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.)
Meyers Races to Bring Home Elusive Title
January 26, 2017
By Dean Holzwarth
Special for Second Half
GRAND RAPIDS – Ben Meyers still remembers when he raced competitively for the first time on the ski slopes.
The Grand Rapids Forest Hills Northern senior standout was 7 years old at the time and competed in a small local race one afternoon at Cannonsburg Ski Area.
And how did he end up?
“I took second,” Meyers recalled. “That might have started my competitive drive. I participated in it and thought it was a lot of fun. Since then I’ve grown to absolutely love the sport.”
Meyers’ competitive nature and immense dedication has helped him emerge as one of the top skiers in the state.
A three-time MHSAA Finals qualifier, Meyers is attempting to accomplish a feat next month that hasn’t been done in almost 20 years.
A skier from Grand Rapids hasn’t won a Division 1 individual title since 1998, when Forest Hills Central’s Eric VanTongeren won the giant slalom with a two-run total of 54.42 seconds.
Meyers has made steady progress in his run to end the drought. As a sophomore he placed fifth, and last season he finished runner-up to Marquette’s Joe Weber.
“I always set my goals pretty high, and my goal was to get the individual state title last year,” Meyers said. “I’ve been racing against those top guys since I was little, and knowing them and my abilities, my goal was to be a state champion. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.”
Meyers has one more shot at making his goal a reality.
The Forest Hills Northern-Eastern combined team will compete in Regionals on Feb. 13 at Schuss Mountain. The MHSAA Finals are slated for Feb. 27 at Nubs Nob.
While Meyers is looking forward to another opportunity to bring home a Finals championship, he’s more concerned with the team’s potential bid.
“First, we have to get through Regionals with our boys team, and we didn’t lose anyone from last year,” Meyers said. “So it’s trying to get the team to state, and then the focus would shift toward getting that state championship. Right now it’s about getting the team to state and getting some good finishes.”
A Forest Hills Northern/Eastern squad has never made it to the Finals, according to coach Chris Glasco, and she said Meyers’ team-first approach to this season has been refreshing.
“As much as he wants to be a state champ, I think it would be more important to him for his entire team to make it to state,” she said. “I truly believe that, and he has changed. I think when he first started it was about Ben and his goals, but he has realized that it’s more important to be a part of something bigger than yourself and that’s the teammates around you.
“Ben has the talent to make it to state by himself, but he wants nothing more than to have his whole team there with him.”
Meyers’ team mentality was prevalent as the goalkeeper on the school’s soccer team that advanced to the Regional Finals last fall.
“I think the similarities with soccer and skiing is having a solid team behind you,” Meyers said. “People think skiing is an individual sport, but it’s greatly a team sport. You cannot succeed just by yourself.”
Glasco said Meyers’ drive to improve sets him apart. He intently watches film and other skiers, looking for any edge he can get in order to succeed.
“He wants to be the master of his sport, and at his level, hundredths (of a second) count and it’s hard to cut them,” she said. “He knows he has to become a technical specialist to make that happen. He watched everything, his high school competitors, the Olympics and the World Cup. Just figuring out what works for them and how he can apply it to his own skiing.
“If there is anything he can do to cut a hundredth here, or a hundredth there, he does it. He works on it until he has it perfected.”
Meyers didn’t rest on his laurels from last season and had a productive summer while fine-tuning certain aspects he lacked.
Increased strength was a major factor.
“I worked on strength deficiencies that I had identified so I was able to get stronger,” Meyers said. “At the beginning of the season I felt like I picked up where I left off last year. I don’t think I’ve lost anything, and I think I’ve improved.”
Meyers, who hopes to ski in college and study pre-med, points to his intangibles as motivation.
“I think my determination is my biggest strength,” he said. “Coming up through the ranks I was struggling to do well and never seemed to find the speed. It wasn’t until a few years ago when everything started to click and I was getting strong enough to finish well. That’s been a defining factor through the years.”
The recent lack of snow locally has hindered Meyers’ training; however, the team has made several trips up north where snow is more abundant.
The coaching staff has gotten creative with indoor training techniques and video sessions.
“We are behind a little bit, especially with the up north schools that are getting to be on snow, but I feel we’ve done everything possible to prepare ourselves,” Meyers said. “We’ve adapted well to the changes, and I’m looking forward to next month.”
Dean Holzwarth covered primarily high school sports for the Grand Rapids Press and MLive for 16 years and more recently served as sports editor of the Ionia Sentinel and as a sports photojournalist for WZZM. Contact him at[email protected] with story ideas for Allegan, Kent and Ottawa counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Grand Rapids Forest Hills Northern’s Ben Meyers speeds through the giant slalom on the way to finishing second in that race at last season’s Division 1 Final. (Middle) Meyers clears a gate during a run at Marquette Mountain. (Click for more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)