Ida Builds Greatest Season 'Brick by Brick'
By
Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half
November 5, 2015
By Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half
IDA – As the greatest football season in Ida High School history rolls into the second week of the MHSAA playoffs, it could be said that winning isn’t even the best thing the Bluestreaks have done this year.
Winning certainly hasn’t been the most important thing they did this season.
With the community strongly backing the program throughout its undefeated season to date, which continues tonight in a Division 5 District Final at home against Dearborn Heights Robichaud, the team has given back – while building a collection of memories they will cherish no matter how long this history-making trip rolls on.
From hosting a fundraiser that hit much closer to home than they anticipated, to welcoming back a beloved member of the program after a health scare – and all while putting together the most successful run in school history – Ida has had a season to remember, even as it works to add more moments before the run is done.
Supporting a new teammate
The regular-season finale was designated as a fundraiser for childhood cancer awareness, and the game against rival Erie-Mason raised more than $4,000 for the St. Baldrick's Foundation, a private institution in California that gives grants to children who are battling cancer.
“I had seen something on Facebook and looked into it and decided that we needed to do something other than just get ready for football games,” Ida coach Tom Walentowski said. “We scheduled our Game 9 as a gold-out game with one of our rivals, Erie-Mason, and we raised money for childhood cancer awareness. The kids got big into that.”
Unknown at the time of the decision to raise funds for childhood cancer awareness, Chloe Arnold, a 5-year-old resident of the Ida community, was battling leukemia.
The close-knit Bluestreaks had room in their hearts to join another team. They joined Team Chloe. And in the regular-season finale, Team Chloe also was able to raise money through sales of merchandise.
One unique item was a helmet that had an Ida decal on one side and an Erie-Mason decal on the other. Players from both teams signed the helmets, which then were donated to Team Chloe for a silent auction that raised $665. A total of $2,315.42 was raised that night for Team Chloe.
“Gold is the color for cancer childhood awareness, and gold is in our school colors and it’s also in Erie-Mason’s school colors, so that’s why we decided that would be the game to do the gold-out,” Walentowski said. “We sold over 500 T-shirts. The kids were really into it.”
The greatest season
Entering the 2011 season, Ida had made the playoffs just three times and finished a regular season undefeated just once – in 1971. The Bluestreaks suddenly have made making the postseason a habit, going 6-3 before losing in the first round in 2011, just missing the postseason at 5-4 in 2012 and then returning to the playoffs each of the past three seasons. Last year, the team finished 8-3, tying the program record for victories with its most since 1991.
That is quite a turnaround for a program that had just three winning seasons from 1999-2010. The reversal of fortunes has been impressive. Prior to 2013, Ida had never scored more than 259 points in a season. The Bluestreaks scored 346 in 2013 and 349 in 2014, and they already have scored 428 this year.
This isn’t just an offensive juggernaut, either. Ida has allowed only 87 points through 10 games.
When asked what has made the difference, Walentowski opened the door to the weight room, where the players were busy doing their lifting on a Monday afternoon, and simply said, “These guys.”
Ida steamrolled its first seven opponents by a combined score of 310-40. Then, in the eighth week, Ida was tested. The Bluestreaks trailed Hillsdale 7-0 at halftime and pulled out a 20-17 victory in double overtime.
“I think when you come out at halftime and you’re down 7-0 and you win the game, obviously that helps your confidence,” Walentowski said. “They never got rattled, they just went about their game.
“When you do that, it just reaffirms to them that you just keep playing your game and things will be fine.”
Ida completed the perfect regular season with a 63-7 victory over Erie-Mason and then won its first playoff game 35-23 over Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard. It was just the second home playoff game in school history, and tonight’s game will be the third.
“I love hearing all of our fans roar when we get a first down or a touchdown,” senior quarterback David Kolakowski said.
Needless to say, the Ida community has gotten behind the winning football team in a big way.
“We hear from a lot of coaches from other teams that they have never known a football team that had such a good community like we do,” senior guard/linebacker Mike Zlonkovicz said. “We drove into town on playoff day, and there was the score from every game on the light posts.
“It was really touching to see that. We’re not only representing the entire school but the entire town.”
The Bluestreaks run an odd-front defense and an offense that so heavily relies on the running game that Walentowski said the old saying of “three yards and a cloud of dust” offense applies to this team in phrase only.
“We don’t like three yards, though,” he said. “We prefer to average eight or nine.”
Ida boasts a pair of 1,000-yard running backs in Eric Bugg and Nick Levicki. Bugg broke the single-season rushing record and also has scored the most touchdowns in school history. Levicki is second on the all-time touchdown list.
“Eric is, I guess for lack of a better term, he’s the poster boy of this team,” Walentowski said. “He is really a good young man. He’s a 3.5 student, he’s solid in the classroom, he’s a great citizen, he’s humble, he just works hard. He doesn’t particularly care for all the fanfare.”
Bugg said the pressure from last season’s success weighed on his mind this season.
“I didn’t know how to live up to it since we did so well last year,” he said. “We’re just trying to beat how we progressed last year, and so far we have.
“We have to get past districts and keep doing what we’re doing.”
Brick by brick
Defensive line coach Gary Deland delivers a motivating speech prior to every game. His topic this week was “brick by brick.” The players listen to him, and that message had extra importance because Deland is experiencing it in his personal life.
Midway through the season, Deland had to undergo emergency triple-bypass heart surgery, but he is back on the sidelines coaching the team and progressively getting better from week to week. In his words, he is improving brick by brick.
“He didn’t know it at the time, but in the first half of our first game against Jefferson, he was having a heart attack,” Walentowski said of Deland. “He got through the game and said his chest was bothering him, but he thought it was indigestion.
“A couple of weeks later it was still kind of bothering him on and off, and he said he should get it checked. We were getting ready to play Blissfield, which was Game 4, and he went to the hospital on Wednesday morning, and they said you’re not leaving, you are having open-heart surgery Thursday morning.”
A week after triple-bypass heart surgery, Deland was back, giving a motivational speech to the players.
“It was a great talk,” Walentowski said. “He has quite a personality, and the kids love him. For us, it was like we hadn’t better screw anything up before Coach D gets back here. I think we all had that attitude.
“The following week, he was back on the sidelines.”
It seemed like nothing was going to keep Deland from returning to his boys.
“It was a blur,” Deland said. “I was less than a few weeks out of surgery, and I was back on the sidelines. My doctor did not approve, but he knew I was going to be on the sidelines and he wasn’t going to be able to stop me.
“I was there; I was with my team. These are a great group of kids. They work hard, and they deserve everything the coaching staff can give them, and that’s why I wanted to be there for them. They have been there for this school and this community all year long.”
Although Deland said he blocks out thinking about his health on the sidelines, the players remain very aware of it.
“The kids have gone out of their way to protect me on the sidelines,” he said. “When a play is coming out of bounds, I have to get out of the way. I cannot get run over. So they do protect me on the sidelines so I don’t get run over by any play out of bounds.
“The doctor doesn’t want me to get too excited, and I try not to. Each week I can feel the momentum of my strength coming back, and I get a little more vocal and a little more animated on the sidelines.
“I have a passion for football, and the kids know it. They know I can blow up at any time, or I can be the grandfather for them.”
And, every week, he is the motivator with his speeches.
“From that very first practice in the summer to the last game as a senior, everything is built brick by brick,” Deland said. “I can draw a correlation between that and my recovery, what I’ve gone through. It’s the same thing. It’s brick by brick.
“You might take two steps forward, and you think you’re getting on to where you want to be as a team, and I might be getting on to how I want to feel, and the next thing you take that giant step backwards. You don’t feel so great, or all of a sudden you were praised by the coach the day before and now you’re screwing up every which way.
“But you’re still going forward, and that is how I paint my recovery, brick by brick, the same as this team. They will progress in the season and the playoffs brick by brick.”
Nobody knows how the season will end, but it already is the greatest football season in school history. The Bluestreaks are giving back to the community with their work for childhood cancer awareness, and they are banding together to win football games.
It is the time of their young lives.
“Being a quarterback was not always my intention,” Kolakowski said. “I was a wide receiver, but in my JV season I had to play quarterback. Then, in the playoff game, I was like, ‘It would be so sweet to be able to run this offense,’ and now I’m getting to live out my dream, which is awesome.”
It is a season that has been building, excuse the expression, brick by brick.
“I think these guys have had a lot of goals,” Walentowski said. “Six of the seniors were with us as sophomores, and there were two freshmen who were with us back then, so those eight kids, they’re still here, and they’ve been building every year.
“They expected to work hard and do well, and that’s what they’re doing. They don’t just like to play football, they like to play football together. There’s a big difference.”
Chip Mundy served as sports editor at the Brooklyn Exponent and Albion Recorder from 1980-86, and then as a reporter and later copy editor at the Jackson Citizen-Patriot from 1986-2011. He also co-authored Michigan Sports Trivia. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Ida running back Nick Levicki attempts to run through tacklers during his team's win over Ann Arbor Gabriel Richard last week. (Middle) Head coach Tom Walentowski, far left, and assistant Gary Deland talk things over with the team looking on. (Below) Fans hung a sign supporting Deland upon his return. (Top and middle photos by Ray Leighton. Bottom photo by Kim Farver.)
Glen Lake Blazes Trail Back to Finals
November 23, 2016
By Dennis Chase
Special for Second Half
TRAVERSE CITY – Congratulatory messages streamed in Saturday after Maple City Glen Lake defeated Leroy Pine River 34-20 in a Division 6 football Semifinal at snow-covered Thirlby Field – a win that secured the Lakers’ first MHSAA Finals appearance in 20 years.
Head coach Jerry Angers’ phone was particularly active. Among those calling or texting: Former Traverse City West coach Matt Prisk, who Angers previously worked under as a defensive coordinator; retiring St. Ignace coach Marty Spencer, whose Saints fell to defending Division 8 champion Muskegon Catholic earlier in the day; and Eric Gordon, the former Michigan State linebacker, who played for Prisk and Angers at West.
Angers, who was still fielding calls and texts late into the night Saturday, was “touched” by the show of support for his Glen Lake program.
Most of all, he was proud of his players, who kept improving every week to make this moment possible.
“They have worked hard for this opportunity,” he said. “I told them (after Saturday’s game), ‘You’re going to Ford Field. You’re one of 16 teams still playing. A lot of people will be watching, but I want you to enjoy it.’
“It’s like the Alan Jackson song ‘Remember When.’ I said in 20 years when you come back to see me I want you to say, ‘Remember when.’”
Glen Lake, which faces Jackson Lumen Christi for the title Friday, won the Class DD championship in 1994 under coach Bill Hollenbeck. The Lakers lost in the Class DD Final in 1996. Now, 20 years later, Glen Lake’s back.
“It’s an incredible feeling,” all-state linebacker Duke Angers, the coach’s son, said a few hours after the game. “It seems surreal right now. Growing up as a kid, you dream about playing at Ford Field. Now we get that opportunity. We’ll enjoy this for 24 hours and then get to work for Jackson Lumen Christi.”
Junior quarterback Cade Peterson, who rushed for 179 yards and three touchdowns in the win over Pine River, is also a coach’s son. His father, Tim, was head coach at Lake City for 15 seasons. The family moved into the Glen Lake school system this year. Tim is the quarterbacks coach for the Lakers.
“I’ve been going down to the state finals since I was 12,” Cade said. “And I would always think, ‘I want to play in this (state finals).’ Now it’s happening. You can ask any team in the state, and their ultimate goal would be to go to Ford Field and play for a state title. Only a few teams can say they accomplished that – and we did. As soon as that moment set in (Saturday), it was ‘Hey, we achieved our goal. Now let’s go win a state championship.’”
For Tim Peterson, who led Lake City to nine playoff berths, including Regional appearances in 2012 and 2013, it was a moment to savor.
“You work your whole life as a coach to try to get to the apex – and this is it,” he said. “We’re there. I couldn’t be happier for the kids, the program and the community.”
Now the task for the 11-2 Lakers is to a win a 12th game. Glen Lake will be taking on a program steeped in tradition. This will be Lumen Christi’s eighth MHSAA Finals appearance since 2000. The Titans have won five crowns during that span under coach Herb Brogan.
“Our kids have been facing challenges all year, and people keep underestimating them,” Tim Peterson said. “They just keep doing what they do – and they do it very well.”
Glen Lake’s losses were to Traverse City St. Francis (21-13) and Frankfort (26-21), teams that finished 11-1. The Lakers came in second to Frankfort in the Northern Michigan Football League’s Leaders division. Jerry Angers, now in his eighth season at the helm, said his team learned valuable lessons from those defeats.
“Sometimes losses are good for you,” he said. “We, as coaches and fans, never want to believe that, but in our two losses we had 15 or so penalties in one and five turnovers in the other. So you go back and you work on it. You try to reduce the penalties, reduce the turnovers. That became a great focus for our kids. I think we’ve had eight penalties in four playoff games – total. And we’ve kept our turnovers to a minimum. If you focus on the task at hand, and what’s in front of you, those things are going to be eliminated.”
Cade Peterson said the setbacks brought the team closer together, too.
“People can start pointing fingers (in defeat),” he said. “That didn’t go on here. Everybody picked each other up and kept fighting, kept going.”
The 16 seniors on the team led the way.
“They set the tone,” Tim Peterson said. “The senior leadership has been phenomenal in keeping the focus.”
Glen Lake had to go on the road at Roscommon and Calumet to win two of its four playoff games. On Saturday, the Lakers, who were averaging 160 yards passing and 215 yards rushing per contest out of their spread offense, stuck to the ground to beat Pine River in blustery conditions that forced officials to clear snow off the artificial turf before and during the game.
Glen Lake rushed for 309 yards. In addition to Peterson’s 179 yards, Duke Angers picked up 59 and Nick Apsey 54. Apsey also hauled in two catches for 34 yards. The Laker backs – running behind a line that features tackles Jake Palmer and Brandon Tremble, guards Ryan Nadlicki and Zack Gushurst and center Tommy Kendall – averaged nearly five yards a carry. Nadlicki’s uncle, Mike, was a star on Traverse City’s state championship team in 1988.
“The weather forced us to be very one-dimensional (Saturday), but we’re real pleased with our ability to run the football as well as throw it,” Tim Peterson said. “That’s a good combination to have when you go deep into the playoffs because you never know what the weather will be.”
For the season, Cade Peterson’s completed 106 of 207 passes for 1,953 yards and 20 touchdowns. Jared Jackson, last year’s starting quarterback, has caught 30 passes, Apsey 23.
The 6-foot-4, 190-pound Peterson leads the team in rushing with 843 yards. Apsey, also a junior, has added 791 yards.
Defensively, Duke Angers, a four-year starter, is averaging 10 stops a game and Tony Duperon seven. Glen Lake is surrendering less than 200 yards in offense per game. Angers was the Traverse City Record-Eagle’s Defensive Player of the Year a year ago.
“As a football coach, he’s one of the best leaders and overall players that I’ve ever been associated with,” Jerry Angers said.
Jerry Angers led Glen Lake to back-to-back 9-2 seasons in 2012-13. The Lakers reached the District Finals those years.
Glen Lake qualified for the playoffs a year ago, finishing 5-5. This season, with a number of experienced players returning, coupled with the addition of Cade and Drew Peterson, the team has flourished. Drew is a sophomore defensive end and receiver. He had an interception Saturday.
Cade Peterson was a two-year starter at Lake City, throwing for 1,753 yards and 19 touchdowns as a sophomore.
“I feel a big part of why I’ve been successful (at Glen Lake) is because of how welcoming everybody was – not only the team and coaches, but the school and community,” he said.
“When those two (Peterson) boys walked in, our kids just grabbed them and said, ‘Hey, let’s go. You’re part of us now,’” Jerry Angers added.
Tim Peterson retired as a principal in June of 2015. He coached the Trojans that fall, but after the school year the family decided to make a move. Peterson was familiar with the Glen Lake area, since he worked camps with Hollenbeck. He was also good friends with Angers.
“It was time for a change,” Peterson explained. “We came up and looked at the academic piece of it, which is most important to us, and we said this is where we want to go.
“We’ve always said, at some point, we’d like to get here. This community is so supportive of their kids and of their school and that’s what you look for as a parent.”
Now the Lakers are one win away from a second MHSAA title. Regardless of what happens, though, Duke Angers said he believes his senior class has made an impact.
“We raised the bar a little,” he said. “We wanted to leave a trail to follow – and I think we have.”
Dennis Chase worked 32 years as a sportswriter at the Traverse City Record-Eagle, including as sports editor from 2000-14. 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) Maple City Glen Lake’s Nick Apsey (5) follows his blockers on the way to the end zone during Saturday’s Semifinal win over Leroy Pine River. (Middle) Wes Peplinski (68) drops the Pine River quarterback in the 34-20 victory. (Photos by Kim Jackson.)