Richard Pitchers Rise to Occasion Versus High-Scoring Beal City in D4 Clincher

By Tim Robinson
Special for MHSAA.com

June 18, 2022

EAST LANSING – Riverview Gabriel Richard baseball coach Mike Magier admitted he was a little nervous while preparing to put in a freshman at a crucial point in Saturday’s Division 4 championship game.

“You talk to him in the dugout, we’re going back and forth and he doesn’t seem fazed,” Magier said,  chuckling. “I don’t know if he knows the situation or not. But he says, ‘I'm ready Coach.’ He throws a lot of strikes, and we had our best defense behind him when he’s on the mound.”

Drew Everingham entered in relief with a runner on and one out in the seventh inning. He hit his first batter, gave up an RBI single, then got a game-ending double play as Gabriel Richard edged Beal City, 4-3, for its second Finals title in five years. The Pioneers also won the Division 3 title in 2018. 

The pitching victory went to senior Ashton Nowak, who started and went 6 1/3 innings before having to leave the game due to the pitch count rule. He was in center field when the final outs were recorded. 

“That’s exactly what we needed,” he said. “It feels amazing. It took everyone, even the entire school coming out to watch us, to get that win.”

Gabriel Richard/Beal City baseballThe Pioneers (17-12) took a 1-0 lead in the third inning when Brendan Hills doubled and scored on a single by Connor Silka. Richard added two more runs on a double to the left-center field gap off the bat of catcher Bryan Tuttle. 

Beal City, which finished the season having averaged an MHSAA-record 12.5 runs per game, scored twice in the sixth inning on a bases-clearing triple by Jack Fussman to make the score 3-2. But Richard added an insurance run in the top of the seventh inning on an RBI single by Nick Wisniewki.

The Aggies (30-3) had one more comeback try, trailing by two runs in the bottom of the seventh.

Jake Gauthier walked to lead off the inning and eventually scored on a single by Brayden Haynes. But the rally fell short.  

“Like I told them after the game, they battled,” Beal City coach Steve Pickens said. “They battled all year. They’re a great group of guys. I’d go to war with them. It bounced a little different today than it usually does, but that’s baseball.”

For the Pioneers, a season of ups and downs ended at the pinnacle.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Tuttle, who was behind the plate for all but three innings this season for the Pioneers. “This is what we’ve dreamed of since the beginning of the season, and now that it’s come true, it’s unbelievable.”

Click for the full box score.

PHOTOS (Top) Brenden Hills crosses the plate for Riverview Gabriel Richard on Saturday at McLane Stadium. (Middle) Pioneers catcher Bryan Tuttle puts a tag on Beal City’s Konnor Wilson during the third inning.

Kingsley Standouts Big Hits on Diamond, as Friends to 4th-Hour Classmates

By Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com

April 19, 2024

When Eli Graves or Gavyn Merchant takes a swing this spring for Kingsley, a special group of friends are not worried how they’ll connect with the ball.

Northern Lower PeninsulaThat group of friends and classmates — students in Joel Guy’s fourth-hour special education class — feel like the two senior standout athletes already hit a home run at school that day. It might even feel like a grand slam from Graves or perhaps a hole-in-one for Merchant.

And the Kingsley baseball and golf coaches feel similarly – and sentiment that may extend through the entire Kingsley community.

Merchant and Graves are playing their final baseball seasons with Stags. Merchant is dual-sporting, adding golf to his incredible athletic career.

Together, they led the Stags to Division 6 football championship in the fall despite battling through extensive injuries. Graves, the star running back, and Merchant, the outstanding quarterback, then fought through long, hard rehabilitations to get back and lead the Stags on the hardcourt and wrestling mats this winter.  

But before stepping up to the plate or the tee to compete for Kingsley on any given day this spring, the pair spend time in Guy’s class and share lunch with the Kingsley cognitively impaired (CI) students.

“You can’t say enough good things about these young men,” said Guy, who also is in his fourth year as the Kingsley golf coach. “I get teary-eyed talking about it – they just kind of took a hold of some of my students making contact at lunch and in the hallway.”

That contact began midway the football season. Graves and Merchant were joined by fellow golfer Ty Morgan and football teammate Skyler Workman.

Merchant (6) hands the ball off to Graves during the Division 6 championship win at Ford Field. A few more senior athletes have been a part of the adoption of Guy’s students intermittently as well. But Guy’s students can count on seeing Graves, Merchant, Morgan and Workman in the classroom each and every day and then at lunch. The time was made possible, Guy notes, because the athletes are ahead in their own academic pursuits or participants in the school’s Teacher Academy program.

How those seniors are contributing is rare for accomplished athletes in a high school setting, Guy is happy to point out.

“Gavin and Eli are state champions in football,” said Guy. “They are the stars of their winter sports basketball and wrestling, and you you think that being seniors with those kinds of credentials at lunch they would sit in a table with all their buddies and talk about their accomplishments.

“They sit with my special education students,” Guy continued. “They make my students feel like they’re the ‘in’ crowd, and I am so proud of them.”

Bruce Graves, father of Eli and coach of the Stags’ baseball team, recalls learning from Guy what that group of seniors was doing with their fourth hour. He wasn’t really surprised to hear from someone else what his senior leaders were doing.

“They wouldn’t tell anybody they were doing it,” the 22-year veteran coach said. “They don’t do it for a pat on the back – they just do it because they like being good guys.”

There are various reports of exactly how the athletes started getting involved with the special education students. But everyone in the school located 15 miles south of Traverse City seems happy they did.

Eli Graves, one of the Stags’ five pitchers, roams center field when he’s not on the mound. He is 1-0 as the Stags are off to a 9-0 start following a conference sweep of Kalkaska, 3-0, 15-0, on Thursday. The right-hander is slated to pitch this weekend and has hopes of the Stags finishing the year with a conference baseball title and a deep postseason run.

Graves and Merchant have raised money all year to get birthday and Christmas gifts for their classmates in Guy’s room. They’ve become particularly close to a couple of his students.

“They don’t really see us as helpers or anything like that — they see us more as friends,” said Graves, now playing his third year on the varsity baseball squad.  “We go into the special ed room, and basically just help the students with whatever work they are doing.”

Merchant putts during Thursday’s golf opener.After recovering from football injuries, Graves averaged more than 15 points per game this basketball season and earned all-conference. Merchant also recovered from postseason surgeries and got back on the mat to place fourth at 132 pounds in Division 3 and became an all-state wrestler for the fourth time.  

The pair’s in-season football injuries were not known to many. They wanted to compete for the state title and tend to the injuries later. Graves rushed for almost 2,000 yards, tying and breaking some of his brother Owen’s school records along the way. He also had 20 tackles, two interceptions and four touchdowns on defense during the 2023 campaign.

Graves sprained a shoulder joint during the Semifinal win over Reed City but a week later carried the ball 33 times and ran for 210 yards in the title game. He had four touchdowns that day in the Stags' 38-24 victory over Almont.

Merchant has had various injuries over the course of his career, undergoing wrist surgery as a sophomore for a carpal tunnel injury and having floating cartilage taken out of a knee following his junior wrestling season.

But what he endured on the way to Ford Field was the topper as he endured two torn ligaments in his knee, a fractured leg, a torn meniscus — and, later on — a pair of broken ribs sustained late in the championship game.

“When you’re in the game, it’s all about adrenaline,” said Merchant, who is facing another surgery in May but shot a 95 to lead Kingsley in its first tournament of the season Thursday at the Frostbite Open in Manton. “You don’t even think about the injury until you get off the field, and that’s when you get ice bags and fight it off.”

They have been close friends since elementary school and credit the Kingsley coaching, teaching and counseling staffs with preparing them for life after graduation.

Graves and Merchant call football their favorite sport. Graves hopes to also play football at the college level, and Merchant expects to continue on the wrestling mat.

Tom SpencerTom 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) Eli Graves, left, and Gavyn Merchant are among standouts for Kingsley’s baseball team again this spring. (Middle) Merchant (6) hands the ball off to Graves during the Division 6 championship win at Ford Field. (Below) Merchant putts during Thursday’s golf opener. (Baseball photos by Karen Middleton.)