Sports Awards Lifetime Achievement Award: Catholic League director Vic Michaels

Vic Michaels never dreamed his professional life would turn out like this.

After all, Michaels enjoyed his life the way it was — teaching and coaching boys varsity basketball at Center Line St. Clement, where he began in 1978 and later also became athletic director and assistant principal.

But then the Catholic League director of athletics, the late Tom Rashid, showed up.

In 1995, Rashid needed an assistant director to replace Ellen Sekerak and he set his sights on Michaels.

It took Michaels less than 10 seconds to turn down Rashid flat. He liked his life the way things were, and the new job came with the added sense of pressure trying to replace the state's most powerful woman in high school athletics.

“I just wanted to stay there and coach and teach and be an athletic director,” Michaels said. “I thought I was done.”

But one day Michaels arrived home and found his wife, Linda, sitting at the kitchen table talking with Rashid.

“It was two against one,” Michaels said. “The guy who preached competitive balance and fair play and sportsmanship, he ganged up on me.”

Soon there after, Michaels became Rashid’s assistant and they proved to be quite a team until Rashid left in 2003 to become associate director of the Michigan High School Athletic Association.

Rashid had remarkable success leading the Catholic League, leaving Michaels with enormous shoes to fill as his successor.

Michaels, who also assumed Rashid’s spot on the MHSAA’s representative council, has done an incredible job as only the seventh director of the Catholic League.

In addition to his normal duties, over the course of the last year Michaels has added six members to the Catholic League — Jackson Lumen Christi and five Catholic schools from Toledo.

Michaels is now the longest serving director of the Catholic League and will be honored with the John Herrington Lifetime Achievement Award at the Detroit High School Sports Awards, presented by Detroit Area Honda Dealers. The show is produced in partnership with the U.S. Army.

The show will be held June 18 at The Fillmore Detroit.

Hard to take the coach out of him

Michaels, 69, was a member of Detroit St. Ambrose’s final graduating class in 1972. He played college basketball at Detroit Institute of Technology and earned his teaching certificate from the University of Detroit Mercy.

He began his coaching career as the JV coach at Dearborn St. Alphonsus for two years before becoming the JV coach at St. Mary of Redford for one.

From there it was on to St. Clement, where he was a terrific coach, winning over 300 games before Rashid came calling.

Leaving the sidelines was difficult for Michaels, who could no longer coach high school ball, but thanks to the Catholic Youth Organization and its elementary school program he was still able to remain on the sidelines.

“What helped me was I was able to coach CYO for four years,” he said. “It kind of weaned me off of being around kids. That’s the hardest part of being downtown. That kept me in touch for a while.”

Michaels’ tenure has come with pratfalls. In his second year, the Archdiocese of Detroit made the wildly unpopular decision to close eight schools, including the likes of Detroit East Catholic and Detroit St. Martin DePorres.

Losing eights schools only made Michaels’ job significantly more difficult, trying to align divisions and maintain a competitive balance throughout the league, which has been a constant battle.

Almost overlooked over the years has been Michaels’ contributions to the MHSAA.    

“I’m not sure there’s been anyone who's been more important to the MHSAA over the last 40 years than Vic Michaels,” MHSAA executive director Mark Uyl said. “The last 23 years, Vic has served as our secretary-treasurer and there’s been nobody better at making sure that our offerings for kids are properly funded, that we’ve tried to stay ahead of curves where we can.”

Michaels also has a keen sense of fair play and he has been instrumental in the MHSAA’s pursuit to stay current with some coaches who view MHSAA rules as nothing more than suggestions.

“He pays attention closely as a board member,” Uyl said, “to not only what the rules are, but how the rules need to continue to evolve to stay current and effective.”

Michaels is so well regarded across the state that during the COVID-19 epidemic that halted high school athletics and shuttered public schools, Michaels was appointed to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s important Return to School Advisory Council.

During his tenure as director, Michaels brought bowling and field hockey to the Catholic League and separated pom-pom and dance into two championships.

The legacy of expansion

But his biggest achievement thus far has been the addition of Lumen Christi and the five Toledo schools.

The Toledo schools are two all-boys schools, two all-girl schools and a co-ed school, and they are now part of the Catholic League in every sport.

“We’d been in discussions for a while,” Michaels said. “It went back to years ago I met with their superintendent, it just didn’t work for a while. Originally, it was just football. I met for the superintendent for just football, but that didn’t go.”

Everything changed when the Toledo public schools that were aligned with the Toledo Catholic schools changed leagues and the Catholic schools were left with no viable options in the Toledo area.

The biggest concern was the travel, but the Detroit area was closer than playing in a league in Columbus or Cleveland.

“There’s been some unexpected challenges, but travel has been good,” Michaels said. “The Toledo schools all say an hour-15, it takes them. That’s their average time. And for most sports, that’s not a big deal.”

The best part is the Toledo schools have fit in nicely, especially when it comes the actual games.

“They’re good; they’re very competitive in almost every sport we’ve got them in,” Michaels said. “We’ve placed them in leagues, now we’ve got to evaluate and make sure they’re in the right divisions.”

At an age when most people are counting down the days until retirement, Michaels is too busy to consider such things.

He has aspirations to expand the footprint of the Catholic League even more. He has his eyes set on Flint Powers and Lansing Catholic Central as potential new members.

That is how he is being kept busy these days instead of planning retirement.

“It’s the different challenges, day to day,” he said. “I have a good staff and honestly, I just put out fires for the most part these days. They do all the heavy lifting.

“I really enjoy my MHSAA rep council work, our Catholic League executive committee stuff and making things happen year to year and projecting next year’s rules and alignments, that’s always fun.”

This spring, the Catholic League has honored Michaels by designating him as one of the league’s 15 “Legends.”

Michaels' influence on the innerworkings of the MHSAA has made him that and even more to the people in Lansing.

“His contributions to the association — we’re celebrating our 100th year next,” said Uyl. “If we had a Mount Rushmore of 10 people over that time who have really helped to build the association, Vic is easily in that group of 10.”

And to think Michaels never wanted to leave the now-closed St. Clement to become the Catholic League’s associate director.

“It’s the best thing I could have done,” he said. “I didn’t want this job. I didn’t want to be the associate. I wanted to coach and stay in high school. But it couldn’t have worked out better professionally. Personally, it’s just been all of the friends — people I’ve met, ADs, not just mine, but statewide. It’s been nice.”

Mick McCabe is a former longtime columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at mick.mccabe11@gmail.com. Follow him @mickmccabe1. Save 10% on his new book, “Mick McCabe’s Golden Yearbook: 50 Great Years of Michigan’s Best High School Players, Teams & Memories,” by ordering now at McCabe.PictorialBook.com.