St Mary's Scores 3-Peat on Late TD
By
Tom Markowski
Special for Second Half
November 26, 2016
DETROIT – Orchard Lake St. Mary’s has been bitten before by teams that made last-second winning plays.
This time St. Mary’s bit back.
Ky’ren Cunningham’s 18-yard touchdown reception with four seconds left gave the Eaglets a thrilling 29-28 victory over Muskegon in the Division 3 Final on Saturday at Ford Field.
St. Mary’s (10-4) began its last drive on its 20-yard line with 1:55 left. A pass interference penalty by Muskegon and Rashawn Allen’s 22-yard run placed the Eaglets in a good position to go for the winning score.
On 3rd-and-3 from the 22, quarterback Caden Prieskorn scrambled for four yards and a first down. An incomplete pass preceded the winning score.
“It was a pistol right,” Prieskorn said. “All we knew was we were going to have man-on-man coverage.”
Make no mistake. This was desperation, and it was a makeshift play. Cunningham is a starting running back. The last time he lined up as a receiver was in the first game this season against Macomb Dakota. Coach George Porritt ditched that plan afterward. Cunningham would stay in the backfield.
But not this time. St. Mary’s had five wideouts and to confuse matters more, Cunningham went to the slot, then switched spots with Clay Antishin, with Antishin moving inside.
“I play running back,” said Cunningham, a junior. “It was one-on-one and the safety didn’t come over the top. Caden just threw it. He just made the read.
“My body felt so weak (when I caught it). I don’t remember much.”
If Cunningham was stunned, Muskegon was more so.
The only loss the Big Reds (12-2) had this season was to a team from Illinois (Lincolnshire Stevenson). They rolled through the playoffs with their Semifinal game against Edwardsburg (19-8) the only close one.
“I just didn’t do a good enough job of teaching coverage,” Muskegon coach Shane Fairfield said.
“People say we can’t win the big one," he added. "We won a lot of big games to get here. The football game doesn’t define you. It’s what you do and the way you act afterwards that defines you.”
It was Muskegon’s fourth loss in a Final since winning its last title in 2008. Meanwhile, the championship was St. Mary’s third straight and eighth overall.
Muskegon took a 21-20 lead on its second possession of the second half. It took the Big Reds 1:48 to go 50 yards with senior quarterback/running back Kalil Pimpleton going the final 18 to give Muskegon the lead with 11:21 remaining.
St. Mary’s then went on one of its patented long, time-consuming drives to retake the lead. The Eaglets took 12 plays to go 47 yards, and Ben Fee set an MHSAA Finals record with a 49-yard field goal to give his team a short-lived 23-21 lead with 4:47 left.
Clinton Jefferson, Jr., returned the ensuing kickoff 49 yards to midfield to give the Big Reds great field position, and they made it count. Jefferson carried five times on the drive for 32 yards, including the last three for a touchdown with 1:55 left.
As it turned out, that was too much time to leave for St. Mary’s.
“Cade made some big throws against DeWitt (in a Regional Final),” St. Mary’s coach George Porritt said. “What amazes me is we were 5-4 at one point, and we battled back.”
St. Mary’s is the fifth team to win an MHSAA football title having lost four games.
Muskegon led 14-13 at the end of an entertaining first half.
The Big Reds went 70 yards during the opening drive and took a 7-0 lead on Pimpleton’s 18-yard touchdown run. Pimpleton’s 27-yard pass to Jefferson helped set up the score.
St. Mary’s then went 69 yards, but its drive stalled and Fee kicked a 32-yard field goal.
La’darius Jefferson took over at quarterback for Pimpleton in the second quarter, and Muskegon increased its lead to 14-3 as Jefferson completed an 80-yard drive with a 2-yard touchdown run. He carried five times on the drive for 25 yards. His 54-yard pass to Pimpleton was the key play.
After another Fee field goal, Muskegon had possession late in the half. But on 3rd-and-9 Jefferson handed off to Pimpleton, who threw a halfback pass that was intercepted by Shermond Dabney, who returned it 30 yards to the Muskegon 30. On St. Mary’s 3rd-and-9, Prieskorn threw a 29-yard touchdown pass to Antishin, who made a diving catch in the end zone with 35 seconds left before the break.
Allen was a workhorse in the backfield, and ran with determination. A junior, he rushed for 136 yards on 25 carries, and Cunningham had 15 carries for 46 yards. Prieskorn was 13 of 21 passing for 200 yards and two touchdowns.
For Muskegon, Pimpleton had three receptions for 88 yards, was 3 of 4 passing for 58 and rushed nine times for 56 yards and two touchdowns.
The MHSAA Football Finals are sponsored by the Michigan National Guard.
PHOTOS: (Top) St. Mary’s Ky’ren Cunningham (12) celebrates his game-winning touchdown. (Middle) Muskegon’s La’darius Jefferson breaks around his blocker Saturday.
Tradition-Filled Tri-County Conference Kicking Off Final Season of 11-Player Football
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
August 20, 2024
The bus driver went too fast.
It was fall of 1979, and Ottawa Lake Whiteford football coach John Hoover had come up with a plan for his Bobcats to dress in their own locker room, warm up on their own field and arrive at the Petersburg Summerfield football field for a Tri-County Conference battle just moments before kickoff.
The plan was working, except the bus driver went a little too fast.
“I don’t remember when I decided we would do it,” Hoover said. “But the night before our game, I got in my car, and I drove about the speed that I thought the bus driver would take from Whiteford to Summerfield. I had a stopwatch to time it just right. I didn’t tell anybody.”
The ploy was meant to rattle the opponent, perhaps make the other team lose focus on the game at hand.
“It’s only like 20 minutes between schools, so warming up at Whiteford and driving was no different than warming up at Summerfield and walking out to the field and waiting through the national anthem and the coin toss,” Hoover thought.
The scheme was working to perfection, but when Hoover determined the arrival would be too soon, he had the bus driver pull over just outside of Petersburg. Finally, the bus made its final trek and arrived.
On the first play from scrimmage, Summerfield fumbled, Whiteford recovered and scored a few plays later – the only touchdown of the game in a 7-0 Bobcats win.
“I don’t know if it worked,” Hoover said. “But, when the bus got near, when we were driving up the road where the Summerfield stadium was, the head coach (LeRoy Wood) was out in the middle of the street, looking down the road, looking for us. I knew right then that it probably worked. It wouldn’t have worked if we had cell phones like they do today.”
Summerfield and Whiteford have played some spirited games over the years as rivals in the Tri-County Conference. Unfortunately, the season that starts next week will be the last one for 11-player football in the TCC.
With the makeup of the league changing over the last decade or so and the move to 8-player football for three league schools, this is the final season for TCC football after 51 years of small-town competition.
The league has just three remaining schools playing 11-player football – Whiteford, Summerfield and Erie Mason. There is no TCC football schedule for 2025 and beyond, although the league itself will stay together for other sports.
“The 2024 season will be the last season that a TCC football champion is recognized in the current league format for football,” Britton Deerfield athletic director Erik Johnson said.
It will be the end of an era in southeast Michigan.
The league was formed in 1973 with schools from Washtenaw, Lenawee and Monroe Counties.
Several schools have taken turns at the top of the conference. Sand Creek has the most league championships, winning 15 between 1977 and 2011 – 14 of them under head coach Ernie Ayers. Morenci (9), Whiteford (7), Summerfield (7) and Clinton (7) have hoisted their fair share of league football trophies. Ayers is the winningest coach in league history, going 174-71 in league games over 38 seasons. Sand Creek left the TCC in football only after last season and will compete in the Big 8 Conference this season.
Whiteford is the only league school to win an MHSAA Finals football championship, but Sand Creek, Morenci and Clinton all have appeared in state championship games.
Both times Clinton played in Finals, Mathew Sexton was the star. Sexton would go on to play four years at Eastern Michigan University and has been in multiple NFL training camps and played in the XFL. He’s the league record holder for touchdowns and points scored.
“I loved being in the TCC,” Sexton said. “It was great competition and was always a blast. Played with some great players, coaches and love the atmosphere each game would bring. Clinton and the TCC made me who I am today. I’m thankful for the experience it gave me.”
Summerfield graduate Jamie LaRocca was an all-state running back in the league, coached in the league and later watched his sons play football in the league as student-athletes at Whiteford.
“There were some great games, great battles,” LaRocca said. “Most of all, it was competitive. Sand Creek was good, Summerfield had good teams and Morenci had some great teams. Different teams always seemed to make their run.”
Britton and Deerfield were two charter members of the TCC, along with Ann Arbor St. Thomas (now known as Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard), Summerfield and Adrian Madison. During the 1990s, however, Britton and Deerfield formed a co-op and became Britton-Deerfield. They later officially combined high schools to become Britton Deerfield
BD had a dominating run on the football field in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Among the players who played for BD teams were Dan Musielewicz and Dustin Beurer. Beurer is now the head coach at Division II Northwood University while Musielewicz is head coach at Division III University of Olivet.
Beurer said he remembers as a high school student going to class with others from rivals Sand Creek or Madison at the Lenawee County Vocational Tech school all week, then playing against them on Friday nights.
“I get goosebumps thinking about those days,” he said. “It was small-town football at its finest back in the day.”
Brad Maska, now the head boys basketball coach at Onsted, was the BD quarterback when that team won multiple TCC titles.
“It is sad,” Maska said of the end of the TCC football era. “It truly was a great conference that produced a lot of great teams, coaches, and players throughout the years.
“The best part of the conference was the small-school pride from the communities. Friday night playing at Sand Creek or Whiteford when I was in school was always the only thing going on in town and the communities always got around us, and the atmosphere for small-school football was amazing.”
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) Clinton’s Mathew Sexton scored more touchdowns in Tri-County Conference games than any player in league history. (Middle) Thomas Eitniear was the quarterback and Jason Mensing head coach at Whiteford when the Bobcats became the first school in Tri-County Conference history to win an MHSAA Finals football championship. (Below) Ernie Ayers coached at Sand Creek for 38 years and won 14 Tri-County Conference championships. (Photos courtesy of the Adrian Daily Telegram and Monroe News.)