Lewandowski Quadruplets Locked In to Lead TC West's Finals Titles Pursuits
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
February 13, 2026
Rivalry. Cross-town? Conference?
Not so much for this year’s Traverse City West ski teams.
It’s sibling rivalry fueling the Titans, and more specifically the “Quads” – as they are widely known – quadruplets Summer, Cam, Dane and Brock Lewandowski.
And, while conference and cross-town school Traverse City Central will be an obstacle in the path of West’s drive to reclaim the boys and girls Division 1 Championships later this month, the sibling rivalry will take center stage when the Quads hit the slopes of Boyne Mountain for the Division 1 Finals on Feb. 23.
Not necessarily among those four, though. This sibling rivalry is mostly a long-standing one between the Quads and their older brothers, Aiden and Caleb, who own individual and team Finals championship trophies. All the Lewandowski children are life-long skiers, and a Lewandowski has been leading the Titans program every year since 2019.
The older brothers haven’t let them forget West has failed to win a boys championship since they left. Aiden and Caleb, who were on West’s first Finals championship team in 2021 and now attend Michigan State University, remind the Quads every chance they get. West’s boys also won Division 1 titles in 2022 and 2023.
That sibling rivalry pressure could help propel the Titans boys and girls to the top this year despite steep competition from last year’s girls champion, Central, and boys champ, Marquette.
“I know there's a lot of pressure on them to perform and to want to be better than their siblings,” acknowledged their mother, Tonya Lewandowski. “Ski racing is a mentally grinding, tough sport because you will have way more failure than success in this sport. We have been so proud of our kids.”
Father Jeremy Lewandowski knows the bar was set pretty high for the Quads by his state champion sons.
“Their whole life the Quads have felt that,” said Jeremy Lewandowski. “And Caleb never lets them forget it. Aiden just raced at fall camp again to prove to them he's still faster.”
The West boys already have their eyes set on Marquette and have locked up the Big North Conference championship with one more competition next week. The Titans haven’t lost a conference race this year, and they topped Marquette in this year’s Regional on Monday.
The West girls are trailing Central as they head into next week’s Big North Conference finale at Crystal Mountain. The Quads and their coaches see their opponents more as friends competing together, rather than rivals.
“It's going to come down probably to the one-hundredth of the second of who is a little bit faster,” predicted West coach Libby Shutler. “We lost the last BNC race to Central girls by a half a point. It's anybody's race on Tuesday.”
Shutler heads up the girls program with the support of boys head coach Ed Johnson and assistant coaches Austin Johnson and Morgan Siemer. She looks for the Final to be just as close.
“On any given day you never know,” Shutler said. “The cool thing about the state championship meet and what has been since I raced in the '80s and '90s is it truly brings the best ski racers in the state of Michigan together to perform, and they're all really good. There's a group of probably 10 boys, 10 girls, any of them could win the state championship.”
The Central girls edged West this week at the Regional with a combined score of 60 for the giant slalom and slalom. West finished with 61.
To get by Central in the league and Final, the West girls will battle stiff competition in Central’s Quinn Gerber, who is looking for a fourth-straight individual Finals title, and her teammates Avery Taggert and Kellen Kudary.
Summer Lewandowski is ready for the challenge, though, with her teammates Avery Plummer and Sarah Shapiro always competing for the top spots.
“Quinn (Gerber) and Avery (Taggert) are making me better because they're just amazing skiers, and I don't want to be the only one out of the four (Quads) that's not exceeding expectations,” Summer Lewandowski said. “Sarah Shapiro tore her ACL her freshman year – which was horrible – but she got back into it and it feels like we're sisters, and these times are so close with that good competition out there.”
While the West girls battle Central and the rest of the Division 1 competitors, the Lewandowski family is quick to assert Brock Lewandowski may be the difference maker in a boys title run.
He missed last season and part of this one recovering from multiple leg breaks.
“After healing he broke it again – same leg, different spot,” said Tonya Lewandowski. “He missed all of the sophomore year. So we have been so insanely proud of Brock this year. It is ‘The year of Brock.’”
Dane, Cam and Brock Lewandowski all credit the efforts of their captain Grady Ellis for keeping the Titans’ focused on opportunities ahead. Ellis finished fifth in the giant slalom and seventh in the slalom at the Regional.
And Cam Lewandowski also agreed Brock’s return has been a difference-maker.
“It’s pretty crazy this year seeing him as good as he is right now,” he said. “It shocked me, actually, the first few races, up there – sometimes you never know what's going to happen. I feel like I would definitely be scared to come back and do it all.”
Brock Lewandowski admitted it wasn’t easy to get back on the hill after the second injury. But he’s also quick to point out he’s more than ready to compete for championships.
“It wasn't great watching from the hill, watching from the sideline, and it was definitely a little scary the start of our season thinking of what happened in the past years with two breaks,” he admitted. “But after I got over that, it's been really fine. I haven't even really thought about it at all.”
Brock Lewandowski is ready to quiet his older brothers a little bit, as is Dane Lewandowski, who took fifth in last year’s Final in both slalom and giant slalom. He believes the team title is well within the Titans’ grasp. Individual titles are also in sight as the Lewandowskis will still have a senior year left next winter.
“We have a little more depth, I would say, than last year and we're working pretty well together,” said Dane Lewandowski, who pointed out his older brothers first started skiing with the older brothers of Central’s three-time champion Gerber. “We know what Marquette can do, and that's definitely our competition for states. We’ve just got to ski to our ability and nothing better, nothing worse.”
Both Lewandowski parents are engineers, and not ski racers. They were introduced to skiing while attending Michigan Tech. Mom was a swimmer and Dad was a baseball and lacrosse guy.
“The joke is people ask, ‘Were you and Jeremy really good ski racers?’ and we're like, ‘No, we grew up downstate and we were just lucky,’” Tonya said. “Jeremy's a much better skier than I am, but it was just one of those situations when our kids were young, where it would hit about 5:30 at night and we had six young kids and we'd go, ‘What are we going to do now ’til bedtime?’”
The answer became clear. It led to their children learning to ski at Hickory Hills, a Traverse City-owned ski hill.
“Jeremy pulled out the Home Depot lights and we set up the little plastic picnic tables in the yard and made jumps and luges for these kids on plastic skis,” Tonya recalled. “They just loved it. And then our friends introduced us to Hickory Hills, and it changed our life. It totally changed our life.”
Tom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.
PHOTOS (Top) The Lewandowski quadruplets – Summer, Cam, Dane and Brock – race this season. (Middle) The Lewandowski family poses for a photo with the quadruplets as infants, and then later during a day on the hill. (Below) The Lewandowski quads stand for a photo with friends from Traverse City Central during Monday’s Regional. (Regional photos courtesy of the Traverse City Record-Eagle. Family and other ski photos courtesy of the Lewandowski family and Traverse City West ski programs.)
South Lyon's Wesner Turns Full Focus to School Sports, Big Finish to 11-Letter Career
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
January 9, 2026
SOUTH LYON — South Lyon senior Teagen Wesner isn’t hesitant to offer advice to younger athletes on the benefits of playing high school sports.
“It teaches you a lot, it brings you good friends,” Wesner said. “Being on the court and being on a team, it just brings you so much more knowledge you can’t learn in the classroom. I’ve learned so many things through sports, it’s something that’s irreplaceable to me.”
And younger athletes should certainly listen to Wesner, given she is quite an example of someone who has fully embraced all that high school sports have to offer.
When she graduates in a few months, Wesner will have 11 varsity letters, earned as three-sport athlete from the moment she arrived at South Lyon High School.
She has been on the varsity volleyball and ski teams since she was a freshman, and has been a member of South Lyon United’s lacrosse team since she was a sophomore (after playing on the JV lacrosse team as a freshman).
“It made me be a well-rounded athlete,” Wesner said of playing multiple sports. “I’ve gotten thrown into a whole bunch of different positions depending on what the coaches need. Having a background in multiple different sports really has helped my athleticism. I feel like I have matured a little more than others because I’ve been in highly competitive environments.”
Wesner said she has skied since she was 3 years old and played club volleyball since she was in elementary school, but made a decision during her junior year that reflected how much she loves playing high school sports.
Instead of playing club volleyball again after that high school volleyball season ended, Wesner decided to concentrate more on her high school teams.
“I just liked high school sports better,” she said. “Club was a lot of fun, but high school has all the people and everything.”
This past fall, Wesner was a captain of the volleyball team and an all-league performer in the Lakes Valley Conference.
This winter, Wesner is serving as captain of the South Lyon United ski team, as she hopes to build on a junior season where she was all-conference in both slalom and giant slalom.
In the spring, Wesner plans to once again play lacrosse and try and repeat what was an improbable success story last year.
Wesner, who said she stopped playing lacrosse in middle school before picking it back up again during her freshman year, took over as South Lyon United’s goalie in the fourth game of the season after the original starter was lost for the season with a torn ACL.
Wesner had played twice as goalie while in middle school, but was mainly a defender. However, desperate times called for desperate measures, so Wesner took over.
“Our goalie tore her ACL and we really didn’t have anyone else on the team, (to play the position),” Wesner said. “I just did whatever my coach needed. She knew with my background in other sports, I could pick it up quickly.”
Weeks later, Wesner and South Lyon United ended up celebrating its first MHSAA Finals championship with a 6-3 win over Hartland in the Division 1 title game.
“Taking a demanding role under high pressure, Teagan remained positive, composed and team-focused throughout the transition,” South Lyon United girls lacrosse coach Deanna Radcliffe said. “Her willingness to do whatever the team needed, combined with her resilience and steady presence, gave the team confidence during a critical stretch of the season.”
Recovering from losing its starting goalie early in the regular season to winning Division 1 was quite an improbable journey, but South Lyon did it with a stout defense and Wesner adapting so quickly her new position.
“I just kind of learned on the fly and let my instincts take over,” Wesner said. “During the season, I definitely got more training that made me way better. At the start, it was just like, 'Don’t let the ball hit you.'”
This spring, Wesner likely will return to her natural position as a defender with the starting goalie expected to be healed from her injury.
At the moment, Wesner doesn’t plan to play any of her three sports in college other than at an intramural level, which will make her cherish her high school years and all those varsity letters even more.
“I’m probably going to put them in a drawer,” she said. “But I think it’ll be cool to look back on. I’ll definitely glow on it for a couple of days. I think it’s a good accomplishment to something I’ve been working towards all four years of high school.”
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS (Top) South Lyon’s Teagen Wesner races downhill during ski season. (Middle) Wesner (7) shares a laugh with a volleyball teammate. (Below) Wesner warms up in goal during last spring’s lacrosse season. (Photos provided by the Wesner family.)