With Seasoned Seniors in Lead, Deckerville Set to Begin Another Title Pursuit
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
October 30, 2024
Preston Holman was an eighth grader when his family moved to Deckerville from the west side of the state, but it didn’t take long for him to realize how much football meant to the community.
“Instantly, it was all clear to me that Deckerville was a powerhouse program around here, and if you’re going to play for them and Coach (Bill) Brown, you needed to be the best version of yourself,” said Holman, now a senior and all-state two-way lineman for the Eagles. “It was really cool. I remember my eighth-grade year, Deckerville lost to Mayville on Homecoming. I remember how upset the players were. I could tell in the atmosphere that Deckerville does not like to lose. But it was really cool to see how the community supported the program.”
Holman and the Eagles have set themselves up to have that support through the 8-Player Division 1 Semifinals, should they keep winning, as the highest-rated team by playoff points in the bracket.
Deckerville, which finished a 9-0 regular season with a win over previous No. 1 Alcona in Week 9, will open the postseason at home Friday night against Bay City All Saints.
“It’s been great,” senior quarterback Hunter Garza said. “We’ve been taking it one game at a time and preparing all season for this, and I think the hard work is showing and paying off. This started three years ago, when we were all sophomores and freshmen, and the hard work is all paying off.”
When Garza and Holman were sophomores, they were part of a core group in that class who were playing key roles on the varsity. That group went 7-4 and won a playoff game in 2022, and Brown was starting to see the potential for something special in the future.
A run to an 8-Player Division 2 Semifinal the next year proved him right.
“We have six kids that started when they were sophomores that are now seniors, and last year, our defense was one freshman, three sophomores and four juniors, so our whole defense is back,” Brown said. “So we knew we had a lot of potential there. We knew we had something going on, even back then. We knew when they were sophomores, even though they were pretty young. The next year, we got halfway through the season, and they were juniors that were starting to play like seniors.”
Knowing what he had coming back, and what a Deckerville crowd could bring during a playoff run, Brown set out to build a schedule that could guarantee the Eagles homefield advantage through the first three weeks of the postseason. That meant scheduling All Saints in Week 1 and Alcona in Week 9. Even had the Eagles lost those games, the benefit of playing a tougher schedule would have been a net positive. Of course, they won them, getting the best of both worlds.
“We play some tough competition in our conference,” Brown said. “But to get to 9-0, that’s pretty special.”
The Eagles outscored opponents, on average, 49-14 on their way to the program’s first unbeaten season since 2019, and fifth in Brown’s 32 years as head coach.
“I think we’ve played very good defense,” Brown said. “Last week (a 50-42 win against Alcona) was tough, but we were playing one of the best teams in the state. Sometimes you have to outscore someone. I think, defensively, we match up and are able to defend a lot of people. Then, being able to turn around and Hunter Garza is having a great year at quarterback – he can run, and he can throw – so I think we’re a little more diverse offensively.”
Garza has rushed for 1,134 yards and 21 touchdowns on 104 carries this season, leading an Eagles’ offense that is averaging 304.9 yards per game on the ground. Senior Parker Merriman had added 859 yards and 11 TDs.
Garza also has thrown for 747 yards and nine touchdowns on just 76 pass attempts.
Defensively, the Eagles specialize in getting teams out of sync, as they have recorded 42 tackles for loss as a team, led by Holman’s 17. He also has nine sacks, while sophomore Brandon Halowitz leads the team with 83 tackles, including 13 for loss and five sacks.
Being a defensive stalwart is nothing new for the Eagles. When they joined the 8-player ranks in 2012, they brought a smashmouth style to what had been a wide-open division, and won a Finals title. The score of that championship game against Bellaire: 14-12.
They’ve made the postseason in each of the 12 years since, advancing to Finals in 2016 and 2017.
“Our goal each year is to win the state championship,” Brown said. “Maybe those seem like lofty goals for many, but I think you have to do that. And, as it goes, right now we’re peaking at it. Last year, nobody would have thought we were going to make a run and get to the Semifinal. I would say the expectations are high for us, and I think that gives our team the drive to always be better than the team that did it before.”
Managing to chase those goals while remaining grounded in the day-to-day work necessary to reach them can be tough. But with senior leaders like Garza and Holman, Brown is confident his team will stay on the right path.
“Deckerville has such a good winning tradition, that it does put a lot of pressure on us, but Coach always says, ‘Just because you’re Deckerville, you’re not guaranteed to make the playoffs,’” Garza said. “Just because you wear the D, doesn’t mean you’re going to make a run in the playoffs. You gotta go out and work for it. You have to go out and win it.”
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) The Deckerville defense converges on a Kingston ball carrier during this season’s 44-0 victory. (Middle) Hunter Garza eludes an Alcona defender last week. (Below) Eagles coach Bill Brown, in headset, checks his chart on the sideline. (Photos by Mike Gallagher/Saranac County News.)
DCC, Rice Begin Following New Leaders
By
Tom Markowski
Special for Second Half
August 16, 2017
The Detroit Catholic League football coaching carousel took a few more turns during the offseason, with a pair of programs once led by two of the winningest coaches in state history welcoming new leaders for this fall.
Two former understudies to those longtime mentors now find themselves with the top jobs directing programs that have combined to earn 18 MHSAA Finals championships.
Adam Korzeniewski, 43, is the new coach at Birmingham Brother Rice, replacing Dave Sofran, who replaced legendary coach Al Fracassa after the Warriors won their third consecutive Division 2 title in 2013.
Dan Anderson, 48, is the new coach at Detroit Catholic Central, taking over for recently-retired Tom Mach, who directed the Shamrocks to a Division 1 runner-up finish nine months ago.
“It is daunting,” Anderson said. “You question yourself. Would Tom have done that? You want to keep the tradition alive. I’m not Tom Mach. I can learn from him and put my stamp on it.”
He and Korzeniewski will seek to do so while navigating what continues to be one of the most competitive leagues in the state. Detroit Catholic Central (10), Brother Rice (8) and Orchard Lake St. Mary’s (7) have combined to amass 25 MHSAA football titles, while Warren DeLaSalle has added two more.
But when Mach announced his retirement from DCC in February, it continued a recent run of Catholic League Central programs passing the baton. Following the 2015 season Paul Verska – who led DeLaSalle to the 2014 Division 2 title – stepped down from the Pilots, and Mike Giannone left Macomb Dakota to fill Verska’s spot. Fracassa retired after the 2013 season with a record of 430-117-7 since starting at Royal Oak Shrine in 1960 and moving to Brother Rice in 1969; he holds Michigan’s record for most high school football coaching wins, while Mach is third with a record of 370-94 from 1976-2016.
St. Mary’s longtime leader George Porritt (256-71 since 1989) will enter this season as the league’s only coach with more than a year heading up the program at his school.
“I’m not a tight T (formation) guy. But I will run it right at you,” Anderson said in explaining a philosophical similarity to Mach. “And I do run some tight T plays. You can’t get rid of the wham. Tom’s philosophy was defense wins championships. That won’t change while I’m here.”
The wham is a basic run play into the middle of the line, a trademark of Mach’s offense. It’s simple but often effective. Anderson said he will install a multiple offense incorporating formations and plays from a variety of schemes as the Shamrocks look to add to last season's 13-1 run.
Anderson has been well-schooled, at Catholic Central and a number of high schools in Ohio where he grew up, played football and coached. He came to Catholic Central in 1999 as a freshmen coach. The next five seasons he was the head junior varsity coach. In 2005, he became a varsity assistant – and in 2007 he became the defensive coordinator.
Anderson played defensive end and offensive tackle at Archbishop Alter in Kettering, Ohio, located near Dayton. He earned a scholarship to University of Pittsburgh where he played guard and was a starter his junior and senior seasons.
Long before then, he knew he wanted to become a teacher and a coach. A junior high history teacher, who was also a coach, played a major role in Anderson becoming the person he is today.
“He coached me in CYO (Catholic Youth Organization),” Anderson said. “He made a big impression upon me. I was 12 or 13 years old, and I knew then I wanted to teach history and coach.
“I love the game (of football). As soon as I got out of college (1992), I started coaching as a volunteer assistant at Penn Hills (Pa.).”
And he hasn’t stopped coaching since. After leaving Penn Hills, Anderson went to Pomfret, Maryland, located just outside of Washington, D.C., and coached three sports (baseball, basketball and football) at McDonough High. After two years, he went back to his alma mater and spent five years there, the last three as the head football coach. His wife at the time was transferred to General Motors in the Detroit area and, again, Anderson sent out applications and was hired by Catholic Central as a history teacher and football coach.
Anderson said he feels fortunate to be in this position. Learning and having mentors within a parochial school system prepared him for this opportunity and challenge.
“Mach, to me, was a heck of a mentor,” he said. “My high school coach, Ed Domstiz, was one of my mentors, too. And he’s still coaching.
“Tom was laid back. He didn’t take things too seriously. With all of the extracurricular things that go on now, he wanted football to remain a game. That bothered him, the kids jumping from one school to another. To me, high school was a great time, all of the friends that you made. When you move around you miss that.
“For Tom, it was more of his relationships with people. He had the Xs and Os, but it was about building men. That was always an emphasis. You had to develop them into great people. What you saw with Tom is what you got. It was refreshing.”
Though Korzeniewski isn’t directly replacing a legend, Fracassa’s shadow still looms over Brother Rice football; history doesn’t leave us that quickly. Expectations remain high for a program that won three straight Division 2 titles from 2011-13. The Warriors finished 7-4 last fall.
There’s an added unknown for Korzeniewski. He’s never been a head coach before. He’s coached for 17 seasons, including six as Fracassa’s defensive coordinator. The last two seasons Korzeniewski was the defensive coordinator at Birmingham Seaholm, working under his good friend Jim DeWald. The two were teammates at Western Michigan during the mid-1990s.
Korzeniewski’s approach is to keep things simple. He doesn’t see his job as having more pressure than most head coaching positions. As a coach, you teach. For the players, they learn.
“To me, it’s my job,” he said. “I go about it as I would anything else. To other people it would be different. I do my job every day.
“I didn’t come here thinking other people did this or that. It’s the kids. It goes back to why I got into coaching. You see the progress. It’s important to them that they get better. Football is important to them.”
Just as Anderson learned from his predecessor, Korzeniewski has borrowed much from Fracassa.
“I learned the importance of a team,” Korzeniewski said. “Nothing is more important than the team. And there’s something else. He made every player feel a part of the team. He had a way to make kids compete. I wish I could do that.
“What’s important to me is that things get taught and understood. You have to be demanding and supportive. (It’s) the action and reaction.”
Rest assured, both coaches will be watched as if through a microscopic lens. They understand that. They also understand they are heading into once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, and they’re going to make the most of them.
“I’m excited,” Anderson said. “We have a great group of kids. We have a great group of coaches and we’re going to enjoy each other’s company.”
Tom Markowski is a columnist and directs website coverage for the State Champs! Sports Network. He previously covered primarily high school sports for the The Detroit News from 1984-2014, focusing on the Detroit area and contributing to statewide coverage of football and basketball. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Detroit Catholic Central's Dan Anderson (left), here coaching the defense during the 2016 Division 1 Final, and Brother Rice's Adam Korzeniewski, the Warriors' defensive coordinator during their 2012 Division 2 title run, are taking over top Detroit Catholic League programs this fall. (Middle) Former Brother Rice coach Al Fracassa (top) retired after the 2013 season, while DCC's Tom Mach stepped down in February.