Powered Up for Another Title Run
March 15, 2013
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
EAST LANSING – There was a time, not long ago, when Flint Powers Catholic was expected to show up at the MHSAA Girls Basketball Finals just about every season.
And there’s been an expectation these last few years that the Chargers would soon return.
They needed overtime, but made good on that Friday by defeating Midland Bullock Creek 48-45 to advance to their first Class B championship game since 2001.
And it’s a run made all the more incredible given Powers’ 3-5 start this season, their Regional Semifinal upset of No. 1 Freeland – and that they came into this winter after posting an 8-13 record a year ago.
“We sort of had a weak start from the Ladywood game (on opening night), and from there we just started picking it up and playing as a team,” Powers senior Darbie Barkman said. “’We believe’ is a huge saying for us, and we just keep going and playing strong. No matter how many points we’re down; in the Freeland game we were down 16 points and came back from that. We just had to keep believing and keep going, and we just always have to push through as a team.”
Powers (21-6) will face either reigning champion Goodrich or Grand Rapids South Christian at 6 p.m. Saturday. Powers and Goodrich played in the same District last season, but found themselves on the opposite side of the bracket when lines were drawn for this season.
The Chargers are owners of four MHSAA girls basketball titles. And along with those banners, a message is posted in Powers’ gym, “We believe,” which became a necessary motto during the rough start against a tough slate including Class A Semifinalist Westland John Glenn.
Powers coach Thom Staudacher said the schedule was built so his team would know what it needed to improve on for the rest of the season. The Chargers now have won 12 straight.
But like in other wins during this run, it took a lot of small contributions from a number of players – and some big and small both from junior forward Michela Coury.
She scored, was fouled, and made the free throw to open overtime and give Powers a lead it would never relinquish. Coury finished with 14 points and 16 rebounds – including six on the offensive end.
But she also forced a travel during the final minute of the fourth quarter that helped preserve the regulation tie, and grabbed one of those offensive rebounds to ice the game after Powers missed two free throws with five seconds to go on overtime.
“We just knew it was going to come down to the last minute as far as who was going to make that last shot,” Staudacher said. “We’d been trying to feed (Coury) down low all game, but it was difficult to get her down there.
“To start that overtime, that three-point play was huge. That wasn’t the intention. We do a dribble drive, and we were working it right there. She was open, and we’ve got to feed her the ball."
Junior guard Sara Ruhstorfer led the Chargers with 16 points and junior guard Ally Haran added 12 with five assists and five steals.
Sophomore Halee Nieman led Bullock Creek with 15 points, 11 rebounds and four steals, while freshman forward Alyssa Mudd had 12 points and sophomore guard Hannah Heldt had nine, five assists and six steals. But the Lancers (23-4) fired only four shots during the overtime, and made only one.
Still, as coach Justin Freeland said after, most of the time when a team is outrebounded 47-28 it should mean a double-digit loss. Instead, Bullock Creek hung on through 11 lead changes and despite 17 Powers second-chance points.
“One thing we learned as a team is to not give up,” Heldt said. “In the Clare game (Quarterfinal), we were down 15, and probably a lot of people lost hope in us. But we just kept going.”
Bullock Creek has had other strong teams under Freeland, including a 23-1 finisher in 2006 and a 24-1 squad in 2007-08. But neither of those advanced out of the Regional.
This team entered the tournament unranked, but beat No. 2 Ludington at the Regional and fell just shy of its first championship game berth. Only three seniors graduate, and four starters should return.
“There are a lot of athletes, from the pros to college to high school, who thought, ‘We’re young. We’ll be back next year,’” Freeland said. “I don’t want to come back one year older. We need to come back one year better. Our mentality this offseason is not going to be happy. We’re going to be hungry. And I know everyone’s going to be on board with that.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Flint Powers Catholic guard Ally Haran pushes the ball upcourt during Friday's Semifinal against Bullock Creek. (Middle) Bullock Creek's Ellie Juengel (24) looks for a teammate while defended by Powers' Sara Ruhstorfer. (Photos by Hockey Weekly Action Photo.)
Yale Athletics Completes Banner Winter with 3 Record-Setting Seasons
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
March 20, 2025
Whatever dollar number Chace Palmateer had next to “banner updates” on the 2024-25 Yale athletic department budget, it’s not going to be enough.
But after a record-breaking winter for the Bulldogs, he’s not really concerned with costs.
“We have six (titles to add) for winter alone, and that’s not including that we had a pretty good fall with cross country,” Palmateer said. “It’s a fantastic problem to have, and truthfully, I hope we have more in the spring.”
Yale’s wrestling, boys basketball and girls basketball teams each completed perhaps the best seasons in their respective program histories this winter, smashing team and individual records along the way.
“That energy among our student-athletes was phenomenal this winter,” Yale boys basketball coach Garnett Kohler said. “That’s one thing about our Yale community, we all support each other. We’re all Bulldogs, through and through, and we love to see each other have success. I thought we kind of fed off each other’s success, too. The wrestlers got going really good early, and that kind of set the stage, then us and the girls got going.”
Yale’s wrestlers were runners-up at the Division 3 Team Final, their best finish ever. The boys basketball team set a record for wins in a season at 22, won the Blue Water Area Conference and District titles, and advanced to the Division 2 Regional Final for just the second time in program history. The girls also set a record for wins in a season at 22, shared the BWAC title, won a District and advanced to a Regional Final for the first time.
“The atmosphere in the school was great,” Yale wrestling coach Rob Majcher said. “So many programs were having so much success because of the work they put in. It’s nice to see that hard work that the kids and coaches put in really paid off for them.”
Majcher’s team was the first to make its postseason run, winning its second-straight Regional title with a dramatic 32-31 victory against BWAC rival Algonac.
The Bulldogs defeated Adrian Madison in the Quarterfinals and Lake Odessa Lakewood in the Semifinals at Kalamazoo’s Wings Event Center before running into an all-time great Dundee team in the Final.
“It meant everything (to get to the Finals),” Yale senior 120-pounder Landon Sopha said. “Everything I’ve done throughout my life was all coming down to that moment for the team. It was just pure joy and excitement, not only getting that mitten (trophy), but thinking of these next years and how great Yale wrestling can be.”
Sopha was part of a record-tying six boys Individual Finals qualifiers for the Bulldogs, and one of five to place, as he took third at 120. Mackey McClelland (113) placed second, Cole McLaughlin (165) placed third, Logan Rhodes (120) placed fourth and Kersten McClelland (132) placed fifth. The five boys placers were second-best in program history, and if you add Gianna Hoskins (105) and Ember Marriott (190), who both placed sixth in the girls tournament in their respective weight classes, the seven total would be an all-time best.
Throughout the year, the Bulldogs set program records for most individual varsity matches won (798), takedowns (1,485) and varsity pins (475) in a season.
McLaughlin set the record for most first-minute pins in a season at 24, and Kersten McClelland had 536 match points, a school record.
“We told the kids, ‘You stick with this, and you will do good things,’” Majcher said. “As a coach, it’s definitely fulfilling to see a group of kids that did stay and did achieve what they were able to.”
Then there was Sopha, who finished off a record-breaking career for the Bulldogs. He became the first in Yale wrestling history to advance to the individual semifinals all four years, the second four-time all-state finisher, fourth four-time Finals qualifier, third four-time BWAC champ, and the all-time leader in career match points at 1,354. He also became the second Yale wrestler to reach the 200-win mark.
“It means a lot,” Sopha said. “For me, it’s something that I’ll be able to look back on forever. It’s something that I’ll hopefully be able to watch people in the future break. It’s pretty cool.”
As wrestling season wound down, the boys basketball team found itself re-writing its own program record book.
Yale finished 22-4 on the year, winning a record 19 regular-season games and setting a program record for consecutive wins with 14. It was a season that surprised Kohler.
“We lost eight seniors from last year, and they had a lot of success on their own,” he said. “We had a lot of new guys coming in, and I did know they had some talent and had some success coming up through the younger ages. I knew we could eventually be good, but I didn’t expect the season-long success we had, strictly because we were so young and untested. That’s really a testament to what (seniors) Ryan Fisher, Clayton Harmon and Blake Bowman were able to do. They were able to get those other guys to buy into that real early, and everybody kind of fed off their leadership.”
While the team was setting records, junior guard Jackson Kohler was lighting the individual record book on fire.
He set marks for points (560), steals (82) and 3-pointers (76) made in a season, as well as points (1,164) and assists (417) for a career.
“Obviously, I’m a team guy, so I wanted the league championship and the District championship, but it’s always good to have accomplishments along the way when you’re winning,” said Jackson Kohler, who is Garnett’s son. “Being a little kid growing up when he was coaching here earlier, I was always watching the older guys practice and how they would go about practicing and how they would be in their games. I always looked up to them and just worked and worked to get to where I am now.”
As Jackson was setting records on the boys side, his classmate Sadie Dykstra was doing the same while leading a record-setting Yale girls team.
Dykstra, who won the long jump and 300-meter hurdles at the Lower Peninsula Division 2 Track & Field Finals in 2024, also became her program’s all-time leading scorer this season, sitting at 1,248 after her junior year.
She’s the Yale girls basketball record holder for points in a game (38), field goals in a game (14), free throws made in a game (12), points in a season (596), scoring average in a season (22.9) and field goals made in a season (217 prior to the Regional Final).
“I think it was super cool – this doesn’t happen very often where you can (go) from the girls side to the boys side and see records being broken by two individual players,” said Dykstra, who admitted that her record-setting season hadn’t really sunk in yet. “I’m going to be honest, it’s probably not even hit me yet that our team went that far to the Regional. Of course, I’m super excited, but I just know I have so much more to give. I’m really looking forward to next season.”
For Yale girls basketball coach Jason Leonard, who spent time with the boys program before taking over the girls head coaching job a year ago, seeing Kohler and Dykstra excel at the same time has been a joy.
“You don’t get to see that – you’re lucky to see one on one side, boys or girls,” he said. “To me, they’re the two best players in the area, and it’s a pretty cool thing to see. I’ve seen Jackson come up on the boys side and as a freshman, he had a huge impact. It’s pretty cool to see and pretty cool for the programs and the community to have them leading their teams to a new level.”
Of course, Dykstra’s records were just the tip of the iceberg for a team that was also experiencing a record run.
The Bulldog girls tied their program record for BWAC wins (13) and regular-season wins (19), while setting the mark for total wins. They also set records for free throw percentage (63.96 percent) and field goals made in a season (551 prior to the Regional Final).
Dykstra also wasn’t the only record-breaker on the team, as senior Alyssa Barr became the program’s all-time leader in career rebounds and blocks with 690 and 74, respectively, heading into the Regional Final loss against Country Day.
“I think we exceeded expectations,” Dykstra said. “I don’t think anybody thought, ‘Oh, they’re going to get to the finals of Regionals,’ just for the fact that we matched up with Armada in the first round of Regionals. I think we definitely exceeded expectations coming from more of other people’s standpoints. For me, I think we met my expectations, because we weren’t going to lose to a team (Armada) two out of three times.”
Regardless of the expectations any of the teams had coming into the season, one thing is certain: It was a winter nobody in Yale will soon forget.
“I will say, we’ve had very good teams come out of the Thumb, and different schools have had different teams succeed at different times, but I don’t remember a school having across-the-board success like we had this winter with the three teams,” Garnett Kohler said. “In schools like ours, talent gets spread out across the groups, and talent comes in waves. To do it all in the same season, it’s pretty fun to watch.”
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) Players on Yale’s bench cheer on their teammates during a game this season. (2) Landon Sopha carries the state flag during the opening ceremony at the MHSAA Team Wrestling Finals. (3) Jackson Kohler gets to the basket against Algonac. (4) Sadie Dykstra shoots a jumper against Croswell-Lexington. (Photos by Katie Allen/Yale Expositor.)