Getting to know you ... earlier

Today's MHSAA representative council blog deals with new policy increasing high schools' abilities to meet with potential athletes during junior high and middle school.

I'm not how sure this affects many outside Lansing and the Lansing Catholic/East Lansing dynamic, or what effect it might have at all locally. Here's what the MHSAA decided:   

"Senior high schools will be allowed to be in contact with potential student-athletes at feeder schools through two Council actions. The first allows high school coaches and athletic administrators to conduct once a year for each sport a sports-specific program to groups of junior high/middle school students and parents if that school has the same governing board or is of the same religious denomination and at least 25 percent of that school's previous eighth-grade class is attending the high school. On or after April 1, information announcing the starting date for high school sports practices and other allowed summer activity may be distributed to groups of eighth graders under the same conditions. The second allows high school students to assist in an unpaid and supervised role with junior high/middle school teams under the same circumstances."

Both of the above allowances definitely will help high school programs get more exposure in their area middle schools, but I don't know that this will change much of how things already happen -- at least in Lansing. It'll likely have a larger effect in Detroit, for example, where there's probably more competition for top athletes.

City school people, fill me in on this one. I might be missing the boat, so let us know what you think.