Coach Comes Home to Lead Central's Rise
By
Tom Markowski
Special for Second Half
September 27, 2017
DETROIT – Thirty-three years ago, Lynn Sanders graduated from Detroit Central. And before he left, he made a promise.
Last year, Sanders showed he is a man of his word.
Sanders, 51, is in his second season as the head football coach at Central. Once a proud program under legendary coach Woody Thomas (who died in 2002), the program had wavered a bit. Coaches like Michael Thornhill, who took over for Thomas in 2002, Eric Smith, Robert Hunt and others have had some success. But stability within the program, especially in recent years, had been missing.
Many of the high school-age students in the neighborhood were attending schools elsewhere in the city. Now-closed Detroit Allen Academy, a charter school near Central, was one alternative. Open enrollment throughout the school district also allowed students to attend any school in Detroit, and many were taking advantage of the opportunity.
Since Sanders’ arrival, and because of his standing in the community, many of those in the neighborhood have decided to remain. Sanders and his staff have been able to make the Trailblazers relevant again, and there’s a renewed respect for the program. Central is 4-1 and 2-1 in the Detroit Public School League Black division and faces Detroit Pershing (1-4, 0-3) this week before taking on Detroit Martin Luther King (4-1, 3-0), one of the state’s elite programs, on Oct. 6.
“When I was 18, I told Coach Thomas I would replace him,” Sanders said. “It took a while.”
The rewards have come quickly.
Last fall in Sanders’ debut, and for the second time in school history, the Trailblazers won two playoff games in a season and finished 7-5. And they led Millington 20-0 in a Division 6 Regional Final before falling 22-20.
There had been success in the recent past. Central tied a school record for victories in a season with a 9-3 finish in 2010. In 2012, the Trailblazers began a run of making the playoffs in three of the next five years, each time finishing 6-4 – although the playoff appearances in 2014 and 2015 ended quickly as Central lost first-round games by a combined score of 107-14.
The Trailblazers took a sizable next step led by someone taking his first at the high school level. Sanders had never been a head coach, but he brought a long list of credentials while working with youth football. A 27-year veteran with the Michigan State Police, Sanders spent 10 years as the president of the Southfield Ravens, a Pop Warner program for players aged 8-11. He spent three years as a league commissioner within Pop Warner in southeastern Michigan. For two years he was a regional commissioner for American Youth Football (AYF).
Before getting the Central job, Sanders worked under coach Keith Stephens at Oak Park and then with Stephens at Southfield-Lathrup as his offensive coordinator.
Then there was a knock on the door of opportunity.
“I got a call from David Oclander, who was the (Central) principal then,” Sanders said. “We met and he told me what he was looking for. He knew of me, knew I was a Central grad, and he told me he wanted to turn things around.
“When I got here the team GPA was 1.9. The first day I called a meeting. I had all of the guys who wanted to play be there. When I gave that speech, I could tell they weren’t really happy. I was their third coach in three years, and I think they felt betrayed. They weren’t really interested. A number of them were looking at their phones, not paying attention. I told them here are my rules, my expectations and if you don’t like it you can leave. About half of them did. Fifteen stayed.”
It didn’t take long for Sanders to build upon those numbers. His association with Pop Warner and coaches in the area helped spread the word that expectations would rise.
In the meantime, Allen Academy closed following the 2015-16 school year and many of those students went to Central – including some athletes who had played on a Wildcats team that finished 5-4 in 2015.
Central didn’t have a freshmen or junior varsity team, but Sanders was able to gather 36 for the varsity. He has 32 this season.
“When I took the job I got phone calls from all over the place,” he said. “Coaches, former players, they all wanted to help. They’d do anything for me. I was well-respected, and the kids started to come. Instead of taking buses out of the neighborhood and going elsewhere, they stayed home. And they were good kids. I set some high expectations. Those that didn’t want to follow got shipped out.”
Sanders and Oclander saw eye-to-eye on many issues. The main objective was to instill discipline, and both came from a background where discipline was paramount: Sanders with the state police, Oclander as a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army.
Sanders looked to improve the quality of coaching his players were to receive in two ways. The first came during the offseason. He knew his players didn’t have the finances to go to camps, even if they were close by at places like Wayne State University. Instead, Sanders brought the college coaches to Central. Staffs from Northwood University, Eastern Michigan and Wayne State all came to Central to conduct a camp.
“That had never been done before at Central,” Sanders said.
The second was to convince coaches in the area that Central was the place to be. Eighteen said yes. Do the math: That’s more than one coach for every two players. It’s safe to say that’s a unique situation – and has led to an almost unheard of type of mentoring process.
And the players are reaping the results. Eight players from last year’s team are playing college football. Five players from this year’s team have made verbal commitments to a college or university, including El Julian Jordan. Jordan, a 6-foot-2, 220-pound quarterback who played his first two years of high school football at King, has accepted a scholarship to Western Michigan.
It was a big change for Jordan to go from a program like King, with 1,400 students, to Central where the enrollment is 370.
“It was a tough transition,” he said. “The kids in school were different. This school is so small, but I like it that way. I can focus more on my grades and such.
“I look up to (Sanders). He’s molded me into a leader. I lead by example. My first impression of Coach was a positive one, and that’s good.”
Jordan has had a fine season to this point, completing 56 of 95 attempts for 1,239 yards, 13 touchdowns and with no interceptions. He’s scored three rushing touchdowns.
“He’s a special kid,” Sanders said. “I don’t think anyone has put him in the position of being a leader before. After time, he knew he could trust me. He’s a phenomenal athlete. He’s a quiet kid until you get to know him. As we made our run in the (playoffs), the different (officiating) crews would watch him warm up. He can throw the ball 70 yards. And they couldn’t wait to see him in action.”
Other top players include a bevy of receivers including Jerodd Vines, TaQuan Snead and Brandon Cooper.
Central returned all five offensive linemen from a season ago including Jamauri’a Carter (5-10, 305). Carter, Snead and Jordan all played on the Eastside Raiders in the Police Athletic League (PAL) before high school.
Sanders’ stay at Central could be a brief one. He and wife, Kathy, who were high school sweethearts, have four children including three sons. One, Londale Sanders, is a junior linebacker at University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff. They recently returned on Sunday after watching their son play in last Saturday’s 34-27 overtime victory at Jackson State.
Another son, Lance Sanders, is one of the offensive line coaches at Central.
“I don’t know how long I’ll do it,” Lynn Sanders said. “I wanted to turn things around. I don’t know how long I’ll be here. I told my wife three years, tops, and see what happens. At least Central is back where parents, the people in the neighborhood are coming back. The kids are getting better. The test will be against King.”
Tom Markowski is a columnist and directs website coverage for the State Champs! Sports Network. He previously covered primarily high school sports for the The Detroit News from 1984-2014, focusing on the Detroit area and contributing to statewide coverage of football and basketball. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Detroit Central quarterback El Julian Jordan warms up before a game. (Middle top) Lynn Sanders, left, and offensive coordinator Kevin Rogers. (Middle below) Jordan surveys the field looking for a receiver. (Below) Sanders and wife Kathy. (Photos courtesy of Lynn Sanders and Detroit Central football.)
Inside Selection Sunday: Mapnalysis '17
October 22, 2017
By Geoff Kimmerly
Special for Second Half
We haven’t had Michigan high school football teams travel by boat to their playoff games, nor fly like the birds over places like Saginaw Bay and the northern stretch of Lake Michigan.
But phrases like “use the lake” and “follow the highway” dominated this year’s playoff mapping process, which once again saw members of the MHSAA staff and representatives of the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association draw into Districts and Regionals nearly 300 dots for our 10-division tournament that kicks off this weekend.
At the end of Saturday – around 9:48 p.m., to be nearly exact – there were 223 automatic qualifiers for the 256-team 11-player tournament, plus 32 for 8-player. By midnight, we had our entire playoff field more or less figured. Sunday at the MHSAA started before sunrise with double, triple and quadruple-checking, before a committee of 12 met to draw the tournament, go over all of each other’s work again, and then get everything ready to be presented online at MHSAA.com and broadcast across the state Sunday night on FOX Sports Detroit.
So much more than that goes into the football playoffs, of course. Athletic directors are scheduling games years in advance, and we start loading schedules into our system in late April. We monitor every game played every week by 614 Michigan varsity teams, plus this season 48 of our schools’ non-Michigan opponents located in five states and Ontario. Now we’re on to lining up everything that will come with the next five weeks of games including assigning officials, gathering potential Semifinal hosts and continuing our work with Northern Michigan University and Ford Field’s staffs to prepare for the 8 and 11-player Finals.
But we’re also the first to say that all of that is background noise to what we all look forward to most – five weeks of the best games our state has to offer again this fall.
As we’ve done the past six seasons, we’re explaining below our most difficult decisions in placing 288 playoff qualifiers in this Mapnalysis 2017 breakdown. For those familiar with our playoff selection process, or who have read this report in the past and don’t want a refresher on how we do what we do, skip the next section and go directly to the “Observations & Answers: 2017.” For the rest, what follows is an explanation of how we selected the playoff pairings during the morning hours Sunday, followed by how we made some of the toughest decisions plus a few thoughts on the breakdown of the field. Go to this page on MHSAA.com to see the pairings in full.
Ground Rules
Our past: The MHSAA 11-player playoff structure – with 256 teams in eight divisions, and six wins equaling an automatic berth (or five wins for teams playing eight or fewer games) – debuted in 1999. An 8-player tournament was added in 2011, resulting in nine champions total each season. This fall, a second division of 8-player football was introduced, and we will celebrate 10 champions for the first time.
The first playoffs were conducted in 1975 with four champions. Four more football classes were added in 1990 for a total of eight champions each fall. Through 1998, only 128 teams made the postseason, based on their playoff point averages within regions (four for each class) that were drawn before the beginning of the season. The drawing of Districts and Regionals after the end of the regular season did not begin until the most recent 11-player playoff expansion.
In early years of the current process, lines were drawn by hand. Dots representing qualifying schools were pasted on maps, one map for each division, and those maps were then covered by plastic sheets. Districts and Regionals literally were drawn with dry-erase markers.
Our present: After a late Saturday night tracking scores, we file in Sunday morning for a final round of gathering results we may still need (which can include making a few early a.m. calls to athletic directors and coaches). Re-checking and triple-checking of enrollments, what schools played in co-ops and opted to play as a higher class start a week in advance, and more numbers are crunched Sunday morning as the fields are set.
As noted above, this season there were 223 automatic qualifiers for the 11-player field by win total with the final 33 at-large qualifiers then selected, by playoff-point average, one from each class in order (A, B, C, D) until the field was filled. There were only five Class D additional qualifiers with 5-4 or 4-4 (playing eight games) records from which we could choose – so after those five we added 10 teams from Class A and nine each from Class B and Class C.
Those 256 11-player teams are then split into eight equal divisions based on enrollment, and their locations are marked on digital maps that are projected on wall-size screens and then discussed by nearly half of the MHSAA staff plus this year two representatives from the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association. Only the locations themselves are marked (by red dots) – not records, playoff point averages or names of the schools or towns. In fact, mentions of those are strictly prohibited. Records and playoff points are not part of the criteria. Matchups, rivalries, previous playoff pairings, etc. also DO NOT come into play.
The 8-player process is similar but changed this fall with the additional division. We take the top 32 teams in 8-player based on playoff point average as our field, then re-sort those 32 by enrollment – the 16 biggest make up Division 1, followed by the next 16 in Division 2. There are no automatic qualifiers by record for 8-player.
Geography rules: This long has been rule number one for drawing MHSAA brackets in any sport. Travel distance and ease DO come into play. Jumping on a major highway clearly is easier than driving across county-wide back roads, and that’s taken into consideration. Also, remember there’s only one Mackinac Bridge and hence only one way to cross between peninsulas – and boats are not considered a possible form of transportation. When opponents from both peninsulas will be in the same District, distance to the bridge is far more important than as the bird flies.
Tradition doesn’t reign: Every group of 32 dots is a new group – these 32 teams have not been placed in a bracket together before. How maps have been drawn in the past isn’t considered – it’s hard to say a division has been drawn in a certain way traditionally when this set of 32 teams is making up a division for the first time.
Observations & Answers: 2017
Let’s start with Congratulations: First to Detroit Western and St. Louis, which qualified for the MHSAA Playoffs for the first time. Then to seven more headed back for the first time in a while: Athens (first berth since 2000), Bridgeport (1999), Flat Rock (1990), Hancock (2006), Royal Oak (2006), Salem (1991) and Vermontville Maple Valley (2005). A total of 21 programs added to totals of more than 25 playoff berths, led by Beal City now with 35, Crystal Falls Forest Park and Farmington Hills Harrison with 33, Mendon with 32, Traverse City St. Francis with 31 and Frankfort with 30. Rockford earned its 23rd straight playoff berth, tying the record set by Felch North Dickinson from 1991-2013, and Menominee earned its 22nd straight to tie Traverse City St. Francis (1990-2011) for third on the list. Of our current 614 football varsities, all but 16 have made the playoffs at least once.
Break the tie: We again had to break a tie as teams that will or could meet ended up with the same playoff point averages. Ties are broken by head-to-head competition first – if the teams played each other during the regular season – followed by opponents’ winning percentage as the second criteria and then a coin flip if those two won’t do it. Cedarville will host Rudyard in an 8-player Division 1 game this week although both teams finished with the same playoff point average – Cedarville broke the tie with its 46-28 win over the Bulldogs in Week 1, which is a good thing because their opponents had matching 38-43 records this fall.
Many ways, no great way to slice it: The map in 11-player Division 2 was among our first tough challenges Sunday. Our most northern District seemed to make sense right away – keeping Traverse City West and Traverse City Central together with Midland and Midland Dow. From there, it’s not a pretty picture. We looked at three ways of splitting up the Detroit-area schools. We have five teams on the Grand Rapids/Muskegon/Kalamazoo side of the Lower Peninsula, but Lowell being eastern-most got sent to a District with three Flint-area schools. The 11-player Division 3 map provided a similar quandary – DeWitt, East Lansing and Haslett are packed nicely just north of Lansing, but an uneven seven schools on the western side of the Lower Peninsula meant DeWitt getting grouped with three closer to Grand Rapids with East Lansing and Haslett heading south to join Parma Western and Tecumseh. Bay City Central is the lone qualifier in this division from the Bay City/Saginaw/Midland area and also had to go somewhere – and in this case it made more sense to send it south along I-75 then across to Grand Rapids.
It’s a highway thing: In both Division 4 and Division 6 of 11-player, we have one Upper Peninsula school joining the rest from downstate. In Calumet’s case in Division 6, there are opponents in the northern Lower Peninsula to slot against, but Escanaba in Division 4 left us again relying on I-75. The trip from Escanaba to Flint Powers Catholic – the southernmost team in that four-team District – seems like a longer haul than sending Escanaba instead southwest to Whitehall. But a trip to Powers is estimated to be an hour shorter than from Escanaba to Whitehall, again because of the main highway.
Use the lake: At least three of our 11-player divisions – 1, 2 and 5 – have a District that rides close to the southeastern region of the Lower Peninsula up from Macomb County into Port Huron. While those thin Districts seem a little odd in shape, they make sense by normal traffic flow up from Lake St. Clair toward the Lake Huron coast. That helps explain why Port Huron Northern is with Roseville, Warren DeLaSalle and Ferndale instead of taking Lowell’s spot with Fenton, Flushing and Flint Carman-Ainsworth.
Worst map ever: At least in my seven years of being a part of the process. I’m speaking of the 11-player map in Division 8, which saw us with six Upper Peninsula schools, but then three Lower Peninsula schools grouped together just below Mackinac Bridge. One of these three had to go with another group, which is how we ended up with Frankfort joining Munising, Newberry and Gaylord St. Mary (Johannesburg-Lewiston and Hillman ended up with AuGres-Sims and Lincoln Alcona.). Then there are the pair of triangles in the southwest Lower Peninsula with Muskegon Catholic Central and Fulton-Middleton a good deal north of their District opponents, but with no other way to group those teams since the other six are all along I-94 or just south. It’s not pretty, but splitting MCC and Fulton up and sending them south was the best of the options we developed.
At the end of the day …
So here’s the fun part. We draw the maps without knowing who is where – and then we take a look at the matchups as they’re being prepared for TV and online.
It’s hard to pick out only a handful to mention at this time, but here’s one guess at a few that will create a buzz this week:
• In Division 1, Holland West Ottawa hosts Grandville after beating the Bulldogs 34-18 in Week 9 to earn an outright Ottawa-Kent Conference Red title; a Grandville win would’ve given championship shares to both and Rockford.
• Also in Division 1, Bloomfield Hills travels to West Bloomfield after beating the Lakers 28-24 in Week 2; West Bloomfield hasn’t lost again.
• In Division 3, Zeeland West and Zeeland East face off again after East downed West 28-8 on Friday to win the O-K Green championship.
• Also in Division 3, DeWitt hosts Grand Rapids Christian after rattling off eight straight wins – the Panthers’ only loss was to Christian 38-30 on opening night.
• Rivals Wyoming Kelloggsville and Godwin Heights meet in Division 4 after Kelloggsville beat Godwin by a point in Week 6 on the way to winning the O-K Silver title. Three Rivers and Vicksburg also will meet for the second straight week, this time in a Division 4 game; Vicksburg beat Three Rivers on Friday to deny the Wildcats a share of the Wolverine B Conference title. Harbor Beach claimed the Greater Thumb Conference East title by downing Ubly 26-14 in the league finale in Week 8, and they’ll meet again this week in Division 8.
• The best rivalry in 8-player last year was Powers North Central versus Crystal Falls Forest Park, and they’ll meet to start this postseason with the reigning champion Jets hitting the road looking to avenge a 66-58 loss to the Trojans in Week 2.
We know every game over the next five weeks will be memorable, at least for those on the field and the communities cheering them on. With our maps drawn, we look forward watching championship roads get blazed – and we’ll be waiting where they end at NMU and Ford Field.
The MHSAA Football Playoffs are sponsored by the Michigan National Guard.
PHOTOS: (Top) The Division 4 bracket mapped out on the Lower Peninsula shows how I-75 served as a guide for putting Escanaba in a District that includes Flint Powers Catholic.