Seeing is Believing as Confident Britton Deerfield Playing for Finals Trip
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
November 12, 2024
A little confidence can go a long way. A lot of confidence could get you to the state championship game.
Britton Deerfield is enjoying a remarkable turnaround season this year and will host Morrice for an 8-Player Division 2 Semifinal on Saturday.
Last year at this time, head coach Erik Johnson was shaking off the pain of a 2-7 season.
“It’s a great story,” Johnson said. “You go 2-7 and, really, last year, the last five weeks of the year we weren’t even in the game. We were getting blown out by halftime in most of those games.
“For those kids to have the resolve and come back and have the kind of success they are having this year is just great to see.”
Britton Deerfield is in its fourth season of 8-player football and having its best season yet. The Patriots have won nine straight games heading into Saturday’s Semifinal against Morrice and have set a school record for points scored in a season. Over the last six weeks, they are averaging 60.3 points per game and set the school’s single-game scoring record.
Senior Luke Wiser said the difference from last season is the team’s confidence.
“It’s all in the mindset,” Wiser said. “Last year we didn’t have the great confidence we have now.”
BD struggled early this season until that confidence kicked in. The Patriots defeated Pittsford in Week 1 but gave up 58 points. They lost in Week 2 to Mendon, giving up 66 points.
Johnson went to the defensive drawing board and challenged his players to get better.
“We talked a lot about the mental aspect of tackling,” he said. “They’ve been tackling since middle school. They’ve been through every tackling drill you can do. Now, it’s about the mental part of football, wrapping up and making the play.”
Over the next two weeks BD held Colon and Concord to one touchdown each.
The new Patriots offense started to soar as well. Johnson had favored a spread offense with a lot of jet sweeps and the quarterback alternating running and throwing the ball. In the offseason, he made a change.
“I knew we were going to have a stable of kids who could run the ball and a couple of different kids who could throw the ball, so I started to think of how I could maximize their efforts,” he said. “We went to more of a single wing offense. I watched a video series about the single wing and worked on ways to adjust that to make it work for our 8-man game.”
The single wing look requires the center to snap the ball to one of three backs and none playing the traditional role of quarterback. The results have been great.
The Patriots have rushed for 68 touchdowns this season and average 7.9 yards a carry. Wiser has rushed for 1,549 yards and scored 27 touchdowns. Caden Freeman has rushed for 806 yards, Caden Kubacki 666 and Cayden Allshouse 569.
Wiser credits the BD offensive line.
“It’s almost like I’m not running,” he said. “I follow my blocks and break off a run, but I think they really do an outstanding job, and our offense moves through them.”
Johnson said as the linemen settled in this season, they started to come to him to suggest different things.
“You know things are going well when the kids see something on the field and come talk to the coaches about it,” he said. “I’ll just say, ‘Yeah, let’s give that a try.’”
On defense, seniors Hunter Kniffin and Jayden Brooks lead the Patriots in tackles. Junior Liem Roe has eight interceptions.
In the first round of the playoffs, BD knocked out Adrian Lenawee Christian, which had won three Finals championships over the last four years. That, in itself, turned some heads.
“To beat LCS was huge for our confidence,” Johnson said. “We have been able to beat some teams that have had our number. LCS had handled us in every game we have had with them until this year.”
BD has eight seniors who have stepped into leadership roles. Juniors who played a lot as sophomores are contributing too.
“We had some younger guys in the backfield last year, but those guys have all grown up,” Johnson said. “The seniors have done an outstanding job of being there, ever since summer. When all of your seniors are there, that feeds down through the program. Other kids see that.”
Johnson said four years ago he couldn’t have predicted the current group of seniors would be where they are today.
“Some of those kids didn’t even play when they were a freshman,” he recalled. “It’s been a pleasant surprise to watch that group mature, and to see them now have success is awesome.”
The Patriots captured the first Regional championship for the program since Britton and Deerfield combined to form one high school in 2010.
From 1993 to 2010, the two schools played a cooperative football program and reached the 11-Player Semifinals in 1999 and 2000. A photo hangs in the school showing a huge crowd ringing the field during the playoff runs those seasons.
The team plays in a new stadium, just a few hundred yards from the old stadium, which is now the practice field.
“The crowd was great,” Johnson said of the Regional championship win over Pittsford. “They were into it. They stayed until after the trophy presentation and celebrated. It was great.”
If Britton Deerfield wants to get to the Division 2 championship game Nov. 23 in Marquette, the Patriots will need that crowd and confidence when they face the 10-1 Orioles this weekend.
“Our kids are really confident,” Johnson said. “That’s a good thing. You get that feeling like you can’t be stopped, and you can win every game you play. That’s good to have.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a sports and news reporter and city editor over 25 years, writing for the Daily Chief-Union in Upper Sandusky, Ohio from 1992-1995, the Monroe Evening News from 1995-2012 and the Adrian Daily Telegram since 2013. He's also written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Britton Deerfield’s Caden Kubacki, with the ball, stretches forward for extra yardage against Adrian Lenawee Christian. (Middle) Luke Wiser (4) takes on a Pittsford tackler. (Top photo by Deloris Clark-Cheaney. Wiser photo by John Discher.)
Historic Finish May be Only Start as Cabrini Adds 1st Regional Title to Building Effort
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
November 28, 2025
ALLEN PARK — The result in its Division 8 Semifinal wasn’t what Allen Park Cabrini had hoped.
But in the end, the 2025 season might turn out to be the year a small-school powerhouse was born.
Before this fall, Cabrini had never advanced past the Regional round of the MHSAA Playoffs and had won only four playoff games in school history.
That changed this year, with Cabrini amassing an 11-2 record and winning its first Regional title before falling the next week to No. 1-ranked Hudson.
It was all part of the vision head coach and Cabrini alum R.J. Chidester had when he took over the job three years ago after spending years as a college assistant coach, with Division I Lehigh his last stop before moving home.
“I believe God brought me back home to Cabrini to use the gifts he has given me to show these kids how to develop their spirit and become the best Catholic American young men they can be,” Chidester said. “They develop their spirit with their faith, attitude, love and effort. If they focus on that, God takes over and everything else falls into place. Three years later, they are making their own beds, tuck their shirts in, go to church on their own and continuously push their minds and bodies to the max. That is why we have gotten the results we have.”
Eddie Hughes, a senior for Cabrini, said it’s been amazing to see that plan fulfilled almost verbatim.
“I talked to a teacher about this,” Hughes said. “He told us what was going to happen, and he said, ‘You guys can believe me or not.’ The day he took over the coaching job, he said if we all buy in, this is what’s going to happen.
“In recent weeks, he’s asked us, ‘The day I got this job three years ago, I told you what was going to happen, and what has not come true?’ None of us could think of a single thing. Everything he told us was going to happen has happened.”
Initially, the hardest step for Chidester was making sure he kept kids in the program. The school historically has had good athletes, but once they got to high school, many would move on to other schools that had historically better football programs.
Knowing that, Chidester made sure to share a message when he took the job with Cabrini’s then-middle schoolers and their parents.
“You have been at Cabrini, and why are you jumping ship?” Chidester said he told players and parents. “I don’t want to say it was a recruiting thing. It was more explaining to them what it was like to be part of a community. From an Xs and Os standpoint, your kid is going to be in great shape. I know the game, and I know how to develop. I’ve coached multiple positions at the college level, and I know coaches who’ll help the kids get to the next level.”
Helping the cause was that Cabrini’s pastor, Father Tim Birney, did something out of the box for the school by hiring Chidester as both a coach and administrator to work in the building.
That has helped because he’s in the school halls and around students every day.
“I’m the first male coach that’s been an employee of the school and in the building” Chidester said. “Father Tim said it had never been done here. He rolled the dice on that.”
As historic as this season was for Cabrini, there’s plenty of reasons to believe it can annually make deep playoff runs.
There are a lot of quality non-seniors on the roster, including junior quarterback Evan Bergdoll, and now younger kids in the K-12 school have seen firsthand that the program can win.
“It’s a way of buying in,” Hughes said. “Some kids didn’t stay and didn’t want to buy in. I don’t want to come off rude, but we’re not really missing them. If they don’t want to buy into our program, then good.”
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTO Allen Park Cabrini football players and coaches surround Fr. Tim Birney for a photo following a 34-32 win over Madison Heights Madison in their Division 8 Regional Final, which clinched the school's first Regional title. (Photo provided by Allen Park Cabrini football program.)