'Little' Sacred Heart Sets Big Goals Again
August 17, 2017
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
MOUNT PLEASANT – Deep in the woods, so far west of municipal Mount Pleasant you’d think you’d gone too far, findable only by invite and the line of cars parked alongside the road, Michigan’s most intriguing cross country team is getting ready to show why.
Well, that might be a little dramatic. Sacred Heart has run early-morning August practices at Deerfield Nature Park for years, and there’s a sign for Camp Weidman and a swinging metal gate right off Vandecar Road to help point the way to the Irish’s preseason home.
But the whole “intriguing” part? That’s hard to dispute.
Three girls teams – Sacred Heart in Division 4, Traverse City St. Francis in Division 3 and Otsego in Division 2 – have won two straight MHSAA Lower Peninsula Finals titles. But comparing times from last season’s races at Michigan International Speedway, run separately but on the same course under similar conditions (the later races got a little muddier), Sacred Heart also would’ve won Division 3 last fall and placed second in Division 2 to the Bulldogs.
That’s pretty incredible for a school of 130 students – and invites anticipation for this fall, as the Irish begin the race season Saturday with six of their top seven runners from 2016, plus another standout who missed nearly all of last fall with an injury.
“Our top runner left us, but we have a really deep team for D4. We have a lot of runners who push each other – push each other to get on varsity, push each other to get to Brooklyn (home of MIS) again, so we are all competitors,” said senior Megan Nowak, that runner who, after just missing making all-state in 2015, was injured most of last fall.
“In D4 this year, we’re the team to beat. But compared to everybody else in all the other divisions, we’re just a little team. So we look at everybody else, look at other people’s times even not in our division, to have that motivation and drive to keep going and be better.”
After winning every race they entered last season, the Irish do have some ideas for another encore.
They start Saturday with the Ryan Shay Memorial Invitational, a 2-mile race at Central Lake. They hope to end Nov. 4 at MIS holding an MHSAA championship trophy for the third straight season, becoming the seventh Lower Peninsula girls team to win three straight titles and first since Clarkston and Goodrich both completed three-year runs in 2005.
Along the way they’ll again see how they match up with many of the state’s best small schools – but with a special opportunity Sept. 15. Sacred Heart will run the “Elite” race at the Spartan Invitational at Michigan State University, which annually includes many of the state’s fastest teams regardless of division and this season will be filled mostly with Division 1 programs plus a few from out of state.
Most years, most if not all Division 4 teams would be severely overmatched against the “Elite” competition. But this Sacred Heart team is not typical for one of the state’s smallest schools. In their most recent high school race – last year’s Final – all seven runners broke 21 minutes.
Now-senior Bailley McConnell came in second in 18:55, with now-junior sister Cammie fifth at 19:10, now-junior Lauren MacDonald 11th at 19:41, and another now-junior Scout Nelson 20th at 20:09. Now-sophomore Desiree McConnell was 25th at 20:14, and now senior Rowan Fitzpatrick just missed all-state (top 30) coming in 31st at 20:28. Alexis McConnell – the oldest of the four sisters – came in fourth last season at 19:09 in her final high school race, but rejoining the lineup is Nowak, who was 36th in 20:26 as a sophomore.
“It’s hard to imagine that after the past two seasons we still have something to look forward to,” longtime Sacred Heart coach Mark Zitzelsberger said. “But we have eight gals that I think we can get under 20 minutes, and if that’s the case and they’re healthy we should be pretty tough to beat again. They girls have continued to work and improve. Their goal is to try and break their record.”
Sacred Heart scored 34 points at last season’s Finals – cross country is scored by adding up a team’s placers, so lower is better – to beat by a point Rockford’s winning score of 35 in LP Division 1 in 2000. That was the first year cross country moved from classes to divisions for postseason competition, and no team has scored better since the switch. In fact, no team in LP Division 4 has scored lower than Sacred Heart the last two seasons.
But the Irish plan to go low again. And early returns make it look possible.
The McConnell sisters despite being one fewer are poised for another big season. Bailley’s fastest time last fall was 18:38, and she ran 18:30 during an offseason meet – and has her sights set on Alexis’ personal-record 18:10. Cammie has finished 17th and fifth, respectively, at her first two Finals, and Desiree is showing perhaps the biggest improvement from last year. Sacred Heart runs a “marathon mile” session where the girls run miles at race pace as far as they can while keeping it up – and she ripped through five miles last week, tying the program record.
McDonald improved from 26th to 11th over her first two Finals, Nelson was 10th as a freshman in 2015 and 20th last fall, and Fitzpatrick has posted Finals finishes of 26th, 47th and 31st her first three seasons. Nowak counted as the fourth-fastest runner on the 2014 team that finished third in LP Division 4 before her near all-state run a year later.
Zitzelsberger called it a “coach’s dream” to have so many runners who could be the lead most seasons. He’d never seen anything like it before he began watching them emerge during junior high. But it also made sense once they arrived.
The McConnells’ parents Rob and Tori are lifelong competitive runners who both ran the Boston Marathon earlier this decade, and Rob with Nelson’s mom Luanne Goffnett have coached in the Sacred Heart program and laid much of this foundation with the junior high program.
Aside from Nowak – whose family moved from the Lansing area before her ninth grade year to follow her dad’s job – the rest of the girls have grown up running together and playing other sports successfully too. Scout Nelson and Nowak also were standouts on last season’s girls basketball team that made the Class D Semifinals and MacDonald came up from the junior varsity, while Nelson, Nowak, Bailley and Cammie McConnell all earned all-state accolades in helping the track & field team finish fifth in LP Division 4 in the spring.
“We all came up from middle school, and it’s kinda become a little family,” Fitzpatrick said. “We became attached to each other.”
Twenty years ago might seem like yesterday when Zitzelsberger recalls just trying to find five runners total after taking over the program. His 1998 team had two girls, but he was able to pull in enough off the track team to build the school’s first MHSAA girls team champion in the sport, in Class D, in 1999.
A decade later, Bridget Bennett won back-to-back LP Division 4 championships in 2008 and 2009. There have been other stars. But he’s never enjoyed a collection of talent like this.
And while Sacred Heart likely won’t be expected to win at MSU next month, it will be a race worth watching as the Irish push to add another fine finish to a memorable and growing legacy.
“We’re such a small school, and most of the people running in the Elite are huge,” Bailley McConnell said. “They have thousands of high school students, and our school is so little. So to be able to do that would be amazing.”
Geoff Kimmerly joined the MHSAA as its Media & Content Coordinator in Sept. 2011 after 12 years as Prep Sports Editor of the Lansing State Journal. He has served as Editor of Second Half since its creation in Jan. 2012. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for the Barry, Eaton, Ingham, Livingston, Ionia, Clinton, Shiawassee, Gratiot, Isabella, Clare and Montcalm counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Bailley McConnell (1858) and sister Cammie McConnell (1859) help push the pace during last fall's MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 4 Final. (Middle) Sacred Heart, posing with its 2016 championship trophy, returns six of seven runners this fall. (Photos by Matt Yacoub & Janina Pollatz/RunMichigan.com.)
Pioneer's Huff Blazed Cross Country Trail
October 3, 2017
By Ron Pesch
Special for Second Half
Today, you’ll find her seated behind a desk in Denver. A CPA and the mother of three, including a former Olympic speed skater, Beth Jurgensmeyer still runs. The MHSAA’s first girls individual cross country champion, she was introduced to the sport as an 8-year old.
The daughter of Reverend Robert O. Huff, a Lutheran minister, and his wife Jane, she was born in Indianapolis. The fifth of six children and the couple’s first daughter, she and the family moved to Midland when Beth was a baby.
“I had a kidney infection,” said Jurgensmeyer, “and a doctor had told us that running would help clear it up. Now I don’t know if that was true, but I started running for Fleet Feet in Midland. It was fun.”
Still going strong today, Fleet Feet was formed in 1967. A track and field and cross country program, it was designed with the goal of keeping kids active. The club competed in AAU competitions, and Huff excelled.
A friend and fellow runner from Fleet Feet introduced her to speed skating.
“Cindy Kressler invited me to skate with her family in the park in Midland. Her brother, Craig, was a pretty good speed skater and ended up an Olympian in 1980. So, I did that in the winter.”
Huff excelled in that sport as well, skating for the Midland Speed Skating Club and earning “Pony Girl“, “Midget” and “Junior” recognition at Michigan Skating Association-sponsored events across the state, and at other races around the Midwest.
“My brothers were all older than me, and they all played sports,” she added. “Football, basketball, baseball, hockey. So I competed too.”
But in sixth grade Huff’s family moved. Pastor Huff had received a call to a church in Ann Arbor. It was his fourth assignment.
“There, I continued to skate, now with the Wolverine Club (based out of Detroit). I ran with the Michigamme Club, and we were coached by (Kenneth) ‘Red’ Simmons.”
Born in 1910, Simmons was a football and track star at Redford High School in Detroit, then at Michigan Normal College (now Eastern Michigan University) before serving 25 years with the Detroit Police Department. Upon retirement Simmons, along with his wife, formed “The Michigammes,” a women’s track club designed to allow girls to compete. In 1976, he was named the first coach in the history of women’s track and field at the University of Michigan.
Huff never missed a beat, winning more than a dozen state age group championships between 1973 and 1976.
“I attended Slauson,” she continued. “That fed into Ann Arbor Pioneer. Back then, it was the only high school in Ann Arbor that had 9th grade. I liked that. You go there you’re the little kid, running with the older ones, trying to keep up. You’re able to keep a low key. I wasn’t very big, and the uniform was sliding down my shoulders. My Mom took it to a seamstress and had mine altered so it would fit.
“My parents never pressured me. My participation was never assumed. Each year, my Dad would ask me a question, ‘Beth, do you want to run again?’ I did - I loved to run. I’d sleep in my shorts and shirt, wake up in the morning, slip on my shoes and run before class. Because of Fleet Feet and The Michigammes, I’d run hundreds and hundreds of races before I got to high school. I knew I was pretty good, but I always liked to be kind of unknown.”
Flying under the radar didn’t last long. By season’s end, Huff, along with sophomore Dana Loesche, had emerged as the team’s top runners.
“After my freshman year, people suggested I run between cross country and track seasons,” Jurgensmeyer recalled. “I told them, ‘I skate in the winter.’”
Now coached by Scott Hubbard, Huff was Pioneer’s top runner as a sophomore and led the cross country team through a stellar year.
Hubbard had run in high school for Ann Arbor Huron and later at Eastern Michigan University. Many today know Hubbard as the longtime voice of the Detroit Marathon. “Beth was very, very good. She was just average size, but she was whippet fast,” he said. “(But) at the state level, cross country for girls was not a sport sponsored by the MHSAA in 1977.”
Yet since 1975, an unsanctioned state championship was hosted in Michigan. In both 1975 and 1976, the event was held at Ann Arbor Pioneer. The 1977 event was run at Potterville High School in November. A total of 370 runners from 105 schools competed in the meet, a substantial increase from the 243 runners that had participated a year previous. Miriam Boyd of Port Huron, one of Michigan’s all-time great prep distance runners, finished with the top individual time, followed by Carol Schenk of Flint Kearsley and sophomore Huff. Crosstown rival Ann Arbor Huron ended the day with the team honor, while Pioneer finished third in Class A.
“It was different then,” said Jurgensmeyer, laughing. “My Mom would make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. On race days there would be two oranges and a Hershey bar. Now, they’d tell you that all that sugar would not be the best thing for you. After a race, you’d go to the car, grab a clean shirt, go to the awards ceremony and go home. My Dad, he couldn’t really watch many races. Saturday’s were busy, as he had weddings or prepared for Sunday. Sometimes, when I would run, he’d be there standing with four or five others from church, as they prepared to go to a meeting. He couldn’t stay the whole race, and that was OK.”
“While in Ann Arbor I met a man, John McCravey, who was in medical training at the University of Michigan,” Jurgensmeyer remembered. “He was one of the people who really wasn’t afraid to offer something other than praise. ‘Beth, your arm swing is awful!’ It was nice to hear criticism. I could get better.”
Today, Dr. John McCravey still practices in Tennessee.
“I had come to U of M for a one-year residency. I had run at Dartmouth, and coached while going to med school in Memphis. In Ann Arbor, I worked with Elmo Morales, the founder of the Ann Arbor Track Club. We started age group cross country. The running boom was on, and Ann Arbor was a hotbed. Beth was older than many of the pupils in the program, and clearly a lot better than most at that point. We became running pals. (Because of) the skating, she had great endurance.”
The pair logged hours in the streets of Ann Arbor, including time during the brutal winter of 1977-78.
“We talked the whole time. As a coach, it’s great when you can run with a student. You can see what they’re doing, feel the biomechanics, and offer advice. ”
In Class A in the spring of 1978, Huff finished second to Boyd in the two-mile at the MHSAA’s sixth annual Girls Track and Field Meet. In the fall, Huff, now a junior, earned Michigan’s first Lower Peninsula Open Class cross country individual championship.
Seven months later, Huff would win the two-mile in track. Only, it wouldn’t be in Michigan.
In December 1979, the Huff family left Ann Arbor for Janesville, Wisconsin, as her father accepted a new assignment.
At Craig High School, Huff again joined the cross country and track teams and quickly emerged as their top runner. Her 10:53.19 time at the Division 1 Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association championship meet set a new state mark. During her senior year in Wisconsin, a case of mononucleosis and a stress fracture set her back, and impacted her running seasons.
Her next move was on to college, where she ran for the University of Tennessee. There, she competed in the 10,000 meters. After college, she married, had kids, and stopped running competitively. After returning to Midland, she resumed speed skating, and introduced her kids to the sports she loved. She coached them as far as she could.
Jurgensmeyer’s son, Ryan Bedford, excelled in cross country at Midland High School before hanging up the shoes to focus on speed skating. He was a 2009 world champion and a member of the 2010 Olympic team. Daughter Kristin also excelled as a runner and speed skater. Beth’s oldest son stayed with the more traditional sports of football and basketball.
Reflecting back on her years as an athlete and as a coach, she added, “Today, parents are overly involved. It’s so high-pressure so early that kids become miserable. Research shows if you start specializing kids too young in one sport, they will be done by age 18. I always wanted my kids to try all sorts of sports and not just specialize. Just let kids fall. Let them get dirty.”
“Really, women’s sports are the best thing to ever happen to sports,” said Hubbard, remembering the long haul involved in opening up those opportunities to the girls. “I was so fortunate to be witness to that. The world is really much richer because of it.”
Ron Pesch has taken an active role in researching the history of MHSAA events since 1985 and began writing for MHSAA Finals programs in 1986, adding additional features and "flashbacks" in 1992. He inherited the title of MHSAA historian from the late Dick Kishpaugh following the 1993-94 school year, and resides in Muskegon. Contact him at [email protected] with ideas for historical articles.
PHOTOS: (Top) Ann Arbor Pioneer's Beth Huff, right, runs just ahead of South Lyon's Cheryl Scheffler during the Ann Arbor Greenhills Invitational in 1978. (Middle top) Huff, second row and third from right, was a freshman on the 1976 near-undefeated Pioneer cross country team that lost only to Livonia Stevenson. (Middle below) In this clip from the Detroit Free Press' Sunday magazine, Huff is shown running in Ann Arbor with Pete Hallop, far left, and Mike Lutz, who went on to play bass for rock group Brownsville Station. (Below) Huff, top row second from right, starred as well for Pioneer's 1979 cross country team, winning the first MHSAA individual championship in the sport. (Photos courtesy of Beth Huff.)