kind of championship weekend moments and stuff like that. Is there any environment that you kind of look forward to going to now or maybe a sport that’s really kind of grown on you as the director? One you’ve kind of gotten more exposure to that maybe you hadn’t had previously?
UYL: You know, every sport and every final is really unique in its own way. The ones that get the most media attention, Yep. Those are neat and special. But, I enjoy a division of our swim finals or, even getting to our tennis finals, the competitive cheer finals, which we had at Central Michigan last year. Just a very unique, and really neat event. The neat thing about this job is you do get to connect with the two dozen plus sports that we have and the different experiences of what the finals look like. And I think that’s one thing I’ve been here now 20 years and it’s because of that excitement that, really keeps all of us going.
SPORTS: Do you foresee, just thinking now that you’ve said all the different sports that the MHSAA has to offer, and I know how much like girls wrestling has grown in the past year, for example. Do you foresee any other sports ever being added? I know other states have things like power lifting or has there been any thoughts of adding other sports?
UYL: We’ve had lots of conversations. Certainly girls wrestling has been our most recent add and that has been tremendously successful. The growth that we’re seeing in numbers has been incredible. Water polo is a, a community that I think we may be getting close to sponsoring. That’d be both girls water polo and boys water polo. And then the other sport where we are seeing numbers growing, and it’s being played on a club basis, is boys’ volleyball. Um, we think that that would become very popular very quickly. The challenge, if we would add a sport like boys’ volleyball and that would be a spring sport, is what then are the implications for schools that want to have it? What does that do to your baseball team? What does that do to your track team? What does that do to your boys’ lacrosse team at maybe some of our bigger schools? So, the issue when adding sports, you can’t just add those in a vacuum. You’ve got to look at that sport, but then also try and figure out what the impact could be to those sports. Because at the end of the day, you’ve gotta support what you’re offering currently, in addition to looking at what’s next.
SPORTS: This time of year, it seems like it’s slow for sports, but how busy are you guys kind of preparing for the fall, the winter and beyond?
UYL: For me, the summer is the busiest time of the year. People hear me say that and they don’t believe me. So much of what I do is planning things six to 12 months in advance. Yes, during the summer we don’t have the hustle and bustle of, well, there was a game last night and there was an ejection or an incident that we have to follow up on today. But, in terms of meeting with my colleagues with some national meetings, you know, meeting with, my football colleagues around the country and how can we increase participation? What are we doing right now with health and safety with football? So those conversations never end. And again, one of the fallacies for some of your viewers is the summer is probably my busiest times. And yeah, looking forward to August and, seeing things getting started.
SPORTS: Thank you so much.
UYL: Thanks you guys. Thanks for coming down.