D2 Winners Follow Through on Title Plans
March 4, 2017
By Tim Robinson
Special for Second Half
CANTON — The Division 2 boys bowling championship came down to the final frame Friday, and when it was over, Lowell had completed a three-year plan that culminated in the school’s first MHSAA title.
Trailing by 46 pins after Baker games, the Red Arrows turned it on during regular play, outscoring Eaton Rapids by 90 pins to take the 1,117-1,073 victory at Super Bowl in Canton.
“It came down to the end in every match,” Lowell coach Chris Clark said.
Lowell senior Logan Smith said when the Red Arrows began the 10th frame in regular play, they realized they were close to winning.
“A couple of their guys had open frames in the ninth, and all of us had marks, which was huge for us,” he said. “But it came down to the last guy before it hit us. It was amazing. I cannot believe it.”
Lowell’s success was the culmination of a plan put forth when Clark took over as coach three years ago.
“The first year,” senior Ben Stewart said, “we had the idea that we had some kid who could bowl pretty well. Let’s just make the state meet. Last year, our plan was we knew we could get there, let’s make it to match play.”
The Red Arrows fell just short of that second aspiration, but had a source of motivation this season.
“The third year would have been the plan to take home the trophy, and this year we came through on our goal,” Stewart said.
Lowell was the No. 3 seed after the qualifying round, while Eaton Rapids was No. 8. The Red Arrows downed No. 6 St. Clair Shores Lakeshore in the Quarterfinals and No. 7 Tecumseh in the Semifinals.
Eaton Rapids, the No. 8 seed, rolled past top seed Flint Kearsley in the quarters and No. 4 Byron Center in the Semifinals.
“This whole year, we had great scores all around,” Stewart said. “We took first in (the Ottawa-Kent) conference, we took first at Regionals. I think from the start, we had this mindset that our whole year was for this weekend.”
The Lowell team’s reaction was subdued in the moments after the win was completed.
“If we were in the other team’s shoes, we wouldn’t want them cheering and screaming in your face,” Stewart said. “You have to have respect for the people you’re bowling against, especially if they make it as far as you did.”
The Lowell bowlers celebrated by staying in their rooms and being together as a team.
“We didn’t sleep much last night,” senior Logan Smith said Saturday. “We all roomed together, having fun and cracking jokes. It was a fun time.
“It was pretty unbelievable,” he said of winning the Division 2 title. “My whole life, I never expected to be a state champ. It was something I never expected to get.”
For the Flint Kearsley girls, winning MHSAA championships is something they’ve come to expect. The Hornets’ title-worthy performance Friday was their fourth in a row and fifth in the last six years.
“It never gets old, that’s for sure,” Kearsley coach Robert Ploof said.
His team held off a game Bay City John Glenn squad in the Final, 1,299-1,217.
“Their coaches did a fabulous job,” Ploof said of the John Glenn team. “We bowled that team a couple of times earlier in the season, and they were nowhere as good as they were (Friday). They pushed us right to the end.”
The Hornets won, in part, due to a key substitution in the Final.
Karlee Griffin, who is Kearsley’s No. 2 bowler, was having an off day and feared she would hurt the team. So she asked Ploof to replace her in the lineup, giving Mary Wheeler, a sophomore, a chance to step in.
“I didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself to pull it any further,” Griffin said. “I wanted my team to win, and I didn’t have the faith in myself that I could pull through, and who knows what would have happened?”
Wheeler stepped into the moment and thrived.
“She came in and threw a big double that helped us win,” Ploof said.
It’s a group of Hornets that Ploof says gets along with each other like no team he’s had in 12 years at Kearsley.
“There’s no drama,” he said. “They’re having a good time and they enjoy it, and they fight for each other.”
A strong feeder program helps, too: Kearsley’s middle school program has five teams, and the junior varsity also thrives.
“That’s what you’ve got to have,” Ploof said. “We’re pretty fortunate as far as that goes.”
Click for full girls results and full boys results.
PHOTOS: (Top) Lowell’s boys pose with their MHSAA championship trophy. (Middle) Flint Kearsley’s girls, holding up their trophy from winning a Division 2 Regional last weekend.
Durand Makes Good on 1st Impressions, Lands School's 1st Finals Title in Any Sport
By
Jeff Bleiler
Special for MHSAA.com
February 27, 2026
JACKSON — Nick Wood had an inkling early that something special was afoot for his Durand High School boys bowling team.
It was during tryouts.
“You could just see that these kids were gifted athletically,” said the first-year coach. “They listen well, they took right in and they ran with it.”
Correction: They ran away with it.
On the strength of three freshmen whose experience belies their years, the Durand boys bowling team rolled through match play Friday, sweeping upstart Romulus Summit Academy North in the Division 3 championship, and left Jax 60 with the school’s first Finals trophy in any sport.
“It meant a lot, being the first state title in our school history,” said Noah Wood, the team’s anchor, the coach’s son and one of the three freshmen. “We were grinding all day. We made our makeables like we’re supposed to. All in all, it was a great day.”
After qualifying third with a total of 3,315 for eight Baker and two regular games, the Railroaders lived up to their name by dropping just one Baker game the rest of the way in three best-of-five matches.
That came in the second game of the Quarterfinal against sixth-seed Caro, but Durand won the next two to advance to face second-seed Bronson in the Semifinals. Bronson reached that round by bowling a rare sixth game after tying Olivet 2-2-1 in the best of five and moving on with a 182-167 victory in the deciding sixth game.
Durand won the Semifinal in three straight, including a 154-113 second game that Nick Wood said was the result of the oil pattern “cliffing” and playing extremely difficult for both teams. The Railroaders closed the match out with a 216 in the third game to advance, then took out Summit with games of 176, 226 and 210.
“The kids really kept the ball in front of them and made their spares, and that puts a lot of pressure on your opponents,” Nick Wood said.
Noah Wood, Carson Drury and Logan Loudermilk are all freshmen but have been bowling together since elementary school. Wood and Loudermilk are cousins, and all three have competed in Michigan Junior Masters Association tournaments. The MJMA circuit is known for providing young bowlers the opportunity to compete on difficult patterns and at houses around the state. Noah Wood is a six-time MJMA champion.
“There is a not a better choice of tournaments in all of the states surrounding Michigan that I could have chosen to prepare me for this tournament more than MJMA,” he said.
While the three freshmen carried much of the load, the team would not have won without the contributions of junior Ryan Hunt and seniors Johnathan Munger and Drew Crackel.
“Everyone on the team has a job,” Noah Wood said. “If somebody misses a spare, then somebody goes back up there and gets a strike or leaves a makeable and makes it, that gets us right back on track.”
Summit left Jax 60 with the program’s highest finish at the Finals. The Dragons had finished 10th twice in coach Joe Wrone’s 12 seasons at the helm and had not advanced into the Quarterfinals before Friday.
“We had a sense if we could even get to cut, something could happen,” Wrone said. “They started unloading it in the first game.”
The Dragons qualified eighth with a total of 3,084 and drew top seed Adrian Madison in the Quarterfinals. They won a back-and-forth match that went the distance with Summit throwing 222 and 221 the last two games after being down 2-1.
Summit opened the Semifinal against Croswell-Lexington with a 267 game and won the match 3-1 before the urethane cliff seemed to get to the best of the Dragons in the championship.
Summit graduates Landon Corley, Michi Wilson and Daniel Griffith-Wrone but returns Greyson Wiedling, Addison Wiedling and Gabriel Hensler.
“If you had a Cinderella story for the tournament, these were the guys. They’ve been together for three years,” Wrone said. “They’ve bonded as friends, and they are so tight. The hugging, the crying when they made it, the advancement. They bowl for each other. It’s all team for these guys. The effort they gave was impressive.”
For Nick Wood, the weight of his team’s accomplishment — doing something no other sports team had done in school history — was not lost on him.
“It means way more for our community than it does for me,” he said. “We’re new to the community. These people are diehards, they leave, they come back. This is for Durand.”