Northville NXN team barred ability to go to NXN nationals by MHSAA rule after qualifying in regionals

"The Great Seal of the State of Michigan depicts the coat of arms of the U.S. state of Michigan on a light blue field. On the dark blue shield the sun rises over a lake and peninsula, a man holding a long gun with a raised hand represents peace and the ability to defend his rights. The elk and moose are symbols of Michigan, while the bald eagle represents the United States."

Make sure you defend your rights. It seems to be what Michigan is all about.

Just sent them my thoughts. Keep those emails going. These student-athletes deserve to be at NXN!

Go, compete, have fun, elevate the kids opportunities for experience and recruiting. MHSAA has no appetite for legal action to be brought against them.

Your problem was you asked and got your school and MHSAA involved.

MHSAA will threaten. Your school will get all worried about the possibility of ineligibility for the athletes or possible sanction for the school. Both organizations will drag their feet and hope you go away.

You won't get information from MHSAA. They hide behind walls. Their rules are arcane and discriminate against athletes that want to gain exposure to the best competition and increase their scholarship potential. They live in the past, are seldom visible at their major events. Logistics of their events are centered around money extraction versus benefit to the athletes. Their biggest move recently was to allow kids to wear running watches during cross country events (big deal). Their salaries are not known, their rules are very difficult to get ones hands on. MHSAA needs to be exposed in order for it to ever change into an athlete-centric organization. They have had past legal action against them that they are still reeling from financially. I understand they had to mortgage their building. MHSAA is in no mood to go to court. Take them on (legally) if necessary and after the race is over. But please go! You will help your athletes and future Michigan athletes to better reach their potential by bringing this to a head.

Many individual athletes from MI have gone to national championship meets or competed outside of MHSAA's venue distance rules. Some have competed internationally. Believe it or not... MHSAA doesn't want MI athletes to represent the United States. Can you imagine... instead of supporting kids that have trained and qualified for a national or international championships, MHSAA wants to hold them back. Precedent has been set with individual athletes going to these kinds of events and it is time that team president is set. MHSAA wants to control an athlete through the entire year and it is none of their business what a kid does outside of the high school season.

Just do it!

Emailed them from the contact form. Let's keep it going.

What's so different about this than Dathan and Jason running in the FL Finals in Kenosha and Orlando? Just because they were individuals and not on a team? This is a club! What a farce. Go Northville! Be leaders and set the trend for others to follow.

Notwithstanding the fact that they may be non-uniformly (I don't claim to know the answer to that) applying the rule to the regional and national meets. But beyond that, let's just think a tiny bit outside the box here.

Throw the MHSAA's response back in their face. Add an athlete from another school to the club team and go compete (and I see nothing here that would compel this new club member to actually compete).

What can their response be at that point? If MHSAA then decides to suspend anyone at that point now you might actually have grounds for some legal action.

Soprano wrote:

Lawschoolgrad wrote:

Lawyer up. May cost some money, but will be worth it. Make it such a legal headache that they never dare do this to anyone again. The pain your children are feeling now will just be passed on to the next group in Michigan if you don't stand up to them now. Take a stand, sue them silly, go anyway, and let the lawyers get your kids eligibility back.

Here is a little secret all of these associations don't want you to know...shhhhh...They never win in court! Go after them hard and fast and they will back down!

Best of luck!

I agree with this. Go anyway and force the state's hand. Then if the state tries to suspend them, get the lawyers involved. From what I'm reading I don't understand how the state association wins this one in court.

Your talking about the wrong Association. MHSAA is more then willing to fight in court over their rules. It took over 10 years in the courts before being rejected by the Supreme Court for them to change the Girls Basketball season from the fall. So, they are very stubborn.

They may not win but they can make it a nasty fight.

I do support the Northville girls getting to run and do our state proud. It's a great accomplishment for them to even qualify.

They should go, and dare the state association to sanction them. There are probably hundreds of cases where Detroit-area AAU basketball teams / players traveling all over the country to compete. The state will look foolish in court.

I'm picking up what you're putting down, follow the rules, but my biggest beef with it is that the rule exclusively affects cross country. No other sports have a national team competition such as NXN (to my knowledge) in addition to an individual aspect. Can anybody think of any other examples?

As far as I know, XC is alone in this, so the MHSAA's rule singles out cross country.

Also I'm going to use the hell out of that meme.

MHSAA wrote:

GO TO NXN!! You all deserve it!!

As long as the kids don't miss too much school, it's really none of the MHSAA's business whether this club runs a race in Portland, London, Rome, or freakin' Beijing!

They will learn more on this trip than they would in a whole year of school.

Go Northville.

There are quite a few:

http://dicksnationaltournament.com/

(I see no Michigan teams in the basketball hs tournament, but you will see them in AAU club team tournaments..)

http://nationals.usahockey.com/page/show/998787-high-school-boys-varsity

(This one is very informative. LOTS of Michigan hockey teams do well in the club brackets, but none compete in the varsity division.)

http://uca.varsity.com/Competitions/National-HS-Cheerleading-Championship

(Same w/ cheerleading. There are lots of divisions, MI teams are barred from the HS varsity divisions.)

Looking around, I saw several sports that had national high school championships. Some had varsity divisions (like basketball above) and Michigan teams are barred from those. Others had club divisions and those are fine (as long as the Michigan teams are made up of representative from several schools.)

What makes them special? They ran in a race the MHSAA allowed them to run, that was a qualifier for nationals, and they qualified. That is what is special.

What makes them special? They qualified for NXN in the only stupid state that appears to not want to let them participate! Also - the rules seem to already be quite flexible, and applied in an ad hoc manner. The MHSAA can do whatever they want - but the girls should get on a plane to Portland and run NXN!

If they are not allowed to participate in MI high school athletics next year, they can run as a club again at various other events including out-of-state invitationals, and of course at NXN again next year. Soon, all the best kids will want to move to Northridge to run so they can bypass MHSSA and participate at the national level events.

Follow the Rules wrote:

Why should we feel like this particular group of students is being done an injustice because they are actually required to follow the rules?

I can't tell if you are joking with your comment, and just trying to stir controversy. This is not a problem that everyone in the nation faces, and it's exclusive to a few groups of people around the country.

It's definitely not true that these Northville girls are the only one experiencing this, but that does not mean that rules should not change. EVERYONE reading this can agree that the rules MUST change and that this is not fair for anyone involved.

Any similar rules to the ones MHSAA has SHOULD BE CHANGED. Anywhere. If you don't fight for change, it won't happen.

I fully support these NXN girls and cannot comprehend how you can not be.

Follow the Rules wrote:

Looking around, I saw several sports that had national high school championships. Some had varsity divisions (like basketball above) and Michigan teams are barred from those. Others had club divisions and those are fine (as long as the Michigan teams are made up of representative from several schools.)

Do you want to know another reason why this situation with the NXN girls is special? THEY GOT SPECIFIC PERMISSION FROM MHSAA TO BE ALLOWED TO COMPETE.

They talked to the MHSAA and were emailed back with permission to be allowed to compete, then once they qualified they were told that the permission does not count and they are no longer allowed to compete? That's pathetic and despicable of MHSAA.

Thanks for doing the legwork for me, Follow. My low phone battery's stopping me from doing much looking into the qualification for those other tournaments--are they invite-only or do they follow a more NXN-style qualification?

Everything about this situation is so awful.

Everything about NXC is a club team other than the fact that they are all from the same school. All the girl's organization, uniform creation, and coaching come from themselves and their parents, not the school.

But then MHSAA comes in and says "No, we've decided you're a school organization and that's final". They're trying to burden individuals that they are NO reason to put a burden on.

This is actually so illogical. It's as if I create a company called "Michigan Companies" and then decide I have control over all companies in Michigan. Why? Because I said I do. They must follow all my rules and regulations because I decided they have to.

This is essentially what MHSAA is doing. They're deciding they have control over the NXC team even though they deserve ZERO control. The team exists outside of their jurisdiction and they should not be able to abuse their power and prevent the team from attending nationals.

#FreetheFro

Perhaps the prudent thing to do was to attempt to change the rule BEFORE the meet (or season). Seems a little silly and self-serving now.

Incredible post by Erin Finn, two-time Foot Locker Nationals competitor and fellow Michigan athlete. two-time Foot Locker Nationals competitor

https://twitter.com/erinefinn/status/667189597374427136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Also this article was updated with some interesting information

http://www.milesplit.com/articles/169672-update-mhsaa-says-no-nxn-for-northville-high-school-girls

An organization should be allowed to run as it sees fit. If you do not agree with certain rules, you have the options to either petition the decision makers to vote to change the rules or you can decide not to be part of the organization. Hiring lawyers in an attempt to get the government to bully the organization into changing its rules makes me lose all respect for those involved with this cause.

In addition, it would be unfair to other schools if the rules were changed at this point when they no longer have a chance to qualify. Each school agreed to the rules in place when they decided to compete this year. Any change in the rules that the organization decides to make should be effective beginning next season.