North Central Soars, Scores 1st Football Title
November 20, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
GREENVILLE – The photos Powers North Central football players took Friday night after winning the first MHSAA championship trophy in program history were finishing touches on arguably the most impressive run yet during the short history of 8-player football in this state.
Although the 8-player format is only half a decade old, it’s fair to surmise Michigan may not see an offense as potent as North Central’s for years to come – at least until the Jets take the floor this basketball season.
Sure, North Central was held to its season low in points Friday. But given the opponent and the stage, the Jets did more than enough to impress in defeating previously-undefeated Battle Creek St. Philip only 58-33 after scoring at least 64 points in every other game this fall.
North Central (13-0) ended this season, it’s first as an 8-player program, averaging 70.4 points per game. That was only half a point less than the basketball team, featuring many of these same players, averaged in winning the Class D title in March.
“When you go into a season, you know what you have and you know what you need to work on,” said junior quarterback Jason Whitens, who also was the basketball team’s leading scorer last winter. “With the group of guys we’ve got, we all love each other, we’re close-knit just like basketball, and we love to work hard. We come out here and perform and just work hard.”
North Central finished 13-0. Before St. Philip came within 25 points, no opponent had come closer to the Jets than 48.
A few key decisions gave them the momentum for such a dominating run.
First came the decision to move to 8-player. North Central had had recent success in 11-player, making the playoffs three of the last five seasons and finishing 8-3 in 2013. But enrollment dropping to 119 students this fall justified the move.
Then came another switch. Whitens, a receiver last season, moved to quarterback to take over for his graduated cousin Rob Granquist after formerly serving as one of Granquist’s top targets.
Whitens threw for 217 yards and two touchdowns Friday, giving him 2,532 yards and 45 touchdown passes without an interception this fall. It’s a good argument, which was more incredible – the zero interceptions or that 25 percent of his 179 passes went for scores.
His development was quickened by work with cousin Granquist, but also by another sharp decision by coach Kevin Bellefeuil, who decided to keep the same offense as when the team was 11-player but drop the tackles and a slot receiver.
Still, St. Philip nearly wrote its own storybook ending as it sought its first football title since 1985.
The Tigers scored first – the first time North Central had trailed this season – and led by as many as nine points before a pair of plays changed the game’s course.
Holding a 21-20 lead with 2:15 left in the first half, St. Philip chose to go for a first down on 4th-and-1 from North Central’s 34 yard line – and was stuffed for a 3-yard loss by junior Tanner Poupore with help from a few teammates.
On the next play, Whitens dropped a 63-yard touchdown pass just over the shoulder of junior running back Bobby Kleiman, who outran a defender for the go-ahead score.
“We’ve got a couple of guys, and we can just call their number and it seems to go for us every time,” Bellefeuil said. “We set up a couple of plays, and then we waited and waited and waited. And then we hit with that big pass to Bobby down the middle and it was just what we hoped would happen.”
Less than two minutes later, junior Dawson Bilski intercepted a fourth-down St. Philip pass again in North Central territory. With 30 seconds left in the first half, Whitens led a 56-yard drive that included 28 and 34-yard passes to Kleiman and ended with Whitens scoring on a 1-yard run with a second left in the half.
“They just had a ton of weapons and speed that we couldn’t contain, and that was the ballgame,” Tigers coach Dave Downey said. “Once we get down, we’re pressing. We’re throwing the ball a lot more than what we probably should have. We like to run the ball a little bit more. When we went to the air, they defended the pass pretty well and they got to our quarterback quite a few times, and that was the difference too.”
The North Central defense did give up a season high in points, but those 33 were also a season low for the Tigers. St. Phil did end up with 380 total yards – senior running back Brayden Darr ran for 104 and two touchdowns despite plenty of North Central attention, and senior quarterback Brendan Gausselin threw for 172 and two scores – but St. Philip couldn’t make up for a pair of interceptions and the Jets’ 572 yards of offense.
Darr also had 13 tackles to lead the Tigers, and Bilski had a team-high 12 for North Central.
Kleiman rushed for 205 yards on only 21 carries, good for an average of nearly 10 yards per attempt. He ran for five touchdowns to go with the sixth through the air.
Bilski and Kleiman are two more of six starters on the Jets’ offense who have another season to play. After averaging 70 points a game and dominating most of all 13 wins, what could be next?
“Keep working hard and just have fun,” Whitens said. “We’re in high school, having the time of our lives right now and doing things we love. We’re ready for next year, and I’m very excited.”
The MHSAA Football Finals are sponsored by the Michigan National Guard.
PHOTOS: (Top) North Central quarterback Jason Whitens runs toward the end zone while St. Philip’s Trevor Searls (70) and Grayson Obey (16) give chase. (Middle) St. Philip quarterback Brendan Gausselin moves upfield while the Jets’ Taylor Belongia (79) and Zach Estrada (68) close in. (Below) North Central’s Bobby Kleiman hauls in a 63-yard scoring pass during the second quarter. (Photos by John Johnson.)
Rejuvenated Dryden Football Hungry for More After Undefeated Start, Signature Win
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
October 1, 2026
Santiago Perales and his Dryden football teammates aren’t patting themselves on the back for anything.
The Cardinals are 5-0 and just knocked off the Thumb’s 8-player giant, Deckerville. It’s the start of a season anyone would be celebrating, but especially a program that just restarted in 2023 after a four-year hiatus.
But looking back on how far they’ve come only makes Perales more resolute in making sure he and his senior classmates don’t lose the edge that helped them get here.
“For me, it kind of still feels the same,” Perales said. “I still feel like we’re the underdogs. The job’s not done. We have to keep working. We have to motivate the younger players to keep working hard. Everyone on the team still has more work to put in. We have to keep our heads down and keep working.”
Perales is one of six Dryden seniors who has been there since Year 1 of the return, enduring the ups and downs of a program starting from scratch.
He, Gianni Coscione, Luke Taylor, Tyler Roberts, Logan Korth and Collin Tyrkus are all in their fourth years with the program and at the heart of the unbeaten start.
“It’s pretty amazing, honestly, watching them grow from freshmen,” said Dryden coach Hunter Gall, who is also in his fourth year leading the program. “They weren’t that confident in that first year, and even the second year. But I think, honestly, it’s been good for us. They’re still super hungry even though we’re 5-0, because they’re not used to it and they don’t want that feeling to go away. But it’s been interesting to watch these freshmen who barely spoke the first year turn into huge leaders on our team. Now we’re watching them teach the underclassmen everything they learned.”
Gall, a 2018 graduate of Dryden, was part of the 2017 team, which was the last to complete a season before 2023.
The following year, the Cardinals played through September before low numbers and injuries forced them to forfeit their final three games. In 2019, they never started, and eventually players from Dryden who were interested in playing football could join Imlay City as part of a co-op.
That included at the middle school level, where Perales, Coscione and some others were playing, and succeeding.
While the co-op provided opportunity, Gall and others wanted to bring back the identity and community excitement that came with having a team representing the school.
A petition was circulated and enthusiastically moved through the process to start things back up again for the 2023 season, with Gall in charge along with his classmate and assistant coach Sam Peyerk.
The Cardinals actually won their first game back, defeating Carsonville-Port Sanilac 52-12, but they would finish the season 2-7, dropping seven in a row before defeating Akron-Fairgrove in Week 9.
“The biggest challenge, honestly, was just teaching the game of football to a bunch of kids who had virtually never played,” Gall said. “Just basic football terms. Teaching sophomores, juniors and seniors how to get into a three-point stance is not a typical issue for most football programs. Almost half our starting lineup was freshmen, and everyone else, they were older, but they had the experience of freshmen. The biggest hurdle was just keeping them confident and keeping them from hanging their heads.”
Fortunately for Gall, his players bought in and even had a belief that very bright days could be ahead.
“I really did know that, eventually, after us putting in the hard work, we’d get to this point,” said Coscione, who is now in his fourth year as starting quarterback for the Cardinals. “Our whole team believed it. I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty hard to believe, but we all (toughed) it out together, stayed together as a team and put in the work. You can’t just start up a new program and expect to be undefeated. We all knew we had to go through those ups and downs of it sucking really bad. (Gall and Peyerk), all the coaches definitely motivated us and got us through that.”
Not all players who had to suffer through the building years were able to enjoy the fruits of the program’s labor, however, and they knew it. That, Coscione said, made their hard work even more impressive. That includes Gall’s younger brother Owen and Coscione’s older brother Sonny, who both graduated in 2025 and were part of the 2023 and 2024 teams.
“(Sonny) is so proud of not just me, but everyone,” Gianni Coscione said. “Even though he’s not out there playing with us, he knows that us being out there and doing what we are today, it wouldn’t be possible without him and the other upperclassmen that we learned from. Without them, all of this probably wouldn’t be possible. I think that shows a big part in how they’re great people. They knew they weren’t going to be part of the greatness, but they were going to be a part of the rollercoaster.”
Dryden won four games in 2024 and five in 2025, barely missing the 8-player playoffs. With just one senior graduated from the 2025 team, expectations were high surrounding this year’s group.
“The first two years, I would have said no, that I didn’t think this was going to happen,” Taylor said. “We were never going to be able to keep up with these kids at the bigger schools. But as a junior we were able to stick with them, and we knew if we locked in over the offseason (the current success was possible). A lot of us got in the gym over the summer, and we really wanted to get in and go far in the playoffs.”
Starting 4-0 was certainly a sign that it was all coming together, but it was the win against Deckerville that has added a new layer of belief in the team, at least in the community. The Eagles were the 2024 Division 1 8-Player Finals champion and advanced to the Semifinals a year ago. They’ve won two Finals titles and have two other runner-up finishes since moving to 8-player in 2012.
“It was a huge win,” Gall said. “Probably one of the biggest wins that we’ve had in program history so far. My high school coach, who was also on the 2008 Dryden team that went undefeated, he’s on my staff, and he said that even including the 2008 season, that was the biggest win of his career. Definitely, by far, it’s the biggest win of mine.”
The players acknowledge how big that win was, especially after suffering through a 2023 game against the Eagles during which they were shutout and gained just 25 yards of total offense.
But last weekend’s success hasn’t changed their goal moving ahead, which is to beat Byron, their Week 6 opponent.
“It definitely feels good, and we know that we deserved it because we put in a lot of work throughout the years,” Perales said. “But we’re not satisfied with our record right now. We want to go undefeated every week, and we know we still have to keep our heads down and keep working toward what we want.”
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) From left, Gianni Coscione and Santiago Perales stand with their team for the national anthem. (Middle) Coscione eyes his target before throwing a pass. (Top photo courtesy of the Dryden football program. Action photo of Coscione by Dane Pelkowski.)