Low Numbers Lead Softball Foursome to Bolster Bellaire Baseball
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
April 22, 2022
Things were pretty straight forward last spring for Bella Huffman, Karysn Fischer, Alex Dawson and Brooklynn Clark.
Huffman played third base the Bellaire Eagles. Fisher was a designated hitter and outfielder. Dawson regularly played outfield and catcher, and Clark handled second base.
Huffman is senior now. Fisher is a junior. Dawson and Clark are sophomores. They were playing for the Eagles softball team. Today, they are members of the Eagles baseball team. Small numbers forced the cancellation of girls softball for this spring.
Hesitant, maybe at first, the four student-athletes made the leap to baseball.
“This is a slightly unique situation, and I am very proud of the girls for stepping out of their comfort zone to help the baseball team,” said Brad Fischer, Bellaire’s athletic director. “Unfortunately, the numbers were just not there to support a softball team.
“When we had to make the tough call to cancel our softball season, we told the girls that they are more than welcome to join the baseball team – and we are happy that a few chose to do so.”
The girls played their first game Thursday at Pellston for first-year coach Chris Bearup after a handful of games were lost to spring weather complications. All four got playing time.
The girls, and athletic director, credited the coaches for the smooth transition to the baseball field.
“Coach Bearup has done a great job of getting the girls comfortable and making sure they know they are part of the team and have every opportunity that the boys do,” said Fischer, also Karsyn’s father. “His leadership has been tremendous.
“We are fortunate to have him.”
The girls started to become very comfortable with baseball during a meeting after the first practice with Bearup and assistant coach Al Balko.
“They were worried about the boys picking on us and treating us like … we weren’t going to be as good as them,” recalled Clark of the post-practice meeting. “Now they’re being more incorporative.
“They are really trying to make us feel we’re at home, and that we’re welcome,” she continued. “They’re giving us a chance to try everything.”
Huffman has dabbled with pitching, and that may work out. It may be a battery with Dawson in the catching position.
“We all got to practice (pitching),” Karysn said. “Alex was in her catching gear, and we pitched.
“Bella was pretty good at it naturally.”
The girls were confident going into Thursday’s season opener. Their eyes are now opened wider as a result, and they are better prepared to compete as they head to Central Lake on Monday. Huffman, Dawson and Clark all got their first at bats out of the way.
“It was a little nerve racking,” Huffman said.
Dawson was in the starting line-up for the first game. She experienced running the 90-foot bases, after being used to the 60-foot base distances in softball.
“You run your little heart out,” she said. “I didn’t make it there, but I ran."
Bellaire lost 9-1 and 11-0 to Pellston, which had already played two games this year.
The girls are coming into baseball with slightly different expectations for themselves as individual players. All plan to try working harder than the boys.
“I went into this season with high expectations for myself because I knew as a girl on the baseball team I had to work harder than any of the boys to try to prove how good I am or how good I am possibly going to be,” Clark noted. “I think speaking for all the girls, we do.”
Numbers also are low for the baseball team. There are 14 on the roster. The tough result of no softball may have saved the baseball season.
And the senior boys are down to their last swing for a District championship. The boys in the Class of 2022 have yet to win a District in any sport. Cole Robinson is among the seniors seeking that first title.
Robinson had his sophomore baseball season cancelled by the pandemic. His football teams saw limited success. The Eagles boys basketball team made substantial improvements especially this past season, but lost its District opener.
Robinson has carried on since losing his father and coach Brock Robinson in April 2020. His dad served as the assistant baseball coach and head football coach for the Eagles before his unexpected death at the age of 54.
The girls would have been cheering for him to get his first District title. But now they plan to help him win one with their play on the diamond.
“We love Cole,” together they exclaimed.
Tom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.
PHOTOS (Top) A foursome of past Bellaire softball players, from left Alex Dawson, Bella Huffman, Karsyn Fischer and Brooklynn Clark, take a photo during their baseball debuts this week. (Middle) Brooklynn Clark stands in at the plate against Pellston. (Below) Karysn Fischer plays right field for the Eagles. (Top photo by Julie Clark, action photos by Kendall Fischer.)
In 'Turn & Burn,' Kent III Gives Voice Again to Father's Life Lessons, Coaching Wisdom
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
August 29, 2025
As his son, his player and during their time coaching together, Warren Kent III was front row for the words of wisdom often shared by his father Warren Kent Jr., who coached a multitude of sports at seven schools over more than three decades.
But as the years have rolled on after his father’s death in 2017, Kent III began to realize something most disheartening – he’d forgotten the sound of his dad’s voice.
In an attempt to regain that memory, Kent III has given us all an opportunity to listen.
His book – “Turn & Burn” – is the story of a son growing to love baseball under the tutelage of his father, a teacher and coach of the local varsity. The seeds for that love of the game are planted during the summer of 1984 – coinciding with the Detroit Tigers’ most recent World Series championship season.
Technically, the story is fiction. But it’s set in Fulton Township, which lies just west of US-127 between St. Johns and Ithaca, where Kent Jr. was indeed a coach and Kent III grew up and attended Fulton High School. And all of the information on the Tigers’ historic run that season – including game-by-game synopses of all 162 plus eight in the playoffs – is true as well and easily will connect with fans who, like Kent III, grew up during that unforgettable summer.
“That was my thing. I wanted people to get the feelings I had with the ’84 Tigers and sharing that with my dad as I was growing up,” he said. “My outlet is writing, so this is really a catharsis, just to get this out there, to let other people know the love of the Tigers but more the love of my father and things we went through together.”
Kent III was five months old when the Tigers won their 1968 World Series championship, but 16 in 1984. He said his book is about 70 percent factual, but even the imagined is rooted in reality.
The main character in “Turn & Burn” – EJ – is 12 years old because that seemed a more reasonable age to fall in love with the sport, and by 16 Kent III was well into his baseball fandom. The father in the book is a teacher and coach. Kent Jr. was a special education teacher for more than four decades and his son’s baseball coach at Fulton High School but just for freshman year before moving into the stands for the remainder of Kent III’s four-year varsity career.
Kent III began coaching baseball himself when he was 18 and served as North Muskegon’s varsity coach for 15 years, including 11 with Kent Jr. as his assistant. At one point in “Turn & Burn” players write EJ’s dad’s initials on their hands because he had been hospitalized after a heart attack; North Muskegon players did the same when Kent Jr. had a heart attack prior to a Pre-District game in 2005.
“Some of it’s been changed. Some of it’s been realistic,” Kent III said. “(But the dad) is definitely my dad’s voice.
“I put him in charge of the outfielders at North Muskegon, and that was his one motto – ‘Turn and burn.’ The kids could probably tell you that over and over, (that’s) the one thing Coach Kent would always say.”
A source of many of the fatherly pearls of wisdom found in “Turn & Burn” came from a journal-style “father’s legacy” book Kent III had purchased for his dad years before and asked him to fill out. Kent Jr. passed those on not only to his children but during a coaching run that took him to Hudsonville, Ashley, Fulton, Vestaburg, Blanchard Montabella and Greenville, where notably he led the football program to its first playoff appearance in 2000.
Writing has long been a love for Kent III, who taught English and journalism for 32 years – and served as a yearbook advisor for three decades – while at Battle Creek Central and then the final 27 years at Muskegon Mona Shores. Prior to becoming a teacher, Kent III was “Journalist of the Year” at Ferris State while sports editor of the student newspaper and then moved on to study and serve as sports editor of the paper at Michigan State.
He has written for the Big Rapids Pioneer, Lansing State Journal and Battle Creek Enquirer, among others over the years, and after retiring from teaching at Mona Shores this spring took a position with Walsworth Yearbooks helping schools all over the state with their yearbook programs.
Kent III also is in his 34th year as an MHSAA registered official. He wrote a piece once for Referee Magazine about his experience officiating the 2011 Class D Girls Basketball Final at Breslin Center, home of his beloved Spartans. He’s more recently officiated Basketball Semifinals at Breslin during the 2023 and 2024 seasons and has returned to the baseball diamond as an umpire as well after umping baseball and softball earlier in his career.
Writing a book came to Kent III during the COVID-19 pandemic, as he like many searched for something to occupy spare time. “Turn & Burn” is available exclusively via Amazon; click for details.
The venture was never about making money, but he’s sold 152 books – well above his goal of 100. And while Kent III still has not come across any recordings or voicemails of his father’s voice, “Turn & Burn” has given him a chance to hear Kent Jr.’s words once again.
“The sound, no. But the things and the ways he would say them, yes,” Kent III said. “Everybody else says they can picture his voice. I think it’s because, I’m assuming being his son, my voice probably sounds familiar to his to other people, but I can hear the things he’s saying. And in that book, the way he’s saying them.”
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Warren Kent III sits in the front row of a team photo as manager for dad Warren Kent Jr.'s 1979 Fulton baseball team; Kent Jr. is sitting far left of second row from bottom. At right, Kent III today. (Middle) "Turn & Burn" is Kent III's first published book. (Below) The Kents anchor a photo with North Muskegon players and their District championship trophy in 2009. (Photos provided by Warren Kent III.)