Hudson's Horwaths Producing Chart-Topping Hits for Tigers' Diamond Teams
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
May 25, 2022
HUDSON – Let it be known that there is little debate in the Horwath household who has the sweetest swing on the diamond. Dinah does.
“I like my swing and I think it’s good but, honestly, I have to say she does,” said Ambrose Horwath, a junior three-sport athlete at Hudson High School in Lenawee County.
“I think mine is better,” said Dinah, laughing – but agreeing.
No matter whose swing is better, they both are swinging hot bats this spring.
Going into this week, Dinah Horwath, a sophomore, was batting .479 and has been at or around .500 all season. She is the Lenawee County leader in hits (46), runs (44) and RBI (36).
Ambrose is batting a healthy .466. He’s among the Lenawee County leaders in hits (41), runs (37), RBIs (34), pitching wins (8) and strikeouts (49).
The two have a sibling rivalry, but there’s no competition to who will have the highest average at the end of the season. That’s because they are both rooting for each other.
“A couple of weeks ago, Ambrose was in a two or three-day slump,” said Hudson athletic director and varsity baseball coach Jeremy Beal. “After our practice I walked back to our field and there was Ambrose and Dinah. She was throwing soft toss to him. They must have had two buckets of balls.
“I’ve seen that before among brothers, but never a brother and sister. It was awesome.”
Ambrose’s slump didn’t last long.
“They pull for each other, and both have really good attitudes,” Beal said.
The Horwaths are a sports-crazed family. Father Lance is a Waldron native who is a principal in the Hudson school district and the Tigers varsity boys basketball coach. He played college baseball at Defiance, where he met Jamie. They were later married and had two kids – Ambrose and Dinah.
“I played college baseball with her brothers,” he said. “That’s how we met.”
Horwath was a teacher at Camden-Frontier when he moved into the Hudson district a little more than two decades ago. Ambrose has been a varsity basketball player since his freshman season and will go into his senior campaign a few 3-pointers shy of 1,000 career points. He also was a starter on Hudson’s Division 8 championship football team in the fall.
Dinah has plenty of varsity experience herself, despite being just as sophomore. She was second on the team in scoring this past basketball season and one of the area's top 3-point shooters. She said she and Ambrose often play one-on-one in basketball.
“We’ve done that since we were little,” she said. “We’re competitive, but we get along very well. We don’t really fight.”
Lance Horwath said the two of them are often together working on either their shot in basketball or swing in baseball/softball.
“They are always playing something,” Lance said. “Sports is a big part of our family. They’ve both been playing since before they even started school. It’s cool to see them together. They are very supportive of one another.”
Dinah, who is considering pursuing a career in sports management, throws right-handed in softball but has been batting from the left side of the box since she picked up a bat.
“From Day 1, she’s batted lefthanded,” Lance Horwath said. “I put her on the left side of the plate because that’s how I batted, and I wanted to teach her. She makes good contact.
“I love how she’s carved out her own niche in softball. She played travel ball when she was younger. She just loves playing the sport.”
Hudson softball coach Amy Hill said Dinah is constantly trying to get better.
“Her secret is she works very hard,” Hill said. “She puts in the time to improve and takes practice time seriously. She spends a lot of time on the tee. She’s a coach’s dream, always looking for ways to improve.”
During Hudson’s baseball and softball games, Lance and Jamie try to find a location where they can stand and watch both games.
“In Hudson, we can stand along the leftfield line and see both games,” he said. “They are both fun to watch. We’re blessed.”
If one sibling’s game ends early, the other gets to the other field as quickly as possible.
“I like it when our games get done so I can get over and see him play,” Dinah said.
Ambrose is no different.
“It’s cool to get to watch her games,” he said. “Every time I look over there or go watch, she’s on base.”
Ambrose said sports came natural to them.
“We will go out and hit together two or three times a week,” he said. “We’ve always been very close. It helps, I think, that we are only one year apart.
Hudson’s baseball team is looking to make some history this spring. The football and wrestling teams have already captured state championships, as did the competitive cheer team. The baseball team is 23-5 and close to winning at least a share of its first Lenawee County Athletic Association championship since 1968.
The Tigers are 9-3 with a doubleheader remaining against Ida. Onsted leads the league at 8-2 but has doubleheaders remaining against Clinton and Dundee, both formidable opponents.
“We need some help for that to happen,” Ambrose said. “But we just have to take care of our games first.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a sports and news reporter and city editor over 25 years, writing for the Daily Chief-Union in Upper Sandusky, Ohio from 1992-1995, the Monroe Evening News from 1995-2012 and the Adrian Daily Telegram since 2013. He's also written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Dinah, left, and brother Ambrose Horwath are among Lenawee County’s leading hitters in their respective sports. (Middle) Dinah prepares for the pitch from her spot in the infield. (Below) Ambrose makes his move toward the plate. (Photos by Rachel Stiverson.)
Oakridge 3-Sport Star Potts Applying Lessons to 'Second Chapter' in Sales
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
July 20, 2023
Jamie Potts put a major strain on his feet and ankles for many years.
Potts was constantly twisting and contorting in cleats and sneakers as a three-sport standout at Muskegon Oakridge and later as a rare two-sport star at Grand Valley State University, where he is still listed in the school’s football and baseball record books.
So it’s fitting that the 30-yeaar-old Potts is now helping to heal feet and ankles as a medical device salesman for Stryker.
“It’s a very competitive, fast-paced job and lifestyle,” said Potts, who graduated from Oakridge in 2011.
“I am very thankful for that because there is a huge void there. When you put so much of your time and energy into it, transitioning out of competitive sports is difficult.”
Potts is the youngest of four boys, so he practically grew up in the bleachers at Oakridge. By the time he got to high school, he fell effortlessly into the rhythm of football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring – all while maintaining a 4.1 GPA, good for fifth overall in his class.
Potts did everything on the football field at Oakridge, as a 6-foot-3, 200-pound dual-threat quarterback. As a senior, he rushed for 1,561 yards and 24 touchdowns and threw for 696 yards and 10 TDs – along with totaling 64 tackles and successfully booting 9-of-13 field goal attempts.
“He was a fantastic high school athlete and one of the best athletes to ever come out of Oakridge,” said former Eagles coach Jack Schugars, the all-time winningest high school coach in the Muskegon area who is now the special teams coordinator at Ferris State. “He was a tremendous leader and the epitome of a role model for younger kids.”
Potts was a solid, if not spectacular, basketball player, known as a defensive specialist who wasn’t afraid to guard anybody.
Then in the spring, he was back to all-state status in baseball as an outfielder, batting .584 his senior year with six home runs, 38 RBIs and 34 stolen bases.
That meant it was decision time when it came to college – would it be football or baseball?
Potts received several Division I offers, including from Central Michigan University for football and Oakland University for baseball.
But it was Division II Grand Valley, particularly then-assistant coach Matt Yoches (now the director of football operations at Miami of Ohio) that floated the possibility of playing both sports – a very rare feat at the DII level.
Potts made the GVSU coaches look like geniuses. He was a four-year starter at tight end and receiver, finishing his career second all-time for the Lakers in TD receptions (35) and third in career receptions (169). In baseball, he finished with 241 career hits, the fifth-most in school history at the time.
“People told me that playing both in Division II wasn’t realistic,” said Potts, who now lives on the east side of the state in Fenton, with his 1-year-old daughter, Brooklyn. “But I wanted to give it a shot and I think I did all right with it. Growing up in Oakridge, my life was all about sports, so it prepared me.”
Potts was drafted by the Texas Rangers shortly after his senior collegiate baseball season in 2015 and played that summer for Class A Spokane (Wash.), batting .217 with four home runs in 57 games. He missed training camp and the first two games of the 2015 football season, but returned to help the Lakers to the DII Semifinals his senior year.
He prepared to resume his baseball career and left in late February for the Rangers spring training complex in Surprise, Ariz., before announcing his retirement in March with a long and heartfelt Facebook post, which concluded:
“My best advice I can give is that you should always chase your dreams until your heart says it’s time to stop,” Potts wrote. “No matter how far out of reach you think it is or how old you are, you can do it with enough hard work and preparation.”
Potts, who completed his degree in allied health sciences with a minor in psychology during the Lakers’ 2015 football run, then had to shift gears and find his place in the “real world,” outside of competitive sports.
Potts said Oakridge, in addition to being a hard-working sports community, also did a mighty fine job preparing him and his three older brothers, sons of Tom and Kathy Potts, for life after athletics. Oldest brother Chris is an engineer, Andy works as a logistics manager and Aaron is an orthopedic surgeon.
It was actually Aaron who pointed him in the direction of medical device sales. He went through five interviews shortly after his retirement before landing his first job in the field at Arthrex in Grand Rapids, before moving on to Kalamazoo-headquartered Stryker last year.
“A big part of my job is being in the operating room with the surgeons and making sure that everything is working,” explained Potts, who is part of a six-member team which covers much of eastern Michigan. “It’s very intense, very much like the feel of a close game. No doubt all of those years of sports help me every day.”
But Potts could not leave sports behind completely after his baseball retirement.
He was back in Muskegon in the spring of 2016 and attended a Muskegon Ironmen indoor football game. He spoke with team owner TJ Williams, who Potts used to watch playing for Oakridge as a kid, and a few weeks later, he was in an Ironmen uniform.
Potts played two years with the Ironmen as a receiver, linebacker and kicker.
“It was a lot of fun, really, getting to play in front of fans in Muskegon again,” said Potts. “The worst part was the walls. I’ve never experienced getting tackled into walls before and, I tell you, that takes some getting used to.”
More recently, Potts helped out last month as a coach at Schugars’ kicking camp at Oakridge, getting him back on the turf at Russell Erickson Stadium, where the field is now known as Jack Schugars Field.
“I’m happy to be a role model for kids,” said Potts. “You learn so many life lessons from playing sports. It really gets you ready for the second chapter of life.”
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PHOTOS (Top) Jamie Potts runs the offense for Muskegon Oakridge as a senior in 2010, and now. (Middle) Potts, second from left, is advancing in his career in medical device sales. (Photos courtesy of Jamie Potts.)