Division 8 Football Final: Elite 11
November 25, 2011
DETROIT – All Mendon, all the time.
That was the story of Friday morning’s Division 8 Football Final at Ford Field. It’s also the best way to describe the Hornets’ season, which ended with a 33-0 win over Fowler to claim their 11th MHSAA football championship.
After entering the postseason tied for the top spot in The Associated Press’ Division 8 state poll, Mendon took down four other ranked teams on the way to the title – including the No. 9 Eagles, who were making their first Finals appearance since 1998.
The 11 MHSAA titles is tied for third-most with East Grand Rapids, and just two off Farmington Hills Harrison’s record 13. Friday marked Mendon’s first Finals appearance – and championship – since 2007.
“At the beginning of the season, you know you want to be a state champion. But you can’t think like that because you’ve got to take one game at a time. Then you finally get here and you’re in awe,” Mendon senior linebacker Cody Bingaman said. “You don’t know how to react. And then the coaches calm you down and get your nerves settled down, and you just go and play like it’s another game.
“We just looked at it like another game we had to win.”
Mendon junior Tyler Harris opened the scoring with an 84-yard punt return touchdown – second-longest in MHSAA Finals history – just 2:44 into the game.
The game was closer than its 21-0 score seemed to indicate during the first half, but Mendon held Fowler to just 62 yards of offense over the final two quarters.
Harris ran for 92 yards and two more touchdowns, and senior Tanner Cook had 95 and a touchdown on the ground. Senior quarterback Chance Nightingale also ran for a score. Junior linebacker Rodney Arnott and Cody Bingaman each had 12 tackles.
“Someone outside asked me to rank this team with all the teams we’ve had, and I certainly can’t do that. But I can rank the schedule,” said Mendon coach John Schwartz, who has led the Hornets through 23 seasons. “Battling through that 14-game schedule that we had, against some of the teams we played … spread teams, we played teams that like to pound it. This is a well-seasoned football team. They have seen everything, and it showed.”
The Eagles (11-3) were making their first Finals appearance since 1998 and in just their second season under coach Craig Koenigsknecht – who played on Fowler’s 1993 team that won the first of the school’s four MHSAA championships. Fowler is 20-4 over the last two years, and took a number of next steps this fall after entering the playoffs 9-0 in 2010 and then losing in the Pre-District round.
“I’m not saying that these guys were just satisfied by being here. (But) they’ve got to understand the caliber of teams that get to this point, and what we have to do to get ourselves to play that standard of football when it gets this late in the season,” Koenigsknecht said. “Bottom line, if we want to do good things next season, we have to work that much harder in the offseason so we can be quicker off the ball, stay on blocks a little bit better, hit the hole a little bit harder and tackle a little bit better.”
Junior linebacker Tyler Koenigsknecht led the Eagles with 11 tackles.
Forest Park Meets Expectations, Adds to Tradition with 5th Championship
By
John Vrancic
Special for MHSAA.com
December 5, 2024
MARQUETTE — They came. They saw. They conquered.
The Crystal Falls Forest Park Trojans did what they set out to do this season, earning their first MHSAA Finals title in seven years in a 42-20 triumph over the Morrice Orioles in the Nov. 30 8-player Division 2 championship game at Northern Michigan University’s Superior Dome.
Forest Park sits fourth all-time with 15 championship game appearances over the 50 years of MHSAA Football Playoffs. This was the program’s first championship since winning Division 2 in 2017 and came after six straight seasons of reaching the postseason but losing during the first or second round.
“My brother (Kevin) and I been talking about this since we were little,” Trojans sophomore quarterback Vic Guiliani said. “When (Morrice) got within 35-20, we just had to keep our foot on the pedal. They responded very well, but we kept our composure.
“It’s crazy motivation. Every year you lose a lot of good seniors, but we still have the heart. We want to get back here.”
The victory enabled the Trojans to finish 12-1. Their only loss took place in a regular-season finale Oct. 25 when they dropped a 45-34 decision to Powers North Central.
That defeat cost Forest Park the Great Lakes Eight Conference West championship. But the Trojans stormed back to avenge it with a 34-12 win over the Jets two weeks later to clinch a Regional title.
“There were a lot of little things,” sophomore running back Dax Huuki recalled of the first North Central matchup. “That was our worst game of the season, but that was probably the best thing that happened to us. That was a nice little reality check, but we weren’t going to put up with it. Everyone on the team really wanted this. That’s what got us here. Our seniors told us what we needed to do and ‘we’re not going to take a play off.’ They held us accountable.”
Forest Park’s successes in the championship game against Morrice were consistent with what the Trojans did well all season. Huuki ran 19 times for 136 yards and two touchdowns, finishing this fall with 162 carries, 1,560 yards and 22 scores on the ground. The team’s 291 rushing yards total for the game pushed the Trojans to 4,004 for the season – but Giuliani also completed all four of his passes for 60 yards, giving him 968 for the season and pushing the team total to an importantly complementary 1,049. Seniors Grayson Sundell (918 yards/18 TDs rushing) and Nick Stephens (11 TDs) were among other top runners for the Trojans.
Seven players started on both sides of the ball, and holding Morrice to just 194 yards of total offense fell in line with the team’s average of 201 average yards allowed entering the game.
After giving up 45 points to North Central in Week 9, the Trojans gave up a combined 56 over four playoff games.
“We definitely felt the sting of losing in our last regular-season game,” Forest Park coach Brian Fabbri said. “Five turnovers and 10 penalties didn’t help.
“It feels great to be state champions. I know how it feels to walk off the field on the other side. I experienced that twice. It’s not a good feeling.”
Fabbri became the fourth coach in Forest Park history to win one of the program’s five overall championships. He also played on a pair of Trojans teams that finished Finals runners-up in 2004 and 2005.
He’ll graduate seven of the 23 players on the postseason roster, including also two-way starters Matthew Showers, Brody Starr, Nate Bradish and Kevin Giuliani. The 6-foot-5, 270-pound Giuliani had made the all-state second team as a junior and will continue as an offensive lineman at Michigan Tech.
“Expectations were very high,” Fabbri said. “Our senior leadership was amazing. They kept us in the game.”
John Vrancic has covered high school sports in the Upper Peninsula since joining the Escanaba Daily Press staff in 1985. He is known most prominently across the peninsula for his extensive coverage of cross country and track & field that frequently appears in newspapers from the Wisconsin border to Lake Huron. He received the James Trethewey Award for Distinguished Service in 2015 from the Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association.
PHOTOS Forest Park’s Nik Stephens (22) gets to the pylon for one of his three touchdowns Nov. 23 at Northern Michigan University. (Middle) The Trojans’ seniors take a photo with the program’s fifth championship trophy. (Photos by Cara Kamps.)