Piggee Leans on Big Reds After Dad's Death, Lifts Team with Dazzling Play
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
November 3, 2021
Watching Destin Piggee do his thing on the football field – drawing collective gasps from the crowd with an array of moves, bursts of amazing speed and dramatic stops and starts – is nothing short of pure joy.
What a contrast from the tragedy the quiet, humble, 15-year-old Muskegon High School sophomore suffered two months ago.
Muskegon coach Shane Fairfield said his young sensation has the heart of a lion, but that heart was ripped out of his chest on the afternoon of Sept. 3 – just hours before the Big Reds hosted Detroit Cass Tech in the biggest game in the state that weekend.
Piggee learned that his previously healthy father, 43-year-old Dereko Piggee, had died from complications after a short bout with COVID-19.
He then did what his dad would have wanted that night and played for the Big Reds, ripping off a 43-yard run (appropriately, one yard for every year of his dad’s life), giving a packed house at Hackley Stadium a preview of what was to come over the next eight games.
“I played that game, but I wasn’t in my right mind,” admitted Piggee, a 5-foot-6, 160-pound slot back and return man.
“My teammates and my coaches have helped me like you wouldn’t believe. If I didn’t have football, I probably would have gone out and done something stupid.”
The next game at Zeeland West was even more challenging, as earlier that day was his father’s funeral service – and then the young man who is too young to drive a car had to lay his father and best friend to rest at the cemetery.
He responded once again, scoring the winning touchdown on a 32-yard run in the fourth quarter.
Piggee hasn’t slowed down since, rolling up 705 rushing yards on a mere 30 carries, for a staggering 24 yards per attempt, with nine touchdowns. He also has caught nine passes for 201 yards and a touchdown, giving him 17 plays of 20-plus yards on only 39 offensive touches.
“He is a gifted natural athlete, but you should see the way this young man works,” said Muskegon coach Shane Fairfield, who has led his team to nine straight wins after the humbling Week 2 loss to Cass Tech. “His love for the game and for his teammates is contagious.”
Muskegon (9-1) hopes to win its 10th-straight District championship at 1 p.m. Saturday when it hosts Cedar Springs (8-2).
The Big Reds, who have also won five straight Regional titles, are aspiring to make it to Ford Field for the eighth time in the past 10 years. Muskegon has won a state-best 878 games and 18 state titles, including six in the playoff era, with the latest coming in 2017.
It has been the emergence of super sophomore “smurfs” Piggee and his good friend, running back Jakob Price (5-7, 165), which has keyed this team’s resurgence.
Exhibit A was Muskegon’s 49-28 win over crosstown rival and two-time reigning Division 2 champion Muskegon Mona Shores on Oct. 8. With the Sailors keying on senior quarterback Myles Walton, the sophomores stole the show – Price with six carries for 217 yards and TD runs of 70 yards and 99 yards and Piggee with six carries for 123 yards and two TDs, along with two catches for 71 yards and another score.
Against Wyoming earlier this year, Piggee touched the ball twice all game and scored touchdowns both times, on an 82-yard run and an electrifying 50-yard punt return.
Although he makes it look easy on the field, it’s been a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute battle off of it for Piggee and his family, especially his mother, stepmother, grandparents and siblings.
“One day after school, I just started crying and I couldn’t stop,” said Piggee, who is the youngest of his father’s five children.
That was when his Big Red family stepped in.
Senior Damari Foster hugged him and held him for a long time, before passing him off to freshman coach Corey Bibbs, who then handed him to Fairfield.
“Coach Fairfield finally got me to stop crying,” said Piggee, who wants to study electrical engineering in college. “He told me about some of the hard things he dealt with growing up, and I learned some things from him.”
Piggee said he draws motivation from his friend Dametrius “Meechie” Walker, a towering, 6-5 senior defensive lineman who was diagnosed last fall with osteosarcoma in his left leg, a rare bone cancer most often seen in teenage boys. The cancer has ended the playing career for Walker – who already had six Division I scholarship offers including from Michigan State, Minnesota and Kentucky – but he remains a positive, smiling force on the Muskegon sideline.
While Piggee is motivated to play hard for Walker, he is also determined to follow in the footsteps of his father, a 1996 grad who was a three-year varsity player and all-area defensive back for the Big Reds. He played running back, but was better known as a dangerous return man and lockdown cover man in the secondary.
“I remember Dereko was a nice, nice kid,” said Dave Taylor, Dereko’s head coach at Muskegon, who led the Big Reds to Class A championships in 1986 and 1989. “He did what I told him to do, and he was one of my favorites.”
This year’s Muskegon team is the youngest in Fairfield’s 12 years as head coach, with as many as eight freshmen and sophomores starting in some games.
The turning point in the season came after the 49-14 defeat at the hands of Cass Tech, when Fairfield challenged Piggee and his underclassmen teammates to rise above their youth and start playing “big boy football.”
“Big boy football means being confident and being in control of yourself at all times,” said Piggee. “We got on a group text and talked about that after our loss.
“We support our brothers here even when no one else does. These guys have helped me to get through every single day since my dad passed; you have no idea. I just want to go out and play as hard as I can for them.”
Tom Kendra worked 23 years at The Muskegon Chronicle, including five as assistant sports editor and the final six as sports editor through 2011. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Muskegon, Oceana, Mason, Lake, Oceola, Mecosta and Newaygo counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Muskegon’s Destin Piggee (3) eludes the grasp of a Lowell defender during the Big Reds’ District Semifinal win Saturday. (Middle) Piggee takes the field with his teammates before the Sept. 3 game against Detroit Cass Tech. (Below) Piggee makes his move upfield against East Kentwood. (Top and below photos courtesy of Local Sports Journal. Middle photo by Tim Reilly.)
Menominee Caps Powerful Ford Field Return with 1st Championship Since 2007
By
Scott DeCamp
Special for MHSAA.com
November 30, 2025
DETROIT – Menominee’s football program has been known a long time for its single-wing offensive scheme, which certainly has served the Maroons well over the years.
The secret to their success goes way deeper than that, however, and it has nothing to do with X’s and O’s. Call it grit, tenacity, resolve – the Maroons have built their program around those characteristics – and now they’re back on top.
Menominee defeated Schoolcraft, 34-6, in the Division 7 Final on Sunday at Ford Field, where the word “grit” has been stamped into the fabric of the Detroit Lions by head coach Dan Campbell.
With a comprehensive effort, Menominee (14-0) captured its first Finals title since 2007, the fourth in program history, and the first for an Upper Peninsula 11-player football team since Ishpeming claimed the Division 7 championship in 2015.
“Just grit and just hard work. I mean, you saw it out there, we’ve got 30 guys on our sideline. Growing up in Menominee, you’re going to have 30 guys on your team, if that,” said Menominee senior Tanner Theuerkauf, starting quarterback and safety.
“You look at our offensive line, we have our guard, he’s 150 pounds – you don’t ever see that, and he just does his job and all those guys do their job in the trenches. … Our want to win is just something you don’t see.”
Theuerkauf and some of his teammates were part of Menominee’s Division 7 runner-up squad two years ago, when the Maroons battled powerhouse Jackson Lumen Christi but fell just short, 34-30.
In last week’s Semifinal, Menominee showed great resolve in erasing a two-touchdown deficit in the fourth quarter and securing a 32-28 victory over Pewamo-Westphalia in a matchup of teams ranked Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, in the final regular-season Division 7 poll.
“Different mentality this year with these seniors,” said fourth-year Menominee coach Chad Brandt, who coincidentally did his student-teaching at Schoolcraft starting in 1996. “Times that I’m not around and they’re running to the locker room and grabbing the footballs and I drive by and they’re out there. That means a lot. And we have linemen that text me, ‘Can we have extra weight-room sessions?’ and those kind of things.
“It takes a lot of work, and these guys have put it in and I just couldn’t be prouder of this group of guys and for our town and for our school of Menominee because they deserve and they appreciate it and they support us in every way possible.”
Menominee senior Clayton Miller helped set the tone Sunday with his hard-nosed running. The 5-foot-11, 190-pounder scored the first three TDs of the game for the Maroons, who took a 7-0 lead on his five-yard run less than four minutes into the contest, went up 13-0 on his two-yard run midway through the second, and led 20-0 on his 31-yard sprint four minutes into the third quarter.
Miller finished with a game-high 112 rushing yards on 25 carries.
“He’s the greatest running back that I’ve ever played with. He’s one of the greatest in Menominee history,” Theuerkauf said about Miller. “He’s not the biggest guy in the world, but he just runs so hard – he runs through guys. … Just for him to want to win, he shows so much energy out there. He’s not the most talkative guy, but he gets the job done and I love that.”
Several Menominee players got the job done, but senior Maverick Geniesse was another who stood out. With Menominee leading 7-0 late in the first quarter and Schoolcraft threatening to score, Geniesse intercepted a pass at the 1 on a Schoolcraft first-and-10 from the 12 to snuff out the Eagles’ opportunity.
Menominee embarked on an 18-play, 79-yard drive that chewed up 8:17 of the clock and was capped by Miller’s second TD run as the Maroons took command with a 13-0 lead.
Geniesse also got into the scoring act, catching a two-yard TD toss from Theuerkauf early in the fourth quarter for a 28-0 Maroons lead. Junior Jackson Myszak capped the Menominee scoring with an eight-yard TD run with 2½ minutes left.
“It feels great. I mean, I’ve dreamed about stuff like this. The ultimate goal is to just be the best team player I can and help the team in any way I can,” Geniesse said. “Of course, the interception, that got our morale going the other way; and the touchdown (reception), it felt pretty good.”
Schoolcraft (11-3) got on the board midway through the fourth quarter on senior TJ Luteyn’s four-yard scoring run.
Both teams displayed offensive balance – Menominee was just more effective throughout the game. Menominee tallied 358 total yards (198 rushing, 160 passing), while Schoolcraft totaled 248 (100 rushing, 148 passing).
“Good, physical team,” Schoolcraft first-year coach Dan DeVries said about Menominee. “Their scheme is a challenging scheme. They can hit the edge hard and you’ve also got to watch for something up the middle and their quarterback can throw as well, so a lot of dimensions to their game. I think they played a fantastic game today. They didn’t make mistakes and we did, and that certainly showed in the score.”
Theuerkauf completed passes to six receivers and finished 7-of-11 for 160 yards. Schoolcraft junior QB Jack DeVries was 12-for-26 for 148 yards.
Schoolcraft seniors Evan Feller and Dane Ostlund paced all defenders with 12 and 11 tackles, respectively. Junior Nathan Nelson notched nine tackles to lead Menominee.
Going back to the late-1980s, Schoolcraft has been a small-school football power, but Sunday marked the Eagles’ first Finals appearance since 2001. They’ve made seven Finals appearances overall and captured titles in 1988, 1989, and 2001.
“Just to see the support and what it means to the town and stuff like that after 24 years – I mean, that’s a long time to not make it back after we’ve had a history of having good football teams and stuff like that,” Jack DeVries said.
“It’s great to do it with the group of seniors we have. Great group of guys – been playing with them for as long as we can remember. (We’ve been) talking about (Ford Field) since we were kids, and getting to go do it was a special thing.”
Sunday signified Menominee’s seventh Finals appearance overall as well. The Maroons also seized championships in 1998, 2006, and 2007 under legendary coach Ken Hofer.
This Menominee teamed restored some of that “UP Power” that Maroons and others north of the Mackinac Bridge take such great pride in.
“That does mean something when we head back across that bridge and it’s ‘UP Power’ and we’ll go through other towns and they’ll be honking horns or happy out on the street …,” said Brandt, a Gladstone native, who spent 20 years as head coach at Stephenson in the UP.
“The UP is someplace special, and it means something.”
For Theuerkauf, this one was a bit personal, too. His older brother, Trevor Theuerkauf, was the starting QB and a two-way standout on the Menominee team that made it to the Finals in 2023.
“He just told me, ‘Go out there and play (your) game. (You) don’t have to worry about anything else,’” Tanner Theuerkauf said. “I kind of had the edge on some of these guys because I’ve been here before. I played in this game – didn’t go our way, but today, come out and get the job done, it’s just the greatest feeling of my life.”
PHOTOS (Top) Menominee’s Brayden Daigneau (73) hoists a teammate into the air Sunday as they celebrate their team’s Division 7 title. (Middle) Tanner Theuerkauf (3) follows Clayton Miller (15) around the edge. (Below) The Maroons’ Jackson Myszak (6) puts pressure on Schoolcraft quarterback Jack DeVries.