Thumb Rivals Honor Connor 'One Last Time'
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
February 28, 2017
Jay Burton said one of his biggest fears after his son Connor passed away in 2009 was that he would be forgotten.
But eight years after his death, the memory of Connor Burton is as strong as ever in Marlette and Brown City, the two communities he managed to make a big impact on during his 10 years on Earth.
“Any parent that’s lost a child, one of the biggest fears is that your child will be forgotten,” Jay Burton said. “They never are, but that’s any parent’s fear. But he’ll be a part of this community for the rest of our lives.”
This past Friday, the two schools met in Marlette for the eighth and final Team Connor Classic, a game that has celebrated Connor’s life since the year after it ended. On this night, Marlette came away with a 49-40 victory, winning the game for the eighth straight time in what would have been Connor’s senior year.
“It’s a good time to call it quits,” Jay Burton said.
Connor’s life
On Thursday, April 16, 2009, Connor went to his gymnastics and baseball practices before shooting baskets outside his house until the sun set and he could no longer see the hoop.
It was a typical day for the energetic 10-year-old, who was described by many as a gym rat and a lover of all sports.
“Whatever sport was in season, he would be ready to play,” said Connor’s uncle Tony Burton, Brown City’s athletic director and former boys basketball coach. “During the winter, basketball was something that was a high priority with him. Obviously, he got taken from us too soon, but he sure loved sports.”
He was good at them, too. His friend Hunter Kelly, now a senior on Marlette’s boys basketball team, said Connor was a better basketball player than most of their friends when they were young.
In the Thumb, Burtons and basketball are synonymous, and Connor seemed poised to be the next in that line – even if he was coming through the Marlette program and not the Brown City one his uncle was leading and for which his cousins had starred. Connor was even a manager, along with his cousin Caleb Muxlow (who is a senior on this year’s Brown City team), for his uncle’s team.
On Friday, April 17, 2009, Connor, who it would be found suffered from Long QT – a heart rhythm disorder – passed away less than 24 hours after shooting his last shot.
“Basically the electrical system in the heart, which tells it to beat, his wasn’t running correctly,” Jay Burton said. “The thing about it was, you would have never known. … I went (into Connor’s room that morning) and the only weird thing he said to me was, ‘Dad, why did you open the door so fast?’
“I didn’t think anything of it, I flicked his light on, and when I came back he hadn’t made it out of bed. He had cardiac arrest.”
A tradition is born
The following basketball season, the Team Connor Classic was born, and the two communities that Connor loved showed their love for him. There were tributes and tears, and a great basketball rivalry was all of a sudden elevated to another level.
“It’s always been a good game between Brown City and Marlette,” Tony Burton said. “We border each other, we’re in the same county, so it’s usually a pretty good game when we play, regardless of records. It means a lot, and for both teams when we play each other, we want to win. But when the game’s over we still have our friendships and our associations with each other.”
While they compete for bragging rights, and often for Greater Thumb Conference East championships, Marlette and Brown City actually have a long history of coming together for good causes.
“Us and Marlette, we have a great relationship,” Brown City High School principal Neil Kohler said. “We do the pink out game in football every other year at our place, we do the Team Connor game. We did a basketball game last year where both teams gathered water for the Flint crisis. So, it’s probably our biggest rival, but also our biggest partnership. When they came to our place about three weeks ago our local rotary did a pancake dinner and had about 400 people come in from Marlette hospice to raise money. The two communities really come together.”
The Team Connor game has a different feeling than most tribute games because of its unique connection of the family to two tight-knit communities.
That was apparent in the latest edition, as Connor’s family – his father, his mother Sue, and his sisters Lindsey and Annie – were given a signed basketball from the Brown City community, and a bouquet of flowers and a blanket tiled with memories from all eight Team Connor Classics from the Marlette community. After the game, the family handed out medals to each player on both teams, receiving from them many long, heartfelt hugs.
It’s not easy for the family, especially in a year when Connor would have been the one on the court with his classmates enjoying a season that has seen the Red Raiders go 18-1 and clinch the GTC East title.
“This is only the second game I’ve watched the Marlette boys play (this season),” Jay Burton said. “I can’t watch them. I see Hunter Kelly; the kid stands a foot taller than me. What would Connor have been? He’s the 10-year-old in front of me and all of his friends are 18 getting ready to graduate high school.
“Caleb Muxlow, his cousin who plays for Brown City, I can go watch simply because he’s family. But this is only the second time I’ve seen (Marlette) play. It just hurts too much.”
Each team came out for warm-ups in the same Team Connor shirts, which combined the green of Brown City and the red of Marlette, and read “One Last Time.” They sat on the court before the game to watch the presentations and a slideshow of photos from Connor’s life and Team Connor Classics past, and stood with one another during the national anthem.
“I think this one was a special night mainly because these were his classmates,” Marlette coach Chris Storm said. “The rivalry has gotten stronger and stronger between us. It was there because of the league before, but it adds a lot of pressure to both teams and you could see that in the game.
“But it means a lot to see how many people come out for the event. The pastor comes back; he’s been out of the area for three years. It’s a great environment for kids to play high school basketball. It’s a District or a Regional feel almost on a regular-season night.”
As the game tipped off, Marlette took the court with four players. It’s a newer, but impactful tradition that was added in the years Connor would have been playing in the game.
“It was quite a surprise (the first year),” Jay Burton said.
It’s a sign that Connor is certainly not forgotten, and while the Team Connor Classic may be going away, anyone who played in one, coached one or simply attended one, will never forget it.
“It means that we’re remembering a great kid that would have given a lot more to his community if he had more time,” Kelly said. “It shows that us as a senior class, the way we represent ourselves as a team and a community, is reflecting who he was. It means a lot because he would have been a senior this year, he probably would have been playing with us. He was better than me, he was better than a lot of these kids, so he probably would have been starting, too.
“So it means a lot to play in remembrance of him, because he’s missing out on all these memories.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Annie Burton, Connor Burton’s younger sister, presents Marlette boys basketball coach Chris Storm with the “Team Connor Classic” trophy after Friday’s game. (Middle) Hunter Kelly hugs Connor’s father Jay Burton as the family welcomes both teams' players. (Below) The game program from the night celebrated Connor Burton’s life and legacy. (Photos by Paul Costanzo.)
Grant, Carrying Perfect Record Into Final Weeks, Quietly Making Statewide Name
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
February 12, 2026
Don’t expect to see Dan George yelling and screaming and snapping clipboards.
In fact, he rarely raises his voice and doesn’t write down any Xs and Os during timeouts, instead calmly talking to his team, often with his hands in his pockets.
“You can’t teach during a timeout, there’s not enough time,” explained George, 73, a longtime college coach who came out of retirement and is now in his second year as the head coach at Grant.
“I just want to refocus everyone and reinforce what we’ve taught at practice.”
Those lessons from the old ball coach appear to be hitting home with the Tigers, who are one of the few remaining unbeaten teams in the state, with a spotless 19-0 record heading into Friday’s home game against Reed City.
Grant, which has already clinched its second-consecutive Central State Activities Association Red title, still has not cracked the Top 10 in the Division 2 Associated Press state rankings. The Tigers were among the “others receiving votes” in the latest poll.
Zaiden Phillips, a 6-foot-1 senior guard/forward, is the team’s ringleader, averaging 20 points, seven rebounds and four assists per game.
Phillips is one of three skilled long-range shooters for the Tigers, along with fellow senior Blake Rider (averaging 15 points, four rebounds and four assists) and junior Kohen Obenauf (eight points, six rebounds). On Wednesday at Big Rapids, the game began with each of those three hitting a 3-pointer as Grant took a quick 9-0 lead.
When Big Rapids adjusted its defense, Phillips and others started cutting to the basket in the Tigers’ motion offense, where he is a great finisher. If those cuts result in drawing fouls, he’s also a strong free-throw shooter.
Phillips and Rider are Grant’s two senior starters (the other three are juniors) and best friends, and their many years of hanging out and playing basketball together is evident in their on-court chemistry.
Junior Austin Gragg is the team’s “big man” at 6-3, averaging eight points and six rebounds per game. The final member of the Tigers’ starting five is junior point guard Jack Swanson, who also excels at driving to the hoop and puts up nine points and five rebounds per game.
Grant goes seven deep, with senior Owen Chesebro and junior Jacob Gates the main reserves.
The Tigers had only nine varsity players as the season approached, before Phillips and Rider talked their buddy and fellow senior Rory Fish – a baseball standout – into playing hoops, which allows the team to scrimmage 5-on-5 at practice.
Those practices are where George’s old-school coaching techniques and the players’ developing skills come together.
“In practice, I make them throw six passes before they take a shot, and they also can’t dribble,” said George with a smile. “They learn in a hurry to be looking up and seeing the court.”
The defense is in the capable hands of assistant coach Kirk Rider (Blake’s father), who is also Grant’s athletic director. The Tigers play primarily man-to-man, but it often looks like a zone as they clog the lane to prevent penetration and force opponents to beat them from the perimeter.
The formula has been working to perfection, literally, this winter.
Phillips has garnered the most headlines, earning MVP honors at the inaugural Be Legendary Showcase at Grace Christian in early January, then scoring 22 points in a victory over Montague on Jan. 6 to top 1,000 career points.
He has remained hot recently, scoring 27 against Remus Chippewa Hills and 31 at arch-rival Fremont in back-to-back games last weekend. His shot was slightly off on Wednesday at Big Rapids, and he finished with 14 points.
“When his scoring falls below his average, he will fill the stat sheet with assists, rebounds, and steals,” said George. “He understands the importance of doing the little things.”
Phillips said the key to his scoring, and the team’s consistency, is defense. Grant forces an average of 12 turnovers per game.
“We get after it on defense and cause a lot of turnovers, then we get easy buckets off of those,” said Phillips, who has received college basketball offers from Kuyper College and Grace Christian.
Grant, which has not won a District during Phillips and Rider’s high school careers, will be favored to win the Division 2 District tournament at Sparta, as it has beaten all four of the other teams in the bracket.
“It would mean a lot to get a District this year,” said Rider. “We’ve been close, but we just haven’t got it done. We know that we need to step up our defense and rebounding in the tournament.”
This year’s perfect season comes on the heels of last year’s 20-3 finish, giving Coach George a 39-3 record while wearing Grant’s orange colors, a gaudy 93-percent winning percentage.
Winning basketball games is nothing new for George, who made his mark as the head coach at Jordan College and later as an assistant coach at Grace Christian University, where he coached for 17 years and was part of six National Christian College Athletic Association championship teams.
But hang around George for even a few minutes and you’ll see that winning games is low on his list of priorities.
“I always tell my players that I want to accomplish three things,” said George, who noted he is having a blast because his team is so coachable.
“First is to have fun. Second is to help them become better people, better brothers and better husbands. And third is to see them in heaven someday.”
Tom Kendra worked 23 years at The Muskegon Chronicle, including five as assistant sports editor and the final six as sports editor through 2011. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Muskegon, Oceana, Mason, Lake, Oceola, Mecosta and Newaygo counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Grant’s Zaiden Phillips, far left, interacts with his teammates before a recent game. (Middle) Veteran coach Dan George talks with a game official. (Below) Phillips considers his next move with George looking on from the sideline. (Photos courtesy of the Grant athletic department).