For the first time in nearly two decades, there will be new sports sanctioned by the Michigan High School Athletic Association, as the Representative Council for governing body for prep sports in the state voted to add boys volleyball and girls field hockey at its recent spring meeting.
The 19-member legislative body for the MHSAA voted to add both new sports for the 2025-26 school year — the first additions to the slate of sponsored sports since boys and girls lacrosse in 2004-05 — while also implementing a number of rules and scheduling changes.
Field hockey will be played in the fall, boys volleyball in the spring, with both sports using next school year as a developmental bridge, as the MHSAA works with the current governing bodies for each.
The Michigan High School Field Hockey League currently lists 36 programs in Michigan, including 11 in Oakland County (Bloomfield Hills, Clarkston, Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood, Detroit Country Day, Farmington, Birmingham Marian, Farmington Hills Mercy, Novi, Bloomfield Hills Academy of the Sacred Heart, Wixom St. Catherine and West Bloomfield), two in the Dearborn Area (Dearborn, Edsel Ford), and one in Macomb County (Warren Regina).
Boys volleyball has 69 teams in 11 divisions, according to the website for the Michigan Interscholastic Volleyball Coaches Association.
The Detroit West Division includes: Dearborn, Lakeland, Farmington, North Farmington, Walled Lake Central and Walled Lake Northern.
The Detroit North Division consists of: Lake Orion, Rochester Adams, Auburn Hills Avondale, Macomb Dakota, Clarkston and Grand Blanc.
The Kensington Division has teams from: Brighton, Hartland, Novi, Northville, Novi Detroit Catholic Central and Walled Lake Western.
In seven seasons, participation in the sport has gone from four teams in 2018, to 12 in 2019, 119 in 2021, 37 in 2022 and 56 in 2023, before adding another baker’s dozen this season.
Among the other business the Representative Council addressed:
– With 80 percent of survey respondents asking for the change, the winter season will be shortened from its end, with team wrestling, bowling and competitive cheer finals moved back to the final weekend in February, starting in 2025-26, followed by individual wrestling, boys hockey and girls gymnastics the first weekend March. Boys basketball finals will be the second weekend in March, with girls basketball and Lower Peninsula boys swimming and diving finals on the third weekend in March. Correspondingly, basketball practices will be able to begin five days earlier to keep first practice dates and tryouts from falling the week of Thanksgiving.
– A team championship will be added for the girls wrestling program with the most success in the individual finals brackets.
– The council approved basketball and soccer committee recommendations to seed the entire district tournaments by MPR, rather than just the top two teams.
– In the interest of protecting the smallest schools remaining in 11-player football, the council acted on a football committee recommendation to cap the enrollment limit for Division 8 schools at 250 students, the divide the remaining 11-player schools evenly over the other seven divisions, to keep bigger schools from dropping into D8 with the continuing expansion of 8-player football.
– The council also tweaked the athletic-related transfer rule to state that an athlete is “ineligible in all sports participated in during the current or previous school year if that student has transferred to a school where a coach is employed who previously was a school employee or third-party contractor at the athlete’s former school.”
– Another football rule tweak stated that schools may not participate in a scrimmage with another school before the Wednesday of the second week of practice, and only if the team has already had practice on seven separate days.
– It also bolstered the penalty for inappropriate behavior toward officials, with coaches or athletes who are ejected for “spitting at, hitting, slapping, kicking, pushing or intentionally and/or aggressively physically contacting a game official at any time during that competition or after being ejected” to be suspended for 14 calendar days, with offending coaches ineligible to coach in the MHSAA postseason for that sport season.
– It expanded the calendar for available days for bowling regionals from just Fridays and Saturdays to include Wednesday and Thursday dates, increasing the probability of finding host sites.
– The soccer mercy rule was changed to allow a running clock in the first half once the lead reaches eight goals.
– It approved a baseball committee recommendation requiring teams to electronically submit pitch count info by noon the day after competition.
