Detroit Catholic Central Baseball Seniors Put Stamp on School's Success
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
June 13, 2026
EAST LANSING — Throughout their entire high school tenure at Detroit Catholic Central, you couldn’t blame the seniors on the school’s baseball team for looking around at all the Finals championships won by other Shamrocks programs and wondering, “When will it be our turn?”
“A lot of fans and outsiders doubted us and we were like, ‘This year is going to be OUR year,’” Catholic Central senior Bennett Thompson said. “We’re going to buy in. Everyone’s going to give it their all. We’re such a senior-led team. We knew it was our season this year.”
Indeed it was.
For the first time since 1999, the Shamrocks won a Finals championship in baseball, earning a 7-0 win over Rochester Adams in the Division 1 title game at Michigan State’s McLane Stadium.
Catholic Central rode an offense that reached the record books and brilliant pitching from senior Mikey Laser to glory.
The offense broke the championship game record for most triples, hammering five of them, four during the first two innings.
That was more than enough offense for Laser, the team’s No. 2 pitcher, whose plans for the future do not include playing college baseball, but attending Michigan State as a student only.
Laser was masterful, allowing just four hits in his shutout.
“I’ve got 18 guys going to (play baseball in) college, and we threw the one guy out there that’s just going to college to be a student,” Catholic Central head coach Ryan Rogowski said. “What a pitcher he is and what an outstanding job.”
For Adams, it was more championship game heartbreak 30 years after it last made an appearance.
Adams lost in the 1995 and 1996 Class A Finals, and those teams also were coached by this year’s leader, Andy Lamkin.
In his second stint as the head coach of the Highlanders, Lamkin led them back to the biggest stage.
“We haven’t done that all year long,” Lamkin said of his team getting just four hits. “You’ve got to give him a lot of credit. He pitched fast. When we did hit the ball hard, it was at people. They outhit us. They took it to us at the beginning, and nobody has done that to us this year.”
The seeds for Catholic Central’s tournament run were sown during the Catholic League tournament, when the Shamrocks lost a semifinal on its home field to Warren De La Salle Collegiate.
Motivated by that defeat, Catholic Central made sure it wouldn’t lose again in the MHSAA Tournament, punctuated by a terrific performance in the championship.
Thompson set the tone right off the bat, hitting the first pitch of the game into the left-center gap for a triple. He scored when senior Dylan Fairchild did the same thing, hitting a triple to the gap in left-center to put Catholic Central up 1-0. The Shamrocks went up 2-0 on an RBI groundout by senior Nicholas Garnick.
In the second inning, Fairchild came up with two outs and two on and hit another laser into the left-center gap, a two-run triple that gave Catholic Central a 4-0 lead.
In the fifth inning, Thompson led with his second triple of the game and the team’s fifth, and then scored on a wild pitch to make it 5-0. Cam Swearingen followed that up with an RBI single to put the Shamrocks up 6-0.
They went up 7-0 in the seventh inning on an RBI sacrifice fly by junior Jaxon Gatt.
PHOTOS (Top) Detroit Catholic Central players celebrate after clinching the Division 1 title Saturday at McLane Stadium. (Middle) The Shamrocks’ Kyle Davis (19) throws to first base while Adams’ Matt Toeppner attempts to advance.
Gull Lake Rallying for Another Run
May 31, 2012
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
A year ago, Richland Gull Lake coach Bill Blakely looked across C.O. Brown stadium and saw one of the state’s top power hitters of all-time – plus five sophomores battling through the nerves of playing in an MHSAA Division 2 Semifinal.
This spring, that big bat – catcher Zach Fish – played instead for Oklahoma State University. But now, the Blue Devils’ coach sees a team filled with big-game experience and capable of rolling despite the graduation of an all-state Dream Teamer or the recent loss of its ace pitcher to an injury.
Gull Lake is 34-2 this spring and 72-4 over the last two heading into Saturday’s District at Otsego. The Blue Devils are ranked No. 1 in Division 2 with wins over No. 2 Grand Rapids Christian, No. 7 St. Clair and previously-ranked Division 1 Portage Central – that last victory coming Saturday by a score of 9-7 in the Greater Kalamazoo Tournament championship game.
“They remember the games from last year, the importance of playing clean,” Blakely said of his team, which despite Fish's graduation returned this spring nearly intact. “They remember from last year that mistakes can just kill you, and you have to minimize those regardless of the competition.”
That perspective should continue to pay off as the Blue Devils attempt to reach Battle Creek again in three weeks – and this time advance to their first MHSAA championship game.
This week’s Second Half High 5 team honoree has gotten pitching wins from 10 players. Five have at least four wins, and together the staff has a 2.24 ERA. Three pitchers will do the same at Division I or II colleges next season – Nate Stegman (5-1) at Eastern Kentucky University, Lucas Hamelink (7-0) at Hillsdale College and Anthony Wargolet (4-0) at Lake Erie College.
That level of pitching depth is rare to say the least. But as of Thursday morning, Blakely still wasn’t sure who would start Saturday’s District Semifinal. Stegman, an all-state selection in 2011, suffered an arm injury a few weeks ago and might not make it back even if Gull Lake returns to Bailey Park.
So the Blue Devils also must continue to rely on a line-up that returned eight starters from last season’s Semifinal order. Three are hitting at least .400 – shortstop Colton Bradley (.488), third baseman Logan Holwerda (.467) and second baseman/catcher Patrick Gaudard (.402). More impressively, 12 players total have an on-base percentage of at least .400, and the team has 138 stolen bases while being caught only 20 times.
“We’ve talked about having the pieces in place where we could make a run for it,” Blakely said. “We’ll put the pieces together. We’ve won this year differently that last year – we’ve bunted a lot more, stolen a lot more. That part for us is completely new.”
But the pressure that comes now is not. Not only is most of the team back from last season, but Hamelink, Gaudard and junior Connor Owen were part of their 100th Gull Lake wins Saturday – the Blue Devils also went 30-11 when all three were on the team in 2010.
The tough part now will be extending the streak without Stegman. But that depth and experience will go a long way toward making it possible.
“The games when something is on the line, they’ve been more focused and less nervous,” Blakeley said. “And we purposely put together a difficult schedule to have that playoff game atmosphere.”
PHOTO: Outfielder Aaron Fadden is hitting .283 with 14 stolen bases this season after also starting for Gull Lake in 2011.