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#TBT: 120 Years of Ithaca Football Wins

October 2, 2014

By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor

The Ithaca football team has won 61 straight games dating to opening night 2010, a stretch that is the longest active streak in the U.S., second-longest in MHSAA history, longest to take place fully during the MHSAA playoff era, and three wins from cracking the the national all-time top 10 list. 

But more than a century before the Yellowjackets began this era of invincibility, they were among those embracing the sport during its infancy in the late 1890s. 

Research by the Ithaca Area Historical Society led to the uncovering of the above photo of the 1899 Ithaca High School football team and all but two of the players' names. 

The Ithaca program has 376 victories dating back to the start of the 1950 season – and further research that is underway should show the team has well over 500 wins dating to its first team in 1895. Cadillac, with 512 victories, was 10th on Michigan high school football's all-time wins list heading into this season.

For some added perspective: The MHSAA was begun from a preceding organization during the 1924-25 school year. The first MHSAA playoffs were played in 1975. Ithaca's most recent varsity football loss came to Montague in a 2009 Division 6 Semifinal. 

Erik O. Furseth

In Memoriam: Erik O. Furseth (1930-2022)

By Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor

March 1, 2022

For 50 years, Erik O. Furseth’s voice chimed throughout MHSAA and Michigan State University athletic events. That voice surely will continue to live in the memories of the many who cherished listening to him, as he died Monday evening at the age of 91.

Furseth began as the public-address voice of MHSAA Boys Basketball Finals in 1968 and continued well into his 80s as those games moved from Jenison Field House to other locations across the Lower Peninsula and eventually settled into Breslin Center. He also was the longtime MHSAA football championship game voice going back to their days at the Pontiac Silverdome and provided the narration for MHSAA Baseball Finals for a decade. He announced his last MHSAA event in 2018.

An MSU basketball player during the early 1950s, the Cleveland Heights, Ohio, native played in the Spartans’ first Big Ten game in 1951. A forestry student initially, Furseth switched to communications. He later became a legendary rock-n-roll radio DJ in Lansing, and for a decade hosted Saturday night dances at the Lansing Civic Center that drew 1,000 teenagers a night – and a surprise performance by a young Stevie Wonder.

Furseth’s voice continued to be known particularly by Spartan fans as the homecourt voice for MSU basketball from 1968-2002 and MSU football from 1971-98. For more, see this feature from the MHSAA Basketball Finals programs written in 2013.

Furseth moved from East Lansing to Traverse City about 25 years ago. Click for his obituary and funeral arrangements.