Making (Health) Histories Every Year

July 23, 2015

By Rob Kaminski
MHSAA benchmarks editor

Tom Minter, recently retired from the MHSAA as assistant director, wore many hats while serving the Association and donned official’s gear in numerous sports outside of business hours.

But one of his finest refereeing efforts might have come during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years when he guided approximately 60 individuals representing 25 medical and professional organizations through an arduous process to upgrade the antiquated Physical Form to what is the standard today: the Pre-participation Physical Examination/Health History Form.

The form highlighted Stage 1 of the MHSAA’s 4 Hs of Health and Safety – Health Histories – and the current form is much more comprehensive, answering questions previously not asked during the quicker, more brief, evaluations.

Sudden cardiac death claims the lives of more than 300 Michigan children and young adults between the ages of 1-39 years annually. Yet, many of these deaths could be prevented through screening, detection, and treatment. One such way to detect high risk conditions that predispose to SCDY is through pre-participation sports screening of student-athletes, and the current physical form provides a mechanism.

While much more detailed, schools report that parents are more than willing to take the extra time and effort to complete the lengthier version.

“When the expanded form came out, people kiddingly made comments about its length; yet in today's day and age everyone understands we need all the information we can cultivate regarding health histories of our student athletes,” said Mark Mattson, athletic director at Traverse City Central.

Down state, feelings have been similar. “We don’t have a problem at all here,” said Anna Devitt, athletic secretary at Hartland High School. “Our parents take care of it, and haven’t balked at the length at all.”

Both agree, and are joined by many others across the state, that  the next logical step is for the form to be converted to a fillable, online document so that records can be accessed by those in need via mobile, laptop or desktop.

Thus, in the “No H left behind” mantra that the MHSAA has assumed, an electronic option of the Health History form is in the early planning stages.

“As an increasing number of our schools strive to be ‘paper-free,’ or at least as much so as possible, it is time to re-invent the delivery method for perhaps our most downloaded or distributed document,” MHSAA Executive Director Jack Roberts said. “Once again, as we move forward with our ‘Heart’ initiative for the coming school year, we are also intent on bringing other projects up to speed.”

The masses are certainly enthused.

“That would be heavenly. An online version that would prevent people from submitting the forms until all the required information was in place would be fantastic,” said Mattson, who has had to turn back, or hold out students while waiting for completed forms, whether at Marquette, Maple City Glen Lake, or his current post in Traverse City. “It’s always been the same; people move too quickly and overlook required fields. It would prevent two things: one, having to hold kids out while waiting for a signature, and two, prevent parents from having to drive in to the athletic office to sign or fill in that last field. We’d know we were getting a completed form.”

At Hartland, where athletic director Jason Reck created an online emergency contact form, a system is in place which allows coaches, administrators and trainers to share necessary data for all student-athletes in addition to the MHSAA forms.

“Our parents love the online emergency contact form, and we require them to fill it out every season, not just once a year,” Devitt said. “Sometimes an athlete gets injured during one season and the next season's coach wants to know about it.”

The information on the form is populated into an Excel spreadsheet which Reck, Devitt, the school trainer and all coaches can access. They can tailor the data by sport and pull it to their mobile devices.

“We’re trying to go completely paperless, and the MHSAA physical form would be another step,” Devitt said. “Our parents and doctor’s offices would love it.”

After Leading Glen Lake Girls to Title, Bradford Brings Boys Into Final Week

By Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com

March 15, 2024

Eight is Enough.

Northern Lower PeninsulaOr is it?

For Jason Bradford growing up on the farm of Arden and Lynn Bradford as one of their eight children, it probably was enough. Bradford’s upbringing may have been slightly similar to “Eight Is Enough,” a comedy-drama television series about a family with eight children that aired on ABC from March of 1977 to May of 1981.

But the show didn’t depict pick-up basketball being played in the barn like it was for Bradford and his siblings. And surely eight would not be enough Regional basketball championships for Jason Bradford, nor enough District titles either. 

After leading Maple City Glen Lake to the Division 4 girls basketball championship last year, Bradford stepped down from coaching.  At the time his teams had won five Regional and six District titles.

Now his teams have won six Regional and seven District championships. He took over Glen Lake’s boys program during the holiday break this winter as the Lakers were off to a 4-2 start. They finished the season 22-5.  

It was the Lakers boys’ first 20-win campaign since the 2018-19 season, and they clinched their first Regional title since 2018.

Glen Lake went 19-5 last year losing to Traverse City St. Francis in the District Final. The season before that ended with a first-round loss to Elk Rapids and 15-6 record.

Bradford led his girls teams four times to the MHSAA Semifinals and almost got their a fifth time this year with the boys. Their run ended Tuesday with a tough loss in the Division 4 Quarterfinals to Mount Pleasant Sacred Heart, 63-51. 

“We’re licking the wounds of that one,” he said. “We’ve got to remember to look at the big picture – they are young men becoming men.”

Glen Lake’s Cooper Bufalini (11) pushes the ball upcourt during a 65-49 District Final win over Bellaire.But Bradford already has turned his thoughts to next season and is making plans for summer basketball.

“Having the summer with them if it goes the way we want is going to be huge,” Bradford said. “There are a few things going through my head I can change or adjust.  

“We want to continue to build on what our philosophy of what Glen Lake is and my philosophy of what Glen Lake is.”

The Lakers will graduate Cooper Bufalini, Gage Baker, Dylan Cundiff, Tyler Bixby and Jamie Blondia. But they’ll have their top two scorers back, sophomore Jacob Plamondon and junior Benji Allen. Plamondon kicked in almost 20 points per game and led the team in rebounding with more than 10 per contest. Allen averaged more than 11 points per game and led the team in assists.

Glen Lake finished second in the Northwest Conference behind Benzie Central, which was undefeated in league play. The Lakers knocked off league opponents Frankfort in the Division 4 District title match and Buckley in the Regional Semifinal.

The battles with Benzie for the conference title may have been the highlights of the season, Bradford noted. Those were Glen Lake’s only losses in league play, and a share of the title was within their grasp late in the second game with the Huskies.

The Lakers lost 60-51 on their home court in the first meeting but took Benzie to the limit in the rematch before falling, 41-39, on the road.

“We had a lot of great games and a lot of great memories,” Bradford said. “Going for conference it pretty much came down to the last few seconds with lead changes. 

“We were up by one point with less than 30 second lefts, and that was the high point,” he continued. “We came up short, but we learned from that game.”

Also among highlights for Bradford this year was the chance to coach against his brother Nathan for the first time in their careers.

The Lakers’ Jacob Plamondon (35) makes a strong move to the basket.The Bradfords started coaching girls varsity basketball 16 years ago, but their teams were in different conferences at the time. Nathan coached the Onekama girls but moved to the boys program before Onekama and Glen Lake had a chance to compete against each other in the Northwest Conference.

The Bradford coaches often talk after their games and learn from one another. They have also seen their parents frequently in the bleachers as they rotate home game sites to see their grandchildren play and their sons coach.

When Onekama and Glen Lake played this year, eight Bradfords were on the rosters as players or coaches. Jason’s son Toby, a freshman, played on the Glen Lake junior varsity team, as Nathan’s son Carson played for the Portagers’ JV squad. The Onekama JV team is coached by another Bradford, Jason and Nathan’s brother Nick. And there were three more Bradfords on the varsity – Nathan’s son Caden and his cousins Luke and Arden.

Glen Lake won both varsity games, 38-36 at Onekama and 61-33 at home.

Jason and his wife Jackie have five children. Their youngest son, Drew, is now a sixth grader at Glen Lake. His oldest son, J.J., is at Michigan Tech and has begun officiating basketball after his senior season at Glen Lake cut short by the pandemic while the Lakers were preparing to play in a 2020 District Final. Daughters Maddie and Grace are playing basketball for Lake Superior State University.

Maddie and Grace were big parts of Glen Lake’s deep postseason runs with Jason as girls coach. With many games played on Saturdays and not conflicting with coaching, Jason, Jackie and the younger boys were able to travel to see the Upper Peninsula’s Lakers play regularly.

This season, the Glen Lake girls – under first-year head coach Brad Fosmore – went 16-8 and won Northwest Conference and District titles before losing a nail-biter, 45-42, to league rival Frankfort in the Regional Semifinal.

“Jason did a good job, and it felt good to carry on the tradition,” said Fosmore, who previously served as a Lakers JV coach. “We took it one game at a time.

“Jason worked hard to build a great girls program,” he continued. “It made it pretty simple because they had that winning tradition and kind of kept it rolling.”

Tom SpencerTom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.

PHOTOS (Top) Jason Bradford, kneeling, coaches the Maple City Glen Lake boys varsity after taking over the program earlier this season. (Middle) Glen Lake’s Cooper Bufalini (11) pushes the ball upcourt during a 65-49 District Final win over Bellaire. (Below) The Lakers’ Jacob Plamondon (35) makes a strong move to the basket. (Top photo by RD Sports Photo/Rob DeForge, additional photos by Nicole Bixby.)