QB Leads Ithaca Back to Legendary Level
November 27, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
DETROIT – At halftime of Friday’s Division 6 Final, Ithaca coach Terry Hessbrook told his quarterback Jake Smith he was the best player on the field and needed to play like it.
Or something like that – no doubt a little more directly, with a few more words that got right to the heart of Smith’s importance in helping the Yellowjackets avoid the disappointment of taking home the second-place trophy for the second season in a row.
Two quarters later, the list of Ithaca quarterbacks who have put up memorable performances at Ford Field grew by one.
Cementing his place in a line of signal callers who have led Ithaca to 83 wins in 84 games, Smith directed a second-half rally that pushed the Yellowjackets past Clinton 27-20 for their fifth MHSAA championship in six seasons.
A year ago, Smith and his teammates left the field after a loss to Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central ended a national-best 69-game winning streak. This time, Ithaca trailed 13-0 early in the third quarter before scoring 27 straight points over 15 minutes to take a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.
“He knew he could get more out of me, and as an offense we definitely produced,” said Smith of his coach’s halftime cajoling. “I wasn’t really panicking. I knew if we get behind, we’ve still got to keep playing. I wasn’t going to let it happen like it happened last year. I didn’t want to experience that feeling again, so I just played as hard as I could.
“It means so much to everybody on our team. Everybody really just wants to go out on top. Everybody wants to be number one. We finished that climb this year and we stuck the flag in the mountain, and it just feels so great.”
And it surely was a bit of a relief too.
Many of the team’s 17 seniors saw the field for most of the 2014 trip to Detroit, perhaps offering a little more motivation to bounce back for the program’s fifth perfect season over the last six.
“It was immense pressure, and to be honest, that made me very nervous. I talked to the players about it before the game today, that I was so happy because since day one last year after we got beat their goal was to get back to Ford Field,” Hessbrook said. “And I thought we had a championship-caliber football team, but I think a lot of people had championship-caliber football teams and somewhere along the line they get caught up and something goes wrong.
“I was glad they were able to play their last game in an Ithaca uniform here at Ford Field and have a chance ... to play for a championship.”
The Yellowjackets (14-0) finished off their best defensive performance of the run in terms of points allowed, giving up only 107 this fall despite dealing the first and only losses to three contenders over the last four weeks.
That defense played a massive role Friday, holding a Clinton rushing attack that averaged 297 yards per game this season to only 179. The Redskins had only 14 yards rushing over five second-half possessions after taking the 13-0 third-quarter lead.
But while the Yellowjackets held Clinton’s offense in check, it came down to Smith to carry them over the top.
The Ithaca run of quarterbacks starring at Ford Field started with Alex Niznak, who ran for five touchdowns in 2010 to lead the Yellowjackets to their first title. Then came Jake’s older brother Travis Smith, who put his name all over the record book in 2011 and 2013 wins – sandwiched around 2012, when back-up Logan Hessbrook came in after Travis Smith was hurt and led Ithaca to another MHSAA Finals victory.
Jake Smith was decent in last season’s Final, running for 90 yards and a score and throwing for 147 yards and the other touchdown as Ithaca fell 22-12. But his first half Friday was not at all noteworthy – six yards rushing and 60 passing.
Then came Hessbrook's pep talk.
“The first half, we did what we wanted to do,” Clinton coach Scott McNitt said. “We kept him in front of us. We didn’t let him get loose. But the third quarter, he found something. And he showed he was the best player on the field.”
Four minutes into the third quarter, Smith scored Ithaca’s first touchdown on a 14-yard run. Three and a half minutes later, Smith connected with senior Spence DeMull on a 22-yard pass in the seam, and two plays later connected with DeMull on the same route for a score that put the Yellowjackets ahead 14-13.
The next possession saw Smith's performance climb toward another level.
With 14 seconds left in the third quarter, he dropped back and rolled left, spun away from a near-sack, down the left sideline – and just as it looked like he would dive at the near pylon, Smith side-stepped right and whirled into the end zone. Ithaca 21, Clinton 13.
Smith added one more touchdown run from a yard out to put the Yellowjackets up 27-13 with 7:47 to play. Noah Poore’s 4-yard run at 4:59 pulled Clinton back within seven. But after Ithaca ran the clock down to 1:47 on its next possession, Clinton went to the air and completed only one of four passes before Ithaca senior Derek Teed ended the threat with a fourth-down sack.
Teed had three of his team’s 11 tackles for losses. Senior linebacker Jace Demenov led the effort on that side of the ball with 10 tackles, and junior linebacker Lane O’Boyle had eight.
Smith ended with 126 yards rushing to go with three scores and 180 yards passing with a touchdown.
For Clinton, senior running back/linebacker Mathew Sexton ran for 141 yards and a score and had six tackles. Senior linebacker Ken DeShano had 11 tackles.
Sexton also played a major role when Clinton fell to Ithaca 41-22 in the 2013 Final, and ran for more than 2,000 yards this season as the Redskins (13-1) charged through this run toward the rematch, eliminating reigning champion St. Mary among one of the most impressive slates of playoff opponents in any division.
“The gauntlet we’ve gone through these past four weeks – St. Mary, Madison Heights (Madison), (Jackson) Lumen Christi, (Grand Rapids) NorthPointe Christian, may have taken some of what we needed in the tank out of us,” McNitt said. “But these kids battled to the end … and had a chance at the end.”
Coaches almost always decline to compare teams from year to year, and especially championship winners.
But Hessbrook admitted this run was a little sweeter than some of the rest because of what it allowed for the players who walked off sadly a year ago and the legacy they were able to finish on a winning note.
“It would be hard for me to put them into numerical order and say this one is my favorite one or that one is my favorite one,” Hessbrook said. “But I’ll say this about this group of seniors: I don’t think that any class at Ithaca has ever dedicated themselves to winning a championship more than this class has, and that’s why it was so important for them to do that."
PHOTOS: (Top) Ithaca quarterback Jake Smith breaks a tackle during Friday's Division 6 Final. (Middle) The Yellowjackets celebrate their fifth MHSAA title in six seasons.
Adrian Football's 'Storyteller' Koehn Begins 52nd Season on Radio Waves
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
September 3, 2025
John Koehn used to collect Sports Illustrated covers – with good reason.
Koehn, 74, has been a sports broadcaster at WLEN, a 3,000-watt station at 103.9 on the FM dial in Lenawee County for more than 50 years. If you are at a football or basketball game where Koehn is broadcasting, chances are you will see a “WLEN” banner hanging nearby.
That banner has been in some unique settings.
“We used to collect Sports Illustrated covers because every once in a while, someone would take a photo and I’d be in the background with the WLEN banner doing the game,” Koehn said. “Over the years we had six or seven Sports Illustrated covers that popped up like that. We went all over back then.”
Koehn broadcast University of Michigan football and basketball games for two decades for WLEN, bringing the action home to listeners in Lenawee County long before the days of streaming services or Internet radio. He did live play-by-play at The Spectrum in Philadelphia when Michigan battled Indiana University in the NCAA men’s basketball championship game in 1976.
“That’s always been my favorite Michigan team ever,” Koehn said.
His favorite thing to broadcast – and the one that has stuck the longest – is Adrian High School football. Koehn did his first Maples football game in 1974 and has done almost every Adrian game since, live on the air. Last week he kicked off his 52nd year doing Maples football when Adrian defeated Dundee 21-0 at Maple Stadium.
“I’ve only missed a handful of games,” he said. “I had a wedding once, and I think another time or two I was sick. I thought I was going to do this maybe three or four years. Here I am. On and on it went.”
Joel Przygodski is the Adrian head football coach. Before that he was an assistant for several seasons and got to know Koehn. Now, they do a weekly pregame coaches show together.
“John has been an important part of the Adrian football community,” Przygodski said. “Friends and families of the program have had the pleasure of hearing his voice call our games for a long time. I enjoy our weekly conversations during the season, and we always seem to talk about players and teams from the past.”
Koehn’s voice is familiar to sports fans in Adrian and Lenawee County. In addition to broadcasting Maples football, he also does at least one county high school basketball game a week and still broadcasts live a handful of baseball and softball games every spring.
“Spring sports are tougher,” he said. “Games get canceled, and it becomes difficult to make them up. The weather outside is unpredictable.”
Koehn grew up in Adrian and played football for the Maples in 1967 and 1968. His father, also John Koehn, held various jobs in the county, including teaching a class at Adrian College.
“He was working on his MBA and teaching at Adrian College,” Koehn said. “For his senior business thesis class, he assigned his students a semester project to research the feasibility of starting an FM radio station in Adrian. He gave them all good grades and used the information to start the station.”
His father was granted the license for 103.9 FM in 1965.
“I was in high school, but I was here when it all started,” Koehn said. “I was pushing a broom and that kind of stuff.”
Adrian had an AM radio station at the time, but the FM station was new.
“The first few years we just gave away FM radios and FM car converters so that people could get the signal,” Koehn said.
One of the first things his father did was form a small network of five stations to broadcast University of Michigan football and basketball games.
“When we started, Michigan allowed any station to broadcast as long as they paid the fees,” Koehn said. “There were at least seven stations. Our station started doing Michigan in 1965 when they went on the air. They were able to do that until the mid-1980s before they went to (WJR) network.”
Koehn, who graduated from Notre Dame, never intended to get into broadcasting. He was at an Adrian basketball game when it happened.
“My first game was a basketball game,” he said. “I just went to help out. I was there, doing stats, and the second half started and the general manager who was doing the game said, ‘Here,’ and handed me the microphone. I got handed a soapbox.”
His dad also launched an FM station in Monroe, 98.3, and gave famed WJR host Paul W. Smith his first radio job.
“My dad knew all about big radio,” Koehn said. “He always said the only way we are going to survive is to make it local, local, local.”
For Adrian, University of Michigan football and basketball was local. He put a lot of miles on his car.
“Back in the day, Michigan basketball played games on Thursdays and Saturdays,” he said. “I remember one weekend, on a Thursday morning, I drove to Madison, Wisconsin, to do a Michigan basketball game. I drove home after the game, got home probably 6 a.m., got some sleep, did a high school game Friday night, and Saturday afternoon I went up to Ann Arbor to do Michigan-Indiana and did a high school game Saturday night. I didn’t have much in the way of pipes by then.”
He also was part of the MHSAA broadcasting network for years.
“I was probably doing 80 basketball games a season back then and driving everywhere,” he said.
During his broadcasts, Koehn keeps his own running stats and often refers back to them throughout his coverage. At halftime, he gives halftime stats, such as leading rushers in football, and tracks things like penalties and first downs.
Koehn said he is an Adrian fan for every game – except when the Maples are playing another local team.
“I’m a fan,” he said. “The only time I’m not is when Adrian is playing another county school. You have to be nonpartisan with that.”
The radio stations have remained in the family. WLEN and 96.5 The Cave, an all-sports format station in Adrian, are owned by his late father’s trust. The other two stations in Adrian, 95.3 FM and WABJ – an AM radio station that was around when WLEN was created – are owned by John’s sister Julie. All four stations are housed in one building in downtown Adrian.
Koehn, who is married, has two children, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. His bucket list is to broadcast a hockey game.
While he waits to do that, Koehn remains hooked on broadcasting Adrian football.
“You get to be a little crazy,” he said. “You get into doing the games. We are telling stories and creating memories for people. I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘Oh, I remember that one game. I was listening. That was one heck of a game.’ It’s all linked to some other memory outside of the football game. Basically, I’m a storyteller – a partisan storyteller.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a news and sports reporter at the Adrian Daily Telegram and the Monroe News for 30 years, including 10 years as city editor in Monroe. He's written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. He is now publisher and editor of The Blissfield Advance, a weekly newspaper. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS John Koehn begins his 52nd season as the voice of Adrian High School football, broadcasting last week from Maple Stadium. (Photos by Deloris Clark-Cheaney.)