Marquette Boys Extend Title Streak to 7
February 25, 2019
By Chris Dobrowolski
Special for Second Half
BELLAIRE — The dynasty of the Marquette boys skiing team is alive and well.
The Redmen captured their seventh consecutive MHSAA Division 1 championship Monday at Schuss Mountain, and their 14th overall, when they finished 27 points ahead of runner-up Traverse City West, 65-92, to take a convincing victory. Brighton took third with 111 points.
Marquette had the top two finishers in the giant slalom, with Hayden Kauppila finishing first in 47.25 seconds and Aaron Grzelak taking second in 47.54, and had three finishers among the top 10. The Redmen were able to overcome two skiers going down in the slalom by getting four across the finish line in the top 25.
“It feels pretty good for all the work we put in, and it finally pays off,” said Grzelak. “I think it feels pretty cool. All clean runs and a lot of people finishing. We are pretty excited.”
Kauppila led the way as the sophomore posted the top Marquette time in both disciplines, coming in second in the slalom in 1:00.58.
“It’s an awesome experience,” Kauppila said of winning another championship. “I thought I did a great job, personally. I’ve had a pretty good season.”
Keaton Jones, the lone senior among Marquette’s contributors, also recorded a top-10 finish in the slalom, taking ninth in 1:05.11. Logan Audette was 15th in the giant slalom (50.48) and 17th in the slalom (1:07.55), Truman Durand took 10th in the giant slalom (50.07) and Drake Scheidt was 25th in the slalom (1:09.52).
Head coach Dan Menze, who had been in charge of the last three championships for the Redmen, said his team definitely feels some pressure with the bulls-eye on its back each season. But he said his skiers are able to rise above it and perform at a high level.
“It helps because we’ve been there before,” he said. “Most of the teams racing here have some experience, but we’ve got a lot of experience with kids who have raced at this race before or races just as big. So, the nerves for the boys aren’t really much of a factor. It helps them with being calm and being ready to race. There’s definitely pressure to try and produce. We have a lot of great skiers up there. They’re used to it. It’s easier on them than it is myself. I get a little nervous at times.”
Rockford’s Nick Rupert, who won the Division 1 giant slalom a year ago, captured the slalom this season after recording the only time under one minute with a 59.9 to edge Kauppila by just over a half of a second.
Marquette could become the third boys ski team in MHSAA history to win eight championships in a row — joining Traverse City from 1988-95 and Petoskey from 2011-18 — if it wins another title in 2020. With three juniors (Grzelak, Durand and Scheidt) and two sophomores (Kauppila and Audette) eligible to return, the Redmen don’t appear to be going away any time soon.
“I’m very fortunate to have a great program up in Marquette that kind of feeds the high school and makes my job a lot easier,” said Menze.
PHOTOS: (Top) Marquette's Hayden Kauppila races downhill during a slalom run Monday at Schuss Mountain. (Middle) Rockford's Nick Rupert speeds toward the Division 1 slalom championship. (Photos by Jake Atnip. For more from Monday's Finals, see Sports in Motion.)
Lewandowski Quadruplets Locked In to Lead TC West's Finals Titles Pursuits
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
February 13, 2026
Rivalry. Cross-town? Conference?
Not so much for this year’s Traverse City West ski teams.
It’s sibling rivalry fueling the Titans, and more specifically the “Quads” – as they are widely known – quadruplets Summer, Cam, Dane and Brock Lewandowski.
And, while conference and cross-town school Traverse City Central will be an obstacle in the path of West’s drive to reclaim the boys and girls Division 1 Championships later this month, the sibling rivalry will take center stage when the Quads hit the slopes of Boyne Mountain for the Division 1 Finals on Feb. 23.
Not necessarily among those four, though. This sibling rivalry is mostly a long-standing one between the Quads and their older brothers, Aiden and Caleb, who own individual and team Finals championship trophies. All the Lewandowski children are life-long skiers, and a Lewandowski has been leading the Titans program every year since 2019.
The older brothers haven’t let them forget West has failed to win a boys championship since they left. Aiden and Caleb, who were on West’s first Finals championship team in 2021 and now attend Michigan State University, remind the Quads every chance they get. West’s boys also won Division 1 titles in 2022 and 2023.
That sibling rivalry pressure could help propel the Titans boys and girls to the top this year despite steep competition from last year’s girls champion, Central, and boys champ, Marquette.
“I know there's a lot of pressure on them to perform and to want to be better than their siblings,” acknowledged their mother, Tonya Lewandowski. “Ski racing is a mentally grinding, tough sport because you will have way more failure than success in this sport. We have been so proud of our kids.”
Father Jeremy Lewandowski knows the bar was set pretty high for the Quads by his state champion sons.
“Their whole life the Quads have felt that,” said Jeremy Lewandowski. “And Caleb never lets them forget it. Aiden just raced at fall camp again to prove to them he's still faster.”
The West boys already have their eyes set on Marquette and have locked up the Big North Conference championship with one more competition next week. The Titans haven’t lost a conference race this year, and they topped Marquette in this year’s Regional on Monday.
The West girls are trailing Central as they head into next week’s Big North Conference finale at Crystal Mountain. The Quads and their coaches see their opponents more as friends competing together, rather than rivals.
“It's going to come down probably to the one-hundredth of the second of who is a little bit faster,” predicted West coach Libby Shutler. “We lost the last BNC race to Central girls by a half a point. It's anybody's race on Tuesday.”
Shutler heads up the girls program with the support of boys head coach Ed Johnson and assistant coaches Austin Johnson and Morgan Siemer. She looks for the Final to be just as close.
“On any given day you never know,” Shutler said. “The cool thing about the state championship meet and what has been since I raced in the '80s and '90s is it truly brings the best ski racers in the state of Michigan together to perform, and they're all really good. There's a group of probably 10 boys, 10 girls, any of them could win the state championship.”
The Central girls edged West this week at the Regional with a combined score of 60 for the giant slalom and slalom. West finished with 61.
To get by Central in the league and Final, the West girls will battle stiff competition in Central’s Quinn Gerber, who is looking for a fourth-straight individual Finals title, and her teammates Avery Taggert and Kellen Kudary.
Summer Lewandowski is ready for the challenge, though, with her teammates Avery Plummer and Sarah Shapiro always competing for the top spots.
“Quinn (Gerber) and Avery (Taggert) are making me better because they're just amazing skiers, and I don't want to be the only one out of the four (Quads) that's not exceeding expectations,” Summer Lewandowski said. “Sarah Shapiro tore her ACL her freshman year – which was horrible – but she got back into it and it feels like we're sisters, and these times are so close with that good competition out there.”
While the West girls battle Central and the rest of the Division 1 competitors, the Lewandowski family is quick to assert Brock Lewandowski may be the difference maker in a boys title run.
He missed last season and part of this one recovering from multiple leg breaks.
“After healing he broke it again – same leg, different spot,” said Tonya Lewandowski. “He missed all of the sophomore year. So we have been so insanely proud of Brock this year. It is ‘The year of Brock.’”
Dane, Cam and Brock Lewandowski all credit the efforts of their captain Grady Ellis for keeping the Titans’ focused on opportunities ahead. Ellis finished fifth in the giant slalom and seventh in the slalom at the Regional.
And Cam Lewandowski also agreed Brock’s return has been a difference-maker.
“It’s pretty crazy this year seeing him as good as he is right now,” he said. “It shocked me, actually, the first few races, up there – sometimes you never know what's going to happen. I feel like I would definitely be scared to come back and do it all.”
Brock Lewandowski admitted it wasn’t easy to get back on the hill after the second injury. But he’s also quick to point out he’s more than ready to compete for championships.
“It wasn't great watching from the hill, watching from the sideline, and it was definitely a little scary the start of our season thinking of what happened in the past years with two breaks,” he admitted. “But after I got over that, it's been really fine. I haven't even really thought about it at all.”
Brock Lewandowski is ready to quiet his older brothers a little bit, as is Dane Lewandowski, who took fifth in last year’s Final in both slalom and giant slalom. He believes the team title is well within the Titans’ grasp. Individual titles are also in sight as the Lewandowskis will still have a senior year left next winter.
“We have a little more depth, I would say, than last year and we're working pretty well together,” said Dane Lewandowski, who pointed out his older brothers first started skiing with the older brothers of Central’s three-time champion Gerber. “We know what Marquette can do, and that's definitely our competition for states. We’ve just got to ski to our ability and nothing better, nothing worse.”
Both Lewandowski parents are engineers, and not ski racers. They were introduced to skiing while attending Michigan Tech. Mom was a swimmer and Dad was a baseball and lacrosse guy.
“The joke is people ask, ‘Were you and Jeremy really good ski racers?’ and we're like, ‘No, we grew up downstate and we were just lucky,’” Tonya said. “Jeremy's a much better skier than I am, but it was just one of those situations when our kids were young, where it would hit about 5:30 at night and we had six young kids and we'd go, ‘What are we going to do now ’til bedtime?’”
The answer became clear. It led to their children learning to ski at Hickory Hills, a Traverse City-owned ski hill.
“Jeremy pulled out the Home Depot lights and we set up the little plastic picnic tables in the yard and made jumps and luges for these kids on plastic skis,” Tonya recalled. “They just loved it. And then our friends introduced us to Hickory Hills, and it changed our life. It totally changed our life.”
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) The Lewandowski quadruplets – Summer, Cam, Dane and Brock – race this season. (Middle) The Lewandowski family poses for a photo with the quadruplets as infants, and then later during a day on the hill. (Below) The Lewandowski quads stand for a photo with friends from Traverse City Central during Monday’s Regional. (Regional photos courtesy of the Traverse City Record-Eagle. Family and other ski photos courtesy of the Lewandowski family and Traverse City West ski programs.)