Durand Makes Good on 1st Impressions, Lands School's 1st Finals Title in Any Sport
By
Jeff Bleiler
Special for MHSAA.com
February 27, 2026
JACKSON — Nick Wood had an inkling early that something special was afoot for his Durand High School boys bowling team.
It was during tryouts.
“You could just see that these kids were gifted athletically,” said the first-year coach. “They listen well, they took right in and they ran with it.”
Correction: They ran away with it.
On the strength of three freshmen whose experience belies their years, the Durand boys bowling team rolled through match play Friday, sweeping upstart Romulus Summit Academy North in the championship, and left Jax 60 with the school’s first Finals trophy in any sport.
“It meant a lot, being the first state title in our school history,” said Noah Wood, the team’s anchor, the coach’s son and one of the three freshmen. “We were grinding all day. We made our makeables like we’re supposed to. All in all, it was a great day.”
After qualifying third with a total of 3,315 for eight Baker and two regular games, the Railroaders lived up to their name by dropping just one Baker game the rest of the way in three best-of-five matches.
That came in the second game of the Quarterfinal against sixth-seed Caro, but Durand won the next two to advance to face second-seed Bronson in the Semifinals. Bronson reached that round by bowling a rare sixth game after tying Olivet 2-2-1 in the best of five and moving on with a 182-167 victory in the deciding sixth game.
Durand won the Semifinal in three straight, including a 154-113 second game that Nick Wood said was the result of the oil pattern “cliffing” and playing extremely difficult for both teams. The Railroaders closed the match out with a 216 in the third game to advance, then took out Summit with games of 176, 226 and 210.
“The kids really kept the ball in front of them and made their spares, and that puts a lot of pressure on your opponents,” Nick Wood said.
Noah Wood, Carson Drury and Logan Loudermilk are all freshmen but have been bowling together since elementary school. Wood and Loudermilk are cousins, and all three have competed in Michigan Junior Masters Association tournaments. The MJMA circuit is known for providing young bowlers the opportunity to compete on difficult patterns and at houses around the state. Noah Wood is a six-time MJMA champion.
“There is a not a better choice of tournaments in all of the states surrounding Michigan that I could have chosen to prepare me for this tournament more than MJMA,” he said.
While the three freshmen carried much of the load, the team would not have won without the contributions of junior Ryan Hunt and seniors Johnathan Munger and Drew Crackel.
“Everyone on the team has a job,” Noah Wood said. “If somebody misses a spare, then somebody goes back up there and gets a strike or leaves a makeable and makes it, that gets us right back on track.”
Summit left Jax 60 with the program’s highest finish at the Finals. The Dragons had finished 10th twice in coach Joe Wrone’s 12 seasons at the helm and had not advanced into the Quarterfinals before Friday.
“We had a sense if we could even get to cut, something could happen,” Wrone said. “They started unloading it in the first game.”
The Dragons qualified eighth with a total of 3,084 and drew top seed Adrian Madison in the Quarterfinals. They won a back-and-forth match that went the distance with Summit throwing 222 and 221 the last two games after being down 2-1.
Summit opened the Semifinal against Croswell-Lexington with a 267 game and won the match 3-1 before the urethane cliff seemed to get to the best of the Dragons in the championship.
Summit graduates Landon Corley, Michi Wilson and Daniel Griffith-Wrone but returns Greyson Wiedling, Addison Wiedling and Gabriel Hensler.
“If you had a Cinderella story for the tournament, these were the guys. They’ve been together for three years,” Wrone said. “They’ve bonded as friends, and they are so tight. The hugging, the crying when they made it, the advancement. They bowl for each other. It’s all team for these guys. The effort they gave was impressive.”
For Nick Wood, the weight of his team’s accomplishment — doing something no other sports team had done in school history — was not lost on him.
“It means way more for our community than it does for me,” he said. “We’re new to the community. These people are diehards, they leave, they come back. This is for Durand.”
Feeding 'Drive to Win,' Loy Norrix Grad Morgan Impresses with Strong USBC Showing
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
July 10, 2025
KALAMAZOO — Trevor Morgan received an unexpected bonus when he joined Scott Brunner’s Old School Scratch League at Continental Lanes several years ago.
The youngest on the team at the time, the 2018 Loy Norrix High School graduate said the fun part about bowling with those guys is that they have all bowled with or against his mom Nikki Randall McGruder, his stepdad Ed McGruder and his dad Randy Morgan.
“Now I get to hear all these fun stories involving my parents and my stepdad,” Trevor laughed.
Morgan added that teammates Brian Cooper, Mark LaBarge and Joe Gates were the guys he looked up to when he was a teen working as a food runner at the bowling alley. Another young bowler, Adam Rowlson, has since joined the team.
“These (original guys) are all guys that 10 years ago I was like, ‘Hey, these guys strike,’” Morgan said. “‘I want to be like them one day.’ And now I’m bowling against them and striking with them. Pretty cool.”
Pretty cool is also a good way to describe Morgan today.
The personable 25-year-old was one of more than 100 Kalamazoo area bowlers who have been traveling to Baton Rouge, La., for the USBC Open Championships, competing in team, doubles and singles divisions.
The tournament, from March 1 to July 28, features more than 11,600 five-person teams from around the country.
While Morgan said his team did not do well, he and Trevor Millard are currently 97th in doubles. As an individual, Morgan sits in eighth place with a 778 score.
“When I left there (May 19), I said I was hoping to stay in the top 20,” he said. “Since it’s been a month and a half, now I’m really hoping I can hold on to top 10.
“I bowled in a higher division with a lot of PBA pros bowling. It’s pretty cool to look at the list and go, ‘Hey, I beat some of these guys who were on TV this past year.’ I didn’t get to see them, I didn’t get to bowl against them, but I’m ahead of them.”
Growing up bowling
Continental Lanes has been Morgan’s second home since he was 2 or 3 years old, when his dad took him bowling but would not let him use the bumpers.
“He’d run down there and put his finger on the second arrow (of the lane) and say hit my finger,” Morgan said. “I tried every time to hit that finger. Sooner or later, I got better at it and was able to do it.”
Not only did he get better, but he bowled his first sanctioned 300 at age 12, becoming the youngest to bowl the perfecto in the Kalamazoo area, a record that still stands.
Things have changed quite a bit since then.
Although he had no sanctioned 300s in high school, his current total is more than 20, including eight two seasons ago and seven last season.
“This past year, I shot 299 then 300 in back-to-back games, which was pretty cool,” he said. “But I don’t have one yet that tops that first one. That is a memory that will never be forgotten.”
Morgan still has the special ring signifying his very first 300 game, although now it fits just his little finger.
He also has a ring for his first 800 series, an 801 bowled Sept. 13, 2018.
He has added more since then and recorded five of them last season when he threw an 846, his highest to date.
Besides his scratch league, one of the few in the state, Morgan also competes on the DDS team of former high school friends Collin Rickey, Jared Edgerton, Antar Howard and Alex Hale at Continental.
Friends since elementary school, Morgan became ordained so he could officiate Rickey’s wedding last month.
“I met Jared through Collin,” Morgan said. “They bowled together at Gull Lake High School and were a part of my team Saturday mornings as a youth team.
“Antar we knew from bowling tournaments like Michigan Junior Masters. Alex went to Gull Lake, and I got to bowl against him for two years. A group of 25 (to) 30-year-olds bowling every week is a fun one.”
As for DDS, “We are the Dumb Dumb Squad,” Morgan said. “My stepdad Ed named us that 10 or 15 years ago, so we’ve just lived up to the name and keep doing it.”
Dream Team
At Loy Norrix, Morgan competed in the MHSAA Division 1 Boys Bowling Singles Finals three of his four years, but his team did not qualify.
“My senior year, I lost in semis,” he said. “I led qualifying, won my first match, won my second match, lost to Matt Buck from Rockford by five pins. At least I lost to the eventual winner.”
In spite of that defeat, Morgan was named to the 2018 Detroit Free Press Dream Team with Genesee’s Luke Cantrell, Wyandotte Roosevelt’s Gabe Cassise, Adrian Madison’s Isaac Solis, Davison’s Brandon Kreiner and Lowell’s Carson Clark.
Morgan said the banquet was nice, “but the fun part was that everybody who was part of the Dream Team was there.
“Those were all people that I actually bowled Michigan Junior Masters events with, so we all knew each other. I still run into most of those people today when I bowl tournaments.”
When bowling became too stressful during high school, Morgan took out his frustrations on the golf course, something he still does.
“I was never very good (at golf), never made states (in high school). I never did anything great,” he said. “I used golf as ‘I know I’m not good, so let me get better' as opposed to bowling where ‘I know I’m good; how can I get better?’
“Golf was always my fallback. A lot of times I took the entire summer off from bowling.”
Although Morgan had several bowling scholarship offers from colleges, he said he attended Kalamazoo Valley Community College but soon decided college was not for him.
Instead he started working for his uncle, Mark Randall, who owns BoxDrop, which sells mattresses and furniture with stores in Battle Creek – where Morgan works – and Kalamazoo.
He and Caitlyn Ankli live in Kalamazoo with their two corgis, but Morgan still has a fleeting thought.
“I still have that kid desire to go give it a whirl on the PBA Tour,” he said. “I understand just as much as everybody else that life happens and I’ve built a life, I have bills to pay.
“I can’t just take 10 weeks off from work and say, ‘I’m going to bowl.’ Do I want to? Sure. If I had the time, I would certainly give it a whirl.
“At this moment, I’m pretty content with where I’m at: bowling two nights a week, a lot of little local pop-up tournaments to keep in the swing of things. I still have the drive to win.”
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Trevor Morgan poses for a photo with his third-place medal at the 2018 MHSAA Finals, and at right Morgan bowls this summer. (2) Morgan wears his 300 ring earned when he was 12, and his 800 series ring from 2018. (3) The DDS team, from left: Alex Hale, Antar Howard, Morgan, Collin Rickey and Jared Edgerton. (Bowling and ring photos by Pam Shebest; all others courtesy of Trevor Morgan.)