Meyers Serves, Strides for Norrix Fall Teams
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
August 21, 2017
KALAMAZOO — Finding a face in a crowd of 357 runners erupting down a hillside all at once could be a daunting task.
But spotting sophomore Joe Meyers is easy, said Greg Savicke.
“He’ll be one of the ones out front,” the Kalamazoo Loy Norrix coach predicted.
That was true at Friday’s Portage Central Early Bird Invitational, where Meyers finished 14th with a time of 17 minutes, 12 seconds.
That sounds like a great time for a first race of the season, but Meyers was not celebrating.
“I had a pretty bad race,” he said. “I was training in Colorado for like a month with my new coach, and I put in a lot of training.
“I should have been well in the 16s. It was just not a good race.”
He didn’t have much time to fret.
The two-sport athlete had his first tennis match of the season Monday.
He’s playing No. 2 singles for the Knights after putting together a 21-5 record at the same flight last year.
Juggling two fall sports is not a problem for the amiable Meyers, with tennis taking priority.
“We work around the tennis schedule,” said Savicke, in his 29th year as Norrix’s head cross country coach. “We get Joe when he’s available. Early in the season it’s not so much, but down the stretch, yes.
“That’s the championship part of our season for us, in October, so we get him for the most important meets coming up.”
Both sports are in Meyers’ DNA.
His mother, Jody, got him on the tennis court when he was 5 and just playing for fun.
“Then I quit and mainly played hockey for years until seventh grade, then picked up tennis again,” he said.
He started running with his father, John, at age 9.
As a freshman, “I didn’t really want to pick one because I knew I could do pretty good in both,” Joe Meyers said. “It worked out last year.”
Both are individual sports, but in running, “you have to definitely have a lot more drive to go out and run by yourself because you can have a lot of excuses not to,” he said.
“In tennis, you go to group and you have to try as hard as you can. I don’t really get as tired in matches (since I’ve been) running.”
Meyers works out with sophomore Reed Crocker, Norrix’s No. 1 singles player.
Crocker qualified for the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Finals last season, losing his top-flight title match, 7-6(6), 3-6, 7-6(8), to top-seeded Varun Shanker of Midland Dow.
The only way Meyers will make it to the Finals is if Loy Norrix as a team qualifies, since the No. 1 player is the only individual eligible if the team falls short at Regionals. The No. 1 singles champion and runner-up at Regionals advance to Finals play even if their teams do not qualify.
“We have a better chance (as a team) this year,” Crocker said. “The team’s looking better.
“We’ve been doing a lot of sprints, a lot. (Sunday) was an easy day. We only ran a mile” before practice.
Crocker said Meyers pushes him to be better.
“Joe is like the marathon runner, so it helps me with conditioning and it helps me on the court because I know he can help build the wins,” Crocker said.
“We hit together, and he pushes me get better. I’ve had the joy to hit with him the last year or so because he joined my coach (Bill Jenkins, who is also Norrix’s head coach).”
Jenkins, in his third season with the Knights, has coached tennis for 38 years.
Meyers possesses a “good work ethic, and genetics are very much in his favor as far as a force in track,” Jenkins said. “He’s built for it in tennis as well.
“He’s also extremely coachable so he has a very good perspective, very good mindset and disposition for tennis. He’s extremely intense, extremely passionate and competitive, but he’s also very level-headed, so he’s able to channel a lot of that energy into proper use.”
Jenkins said, in his experience, it is unusual to have an athlete be so successful in two sports in the same season.
“He’s got very set dreams but he works at them on a daily basis, knowing that the only way to achieve them is through his commitment,” the coach said.
“Regardless of whatever natural distractions may come up, he seems to stay on track very diligently and is years ahead of his time.”
While Meyers needs the team to qualify for the MHSAA Finals in tennis, he has a much better shot of earning a berth in cross country.
Last year, then-senior Gabe Runyon was the only Norrix runner to qualify for the Lower Peninsula Division 1 competition at Michigan International Speedway.
Meyers just missed qualifying, finishing 21st at his Regional with a time of 17:04. The top 15 runners moved on.
Savicke lost Runyon and four of his other top seven runners to graduation this spring, noting that Meyers has moved up from second in the order to become the team’s top runner.
Meyers has improved on his 2016 Regional time and has an unofficial personal best of 16:30. He has hit 17:00 in a race, and his short-term goal is to get into the 16s during competition.
Said Savicke: “Joe’s father was a runner in high school for (Kalamazoo) Hackett in the 1980s, and he’s really active in bicycling and running events. He’s brought Joe along with him.
“I think that just paid dividends with his running abilities. I saw Joe in middle school, so I knew he would be a good fit for us.”
Norrix’s next cross country meet is Thursday with Meyers leading a varsity contingent of junior Will Carrier, senior Zach Skinner, sophomore Myles Baker, junior Rowan Mathieson, senior Garrett Bloom and sophomore Erick Ponce.
Once the fall season is over, Meyers does not plan to leave sports behind.
He bicycles and was the Michigan Bicycle Racing Association road race junior state and point series champ a year ago and “might pick up hockey or swimming this year,” he said.
In the spring, he is part of the varsity track & field team, competing in the 1,600, 3,200 and 3,200 relay.
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Kalamazoo Loy Norrix sophomore Joe Meyers returns a volley during a tennis practice Sunday. (Middle) Clockwise from top left: Meyers, tennis teammate Reed Crocker, Knights’ boys tennis coach Bill Jenkins, Knights’ boys cross country coach Greg Savicke. (Below) Meyers pushes ahead of a pack during Friday’s Early Bird race at Portage Central. (Photos by Pam Shebest.)
Work, Patience Paying Off as EGR's Workman Finds Pace Among State's Lead Pack
By
Dean Holzwarth
Special for MHSAA.com
September 25, 2025
EAST GRAND RAPIDS – Earlier this month, East Grand Rapids cross country standout Jonah Workman arrived at the Sparta Invitational feeling less than enthusiastic to run as raindrops began to fall.
“I came into the race not really thinking I was going to try super hard, to be honest,” Workman said. “I got to the race and it started to rain and the course was super muddy when we were warming up. We really didn't want to run.”
A day of angst quickly turned to exhilaration hours later after Workman eclipsed 15 minutes for the first time to win the event easily.
He clocked a personal-record 14:58.8 and won the race by almost a minute.
“Jonah asked me what I thought the course record was, and I jokingly said, ‘If you break 15, I think you will get it’, and then he went out and just hammered and put it away,” Pioneers boys cross country coach Drew Collette said. “That’s a quick course, but I didn't know if the conditions would be perfect for that. But he went for it and blew me away.
“It was a significant PR, and anytime you can break 15 it's a big deal, especially by yourself. That’s really special, and it was super fun to see that.”
Workman is one of only three runners in Michigan to run under 15 minutes this season as he joins Ann Arbor Pioneer’s Kamari Ronfeldt (14:47.9) and Beckett Crooks (14:56.1).
“I went the first mile in like 4:42 and I was like, ‘I feel good. I can run pretty hard,’” Workman said. “I ran hard after that mile. It was a fluke of a race, but glad it happened.”
Workman is one of the top returning runners in the state this season and the catalyst of a talented Pioneers squad.
He finished fifth overall at the Lower Peninsula Division 2 Final last season, but hopes to end his career accomplishing a goal he set for himself in middle school when first meeting Collette.
“I met him in eighth grade, right before I took the job, and we talked about his goals and he wanted to win a state title his senior year,” Collette said. “I told him that we could get there, and we can work on that.
“He had natural talent, and he's been very dedicated to his craft and very dedicated to his goals. When you have that type of talent and mix it with someone that is driven the way he is … it's not a real surprise to see four years later and here we are.”\
Workman recalled that first encounter with Collette and the conversation concerning what he hoped to attain.
“When I met him I had just PR’d and won this race and was very pumped up with energy and confidence,” Workman said. “I thought I could have a future in this, and that would be winning a state championship for me.
“I always watched my sister, Ainsley, running at the state meet and I also watched all these family friends win it and be successful. So in middle school, I kind of always had that in the back of my mind.”
Running has been a common thread in the Workman family.
“I was put into running in sixth grade by my parents, who both ran at Calvin College, and my sisters ran, so it was kind of natural for me to go into running as well,” Workman said. “I played basketball freshman year, but sat the bench and I thought to myself, ‘Why am I sitting the bench when I can go train for track?’”
Workman was a freshman when East Grand Rapids won a Division 2 team championship, the first in program history. He finished 45th individually that season and 31st as a sophomore before making a giant leap his junior year.
“We were really careful about him and his progression,” Collette said. “He was watching and learning from the older guys and then had more of a workload as a junior when he became a lot stronger and became a leader on the team.
“Seeing him take fifth last year and now being exactly where he wants to be and where we wanted him to get to in a place where we can vie for that individual title is really exciting. It’s been an awesome progression of just being patient, being smart and having that long-term goal in mind the whole time.”
Workman’s mindfulness to his training, coupled with a strong worth ethic, were main factors in his times continuing to drop.
“It’s all about consistency within my training and building confidence over time,” Workman said. “I used to beat my stuff up after bad races and that set me back, but now I go with the one-third rule and coach has been a great tool to keep instilling that confidence in me that I can compete at a high level.”
Workman has his sights set on the EGR record (14:56), as well as capping his high school career with another Finals title. The Pioneers have finished third as a team the past two years.
“Winning state as a team is one of my biggest priorities, especially after my freshman year being able to win it as a team," Workman said. "Being able to win it now with all of my friends would just be a super way to end high school cross country.
“These guys have been dedicated to their craft and have been for four years with me. It's been amazing to be in this type of environment, and I'm surrounded by guys who want it as bad as I do.”
Expectations remain high for this group because of the runners’ experience and depth.
“It’s a group that is really driven and really wants to get back on top,” Collette said. “We want to bookend by trying to win one more time for this group. It’s going to be a hard challenge, but that’s what we’re aiming for.”
Dean Holzwarth has covered primarily high school sports for Grand Rapids-based WOOD-TV for five years after serving at the Grand Rapids Press and MLive for 16 years along with shorter stints at the Ionia Sentinel and WZZM. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Allegan, Kent and Ottawa counties.
PHOTOS East Grand Rapids’ Jonah Workman runs at Grand Rapids South Christian’s Under the Lights Invite on Aug. 22. (Photo by Willoughby Sports Photography.)