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March 7, 2010 This past week was Spring Break for students at Eastern Michigan and Michigan. Some traveled to tropical destinations, some went on service trips, and some came home. I found myself spending a tropical (what great weather this past week!) week in Novi, catching up on homework and seeing a few old friends I haven’t seen in a long time. I also got a chance to take in a Novi hockey game, specifically their 11-3 shellacking of the Walled Lake Northern Knights. The Novi student section was energetic and it was hard not to be, with its team so easily crushing the competition. Over the last couple years I’ve traveled to countless sporting events on no less than 20 college campuses. It’s rare I hear a chant that’s new AND comedic, but with Novi up handily midway through the second period, the Novi student section began a fantastic heckle. Yelling towards the Walled Lake Northern fans, they chanted, “We can’t hear you (clap, clap, clap clap clap), repeat, we’ll cheer for you, repeat, let’s go Northern”. It certainly made me bust out laughing. And it was a great night for Novi hockey. They’d go on to defeat Hartland 4-3 Friday, and are set to face off against Warren De La Salle Tuesday at 6:30 pm at Novi Ice Arena. The winner of that game heads to Compuware Ice Arena and the state semi-finals. Watching the Novi team dominate Northern - they were bigger, more physical, faster and controlled the puck for most of the game - I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if Novi and Catholic Central faced off again in the state semi-finals or finals. How great would that be?!? (CC beat Novi 6-2 earlier, a regular season game). Well it turns out the two schools are in different divisions (CC is D1 in hockey, Novi D2); alas, my dream scenario couldn’t happen. Hockey, like basketball and some other sports in Michigan, allow all teams to qualify for the playoffs. Unlike football where at least 6 wins are required, even the worst teams in these sports have a chance at a state title at the end of their regular seasons. Such egalitarian entrance policies are designed to give every team a shot, evoking warm and fuzzy feelings and perhaps flashbacks to one of the best sports movies of all time, Hoosiers. But that’s not actually how it works. In Hoosiers, literally every team in the state competed in the same bracket. Michigan, like every other state in the union today, including tragically Indiana, has separated its schools by size in each sport into separate divisions. In cross country, there are four state championship cross country teams in November at MIS and there will be 3 state champions in hockey this year. Why can’t we let the Cinderellas of the world compete with the private schools that recruit middle school athletes? Why don’t we make the large public school of 2,000+ students prove they can beat the small public schools from up North with 500 kids in grades K-12? It wouldn’t be difficult to do: have all the state champions from the different divisions play for the title of best team in the state. The MHSAA can keep the multiple state championship formula and the schools would get to compete for an even more illustrious prize. The MHSAA thinks it would be cruel and unusual to make these underdogs get crushed annually by the bigger schools. But what if the small schools pulled off the upset? It happened at least once before, and became one of the greatest American sports stories of all time. Surely it can happen again. (c) 2010 Novi
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