By Staff
Determining a format for using rally scoring for its post-season tournaments and regular-season volleyball play, and finalizing the details of its first post-season tournament in girls and boys lacrosse beginning in 2004-05 highlighted the actions of the Representative Council of the Michigan High School Athletic Association at its annual Spring meeting, May 2-4, in Thompsonville.
The spring meeting of the 19-member legislative body of the Association's nearly 1,500 member schools is usually the busiest of its three sessions each year. The Council considered 76 committee proposals and also dealt with a variety of eligibility rule and post-season tournament and operational issues.
Rally scoring in volleyball, where a point is awarded on every serve, has been in use by some MHSAA member schools in various forms for regular-season play for several years.
Beginning in 2004-05, the use of rally scoring becomes mandatory for National Federation of State High School Associations members. The Representative Council voted to utilize a rally scoring format of 25-point games in a best-of-five match, with the fifth game going to 15 points, for MHSAA post-season tournament play and varsity dual competition during the regular season. Local schools and leagues will determine what format will be used for scoring games and matches for other than dual meets at the varsity level during the regular season and for all subvarsity play.
A three-tiered post-season tournament will debut in lacrosse in the spring of 2005, the first year the MHSAA will provide schools with services in that sport, raising the number of tournaments sponsored by the Association to 28, 14 for girls only and 14 open to both girls and boys.
There will be two divisions of post-season tournament play based on the enrollments of the participating schools. Two MHSAA Lacrosse Committees, one for girls and one for boys, will meet twice each during the school year -- the first time in February to choose host sites for tournaments and place teams into regions based on geography and program strength; the second time in May to set the pairings in each region and select officials.
A third tier of the tournament will take place each year from 2005 to 2007 if a minimum of eight schools which are establishing their lacrosse programs for the first time declare prior to the February meeting of the Lacrosse Committee their intention to compete in this developmental level of competition.
It is expected that the first post-season tournaments in 2005 will consist of approximately 32 teams in each boys division and 16 teams in each girls division. The inaugural MHSAA Lacrosse Finals will take place on June 11, 2005.