Brighton Names Baseball Field for Program Builder, Longtime Leader
By
Tim Robinson
Special for MHSAA.com
May 4, 2023
BRIGHTON — Mark Carrow didn’t know what to expect April 22 when he arrived at Brighton High School’s baseball field, where he was the guest of honor for a ceremony officially naming it Carrow Field.
“I remember back in October, when they announced this would happen, I told my wife, Mary, that there will be probably 60-70 people here, because there are 18 players on each team and their parents,” he recalled. “We pulled up here and there were all these people, and these young men who look older now.”
Dozens of Brighton alumni, some of whom Carrow hadn’t seen since their high school days nearly a half-century ago, were in attendance for the ceremony held before a doubleheader with Ypsilanti Lincoln.
Carrow retired in 2006 after 34 seasons as Brighton’s baseball coach, recording 823 wins, now eighth on the state’s all-time list. He also was an assistant football coach and coached both boys and girls middle school basketball.
He came to Brighton a year after graduating from the University of Michigan, where he played baseball for the Wolverines, starring at third base.
“My dream was to coach baseball at Ann Arbor High,” Carrow said of his high school alma mater, now Ann Arbor Pioneer. “That was my dream.”
But he had applied to Brighton Area Schools as well, and after a year teaching in Grand Rapids, he and Mary both were offered teaching positions.
“Wouldn’t you know it? We were in school for two days and Ann Arbor calls me up,” Carrow said. “They had a phys ed job open. I’d have been the JV football coach, and I knew the baseball coach was on his way out. It was everything I wanted, and I went to (administrator) Bob Scranton and said, ‘Here’s what’s happening.’ He told me to think about it over the weekend and come back Monday.
“My wife and I talked it over, and we were so grateful to Brighton for giving us a chance to be near our hometown that we felt we owed them a year,” Carrow said. “In November, we bought a house that we lived in for 22 years.”
Brighton’s sports teams weren’t the dominant squads of today. The football team had had two winning seasons in 20 years, and the year Carrow arrived went 0-9.
“We played in six homecoming games, including our own,” he said. “Everyone wanted to play us.”
The baseball team wasn’t much better, having gone decades without a winning season.
But the Bulldogs were 12-12 that first spring under Carrow’s leadership, and never finished below .500 during the rest of his tenure.
The Bulldogs joined the Southeastern Conference the next year and got off to a 7-0 start before losing at Lincoln.
“The kids were crying on the bus ride home,” Carrow said, “and I knew right then that Brighton had turned a corner, that it meant something to win and losing wasn’t acceptable anymore.”
Brighton took off, winning 20 games or more in all of his last 23 years as a coach, and a total of 13 league titles, 12 District titles, three Regional crowns and while making two trips to the Semifinals.
The talent was there, too, including 16 all-state players and two Mr. Baseball Award winners in Ron Hollis and Drew Henson.
Carrow earned national and Michigan Coach of the Year honors three times apiece and was inducted into the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame in 1992.
The field was renamed in his honor after the Brighton school board changed its policy to allow the renaming of facilities to honor living persons less than two years ago.
But Carrow is quick to cite the reasons for his success.
“The players are the ones who made this possible,” he said. “I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I never threw a pitch or hit the baseball. I got 800 wins, but it was because of them.
Carrow has a photographic memory, which came in handy while chatting with former players.
“It was funny, because with each kid I remembered an incident about them,” he said. “Jeff Bogos, who I hadn’t seen since he graduated in 1979, came out and I said, ‘Do you remember when we were at Milan and your knee went out (of place) in the middle of the field?’ It happened twice. He said, ‘How do you remember that?’ And I said, ‘How could I not?’”
Carrow moved to Florida after his retirement, where he and his longtime assistant, George Reck, meet up a couple of times a week. He makes frequent trips north to watch U-M football and to visit his son, Chris, who lives in Chicago.
Baseball is firmly in his past.
“I think I’ve been to one high school game since I went down there,” Carrow said. “I hated the way the coach was coaching, and Mary did, too. She said, ‘We don’t have to watch any more high school baseball,’ and I said, ‘You’re right.’”
When he retired, Carrow said he would likely be forgotten in a few years.
Seventeen years later, his legacy is assured and his memory will be invoked any time one looks at the scoreboard in left-center field that has a “Carrow Field” sign on top of it.
Not bad for a coach who was in the right place at the right time.
“My dream was fulfilled, and rightly so,” Carrow said. “And, believe me, I made the right decision. I couldn't have had better kids to teach or lived in a better community. It couldn't have worked out any better.”
PHOTOS (Top) The Carrow family stands together in front of the welcome sign to Carrow Field – including daughter Tiffany (front left), Mark and Mary (second from left, front and back) and son Chris (far right). (Middle) The Carrow name stands tall atop the scoreboard at the field named for the longtime coach. (Family photo by Daniel Collins.)
St. Mary's Earns Another Saturday Return, Taking on History-Making Kenowa Hills
By
Steve Vedder
Special for MHSAA.com
June 11, 2026
EAST LANSING – Death, taxes and Orchard Lake St. Mary's baseball team finding itself in another MHSAA Finals championship game.
The last of those three certainties was affirmed again Thursday when the torrid Eaglets blanked Dearborn Divine Child 8-0 in a Division 2 Semifinal at Michigan State.
Orchard Lake St. Mary’s used two productive innings to soar into Saturday's 9 a.m. title game against Grand Rapids Kenowa Hills. The spot in the Finals will be the program's 10th since 2007, with three titles won from 2019-2022 and six since 1998.
Despite the long track record of success, Eaglets coach Nick DiPonio said the winning never gets old or taken for granted. The program has averaged 33 victories per season since claiming the 2019 Division 2 title.
"This was definitely not just another game," said DiPonio, whose No. 1-ranked team upped its winning streak to 26 games. "We're battle-tested. We play in a great league with great players, and we're used to competition. We've become good at blocking out all the extraneous noise."
Orchard Lake St. Mary's sent 12 batters to the plate to score five runs in the third inning and added three more runs in the fifth. The third inning barrage included three triples, including one by Hudson Brzustewicz with the bases loaded. Luke Crighton drove in a run with another triple.
The trio of runs in the fifth included an RBI single by Zach Essig, one of three current Eaglets who had older brothers play on previous state champions. Essig said his current teammates are well-aware of the program's previous success.
"It's crazy," said Essig, who has two older brothers on former champs. "I'm the only one without a ring; we haven't won anything yet. Those guys were role models for us. Our older brothers pushed us. We've got a lot of good guys on this team, and we're capable of beating anyone when we play well."
Crighton, who scattered four hits and faced only three batters over the minimum, thought he did a quality job of wading through a Divine Child lineup which scored 30 runs over the Regionals and Quarterfinal.
"I threw strikes and felt strong, and overall I thought I did okay," he said. "I was able to trust the defense to make the plays.
DiPonio said Crighton is a big-game pitcher.
"I expected him to go out and do this, the last two years, really," DiPonio said. "He always gives us a good chance to win. He throws strikes with multiple pitches."
Brzustewicz said there is no doubt one of the team's foremost goals is to carry on the long history of success in June. That success is felt by virtually all the players, he said.
"There is a brotherhood; we're going out there for our brothers,” he added. “We like to have fun and win, and we're right there this year. We've won like 26 in a row, but I don't know if we're at the same level yet as some of those teams. A couple won 40-some games."
Dearborn Divine Child coach Jeremy Shay, who has seen plenty of talented Eaglets teams in his four years, says the current club is a good one because it covers all parts of the game.
"They're very good," he said. "They obviously can hit and have very good pitching and play well defensively. They're tough to beat.”
Grand Rapids Kenowa Hills 9, Vicksburg 6
While Kenowa Hills may be known for an outstanding pitching staff, it was a pair of clutch seventh-inning hits that propelled the Knights into their first MHSAA Baseball Final.
Trailing 6-5 entering their final at-bats and having blown a 5-0 lead earlier, the Knights got a two-run triple from senior outfielder Andrew Lake and run-scoring single by Jack Stoddard to up their winning streak to 20 games.
"I was looking fastball and I choked up on the bat, and (the pitcher) hung a curve and I turned on it," Lake said. "You dream for this moment."
The clutch hits aside, Kenowa Hills (36-2) entered the game with a remarkable pitching staff which included three pitchers who had combined for a 26-1 record and ERA of under two runs a game. Kenowa Hills pitchers have 13 shutouts this season and 28 games where they have held teams to three runs or fewer.
"That's been our team all year – we battle," Stoddard said. "We come together as a team and have stayed motivated."
Kenowa Hills led 5-0 in the third inning with Hudson Drake driving in one run on a sacrifice fly and Brennan Gustinis adding an RBI triple.
But Vicksburg (30-8) cut the margin to 5-2 in the bottom of the third and then took a 6-5 lead into the seventh. Bulldogs junior outfielder Maguire Bowles drove in three runs with a single, bases loaded walk and triple. Graham Kubiak also drove in a pair of runs.
Despite the eye-popping numbers posted by the pitchers, first-year Kenowa Hills coach Todd VandenHeuvel said his club can hit and score clutch runs. The team entered Thursday with a .380 team batting average and come-from-behind wins over Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central and East Grand Rapids that proved to players that despite being unranked to start the season, they could be a power.
"Can we be really good or great?" he asked players earlier this season. "I think we've moved the needle toward being great. We've played from behind late before. It was an unusual situation, but I think it allowed us to play an aggressive game. That doesn't surprise me; that's what great teams do.
"I think we have a perfect balance of both (hitting and pitching). We like getting a run every inning; we don't do a lot of three or four-run innings."
Vicksburg coach Brian Deal, who is retiring after 28 years and 487 wins, said a team from a small town like Vicksburg making a Semifinal is a major feat.
"It's great for all the small towns," he said. "We did this for all those small towns. We think we can go toe-to-toe with any team. We had our chances to put more runs on the board."
PHOTOS (Top) An Orchard Lake St. Mary’s runner crosses the plate during the Eaglets’ Division 2 Semifinal win Thursday at McLane Stadium. (Middle) Kenowa Hills’ Bobby Haisma (19) applies a tag on Vicksburg’s Maddox Rosalin a few steps in front of first base.