Boyne Mountain Invitational Welcomes 29 Teams, Multiple 2025 Finals Champions
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
August 28, 2026
Boyne Mountain has provided memorable championship experiences over several years as a regular host of the MHSAA’s Girls & Boys Ski Finals.
Now it’s become the field of dreams for boys soccer as well.
Since 2023, some of the state’s top soccer programs have started the season at Boyne, participating in the Boyne Mountain Invitational. This year’s event featured 29 teams, including two 2025 Finals champions.
“It's a massive state – from Marquette to Monroe, Leland to Hartford – we spanned all of it, and undoubtedly we had a 2026 state champion in attendance … or four,” said Jeff Suffolk, tournament director and boys soccer coach of Harbor Springs, the official tournament host. “I have this innate desire as a coach to teach kids how to believe in themselves. A lot of these kids that live this far north never get to see those teams that they may see in the Finals in November.”
Boyne first hosted soccer in 2022 as preseason scrimmages. Twenty-two teams competed last August, including Leland and Warren De La Salle Collegiate, the eventual champions of Divisions 4 and 2, respectively.
“I think we had 12 teams up there for it,” Suffolk recalled of the first soccer played at the Boyne Mountain Sports Complex. “It's a really nice venue to host everybody, and the legend of the of the kids' experience kept growing and parents wanted to be a part of it. So that was kind of how we got to where we're at now.”
Leland is one of the many programs benefiting from the tournament’s popularity. The Comets, also Division 4 champions in 2018, have been a part of it the past two years.
“We actively go off and always try to find the best teams to play,” Leland coach Rob Sirrine said. “I think it's just a fun event, and the teams keep coming back. Special thanks to Jeff Suffolk, because it takes a tremendous effort to pull this off.”
This year Leland sandwiched a 2-0 loss to Detroit Country Day, last year’s Division 3 champ, between ties with Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood and Plymouth Christian Academy.
“You have to score goals to win, and I think we learned we don’t have to get the perfect shot to score,” Sirrine said of the Comets’ games at Boyne. “And I do think defensively we’re solid.”
Leland will now move on to the Elk Rapids Cherry-Kee tournament this weekend playing Muskegon Western Michigan Christian. Elk Rapids also will play WMC along with Williamston.
The Elks, who fell 3-2 to Pontiac Notre Dame Prep in the 2024 Division 3 Final and ended last season in the Regionals, played Grand Rapids South Christian, Eaton Rapids, and Country Day at Boyne this time. They tied Country Day and won their other two matches.
Host Harbor Springs, having capped last season with a 4-1 Regional loss, got off to a rough start at the tournament – but it didn’t discourage Suffolk.
The Rams tied 2001 Division 3 champ Ludington, 0-0, dropped a 3-0 decision to Country Day and fell 4-0 to Cranbrook.
Harbor was playing without senior all-stater Henry Juneau, who broke his shoulder during preseason football while planning to dual-sport this fall. Also, standout sophomore center back and captain Alex Marquardt left the Rams’ first game early with a broken nose after being accidentally kicked in the face. Marquardt and Juneau are expected to miss a good portion of the fall season.
Juneau scored 48 goals last year for the Rams and added 16 assists. With 141 career goals, he ranks among the MHSAA’s all-time leading scorers.
“The boys learned how to play low block, and they did it really, really well,” Suffolk said of the Rams’ adjusting to the losses of Marquardt and Juneau. “By the end of the weekend, they were phenomenal at it, and they held Notre Dame to zero, and we even actually had chances to beat Notre Dame. I thought Notre Dame was one of the better teams there, … They beat Country Day. They beat De La Salle. They beat Marquette.”
Suffolk, who quickly added Romeo or Birmingham Seaholm also were among the best in the tournament, if not the best, received considerable positive feedback on Northern Michigan also offering tremendous team-building activities for teams with its rivers, lakes and campgrounds.
Those extra activities will be available next year, even if the tournament ends up being played right in Harbor Springs, home of Ottawa Stadium.
“This is six years of the making, and we look forward to next year,” Suffolk said. “I kind of want to move into Harbor Springs because I think the experience would be cooler … having the town right there would be great for the parents and Ottawa Stadium is such a cool venue. A lot of people have never seen that place before. I'd like to expose them to that as well. too.”
More credit, too, goes to the school district’s administration, especially athletic director Chris Gallagher.
“I give the administration a lot of credit for being brave and trusting me to produce something like this,” Suffolk said. “There has been tons of support from the administration.”
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) Clockwise from top left: Harbor Springs keeper Turner Schultz dives to his right to stop a shot. Monroe players enjoy some time by the fire. Marshall players and their coach huddle during a break in their tournament schedule. Pontiac Notre Dame Prep supporters tailgate. (Middle) Visiting players take advantage of a chance to go canoeing. (Below) Harbor Springs coach Jeff Suffolk talks things over with his team. (Harbor Springs photos by Drew Kochanny/Petoskey News-Review. All other photos courtesy of Jeff Suffolk.)
Gladwin Soars to 55 Straight League Wins
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
August 28, 2019
Erik Seebeck was a manager for the Gladwin boys soccer team in 2015 when it advanced to the MHSAA Division 3 Semifinals.
That team and its postseason run made quite an impression on the then-eighth grader.
“It was a good experience. I really enjoyed it,” said Seebeck, now a senior sweeper and captain for the Flying Gs. “I learned a lot from being around them and watching how they all responded even when they were down – just never giving up and always giving their all.”
That 2015 team gave Seebeck – and the Gladwin soccer program – something else: the start of what is now a 55-match conference win streak. Gladwin has not lost a Northern Michigan Soccer League game since the conference tournament in 2014.
“We like to set goals at the beginning of the season, and we like to talk about where we want to reach,” Seebeck said. “We want to keep this streak going. We have lots of talent this year, and we’re not having a drop off. We’ve had guys step up and fill the seniors’ positions. We talked over our goals, and we kind of wanted to keep that continuing, to see how far we could make it on that streak.”
Gladwin, a member of the Jack Pine Conference in its other sports, competes in the South division of the NMSL. The league includes schools as far north as Cheboygan and as far west as Big Rapids Crossroads.
Gladwin’s streak includes four straight victories in the league’s conference tournament, which consists of the top two teams from each division at the end of the season.
“We try not to dwell on it too much, but it’s kind of a fun thing for some of the kids,” Gladwin coach Jerome Smalley said. “The graduating class of last year, we had players that played on varsity all four years, and they never lost in the conference. There are some good teams in our conference, and some teams that would really like to end this. But we try not to dwell on it too much.”
This season, Gladwin is off to a 7-0-1 start, which has included 7-0 and 8-0 conference wins against Clare and Big Rapids Crossroads, respectively.
Jonathan Grijalva, a senior forward and captain who is in his third year on the Gladwin varsity team, admitted there’s some pressure that comes along with the streak, but added that it doesn’t define the team.
“Obviously we’d like to keep that going, and there is pride there,” Grijalva said. “But if it ended, I don’t think we’d be horribly upset, because we’re a successful team. And even if we didn’t keep that record going, we just like to have fun, too.”
This year’s team has built another streak all its own, not having allowed a goal through its first eight matches. While the Flying Gs are having no problem putting the ball in the net, having scored 37 goals, Smalley said the strength of the team is its defense and the collective effort the entire team puts into keeping the ball out of the net.
“Our entire team is playing defense,” Seebeck said. “Everybody is getting back, and everybody is helping out on defense. Our four guys in the back (Seebeck, Wilson Bragg, Cal Woodbury and Kurt Landenberger), we’re all communicating great and letting each other know what we have to do. Our midfield is coming back and covering those give and gos. That helps tremendously when all of your team comes back to help on defense.”
The hope now for Gladwin is that this early success on both sides of the field can translate to success not just through the regular season, but into the postseason as well. Because while the Flying Gs have not lost a conference game since 2014, they also haven’t advanced beyond the District tournament since 2015.
In 2016, Gladwin lost 1-0 in the District Semifinal against Tawas. In 2017, it lost 2-1 in the District Semifinal against NMSL North member Ogemaw Heights. And in 2018, Gladwin again lost to Ogemaw Heights, this time in a shootout in the District Final one week after the Flying Gs had claimed the conference crown with a shootout win against Ogemaw.
“The postseason hasn’t been as kind to us as the regular season,” Smalley said.
In order to try and change that, Smalley said he has attempted to beef up the nonconference schedule throughout the years. This past weekend, Gladwin won the Alma Tournament, defeating the hosts, as well as Birch Run, while playing to a scoreless draw against Big Rapids.
“Close games definitely put things into perspective for everybody,” Seebeck said. “We were in the Alma Tournament, and we played Big Rapids and played them to a 0-0 tie, and they had some good players and good passing that kind of opened up to some of our guys what very skilled teams are going to look like when we go into the postseason. It definitely shows you what your limits are.”
There’s a belief among the players that this year’s team can end the recent postseason woes and hopefully catch up to the 2015 team that set them on their current path.
“I’m hoping we can go to state,” said Landenberger, a senior stopper. “I think we can do it; we just have to work together and try our hardest. It’s not going to be easy by any stretch, but I think we can do it.”
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) Gladwin's Jonathan Grijalva (14) works to deflect the ball away from an opponent. (Middle) The Flying Gs celebrate their Alma Tournament championship this month. (Top photo by Max McDonald/Gladwin County Record. Middle courtesy of the Gladwin boys soccer program.)