Redettes Hold Off TC Central, Ice 4-Peat
February 25, 2019
By Chris Dobrowolski
Special for Second Half
BELLAIRE — Marquette and Traverse City Central’s girls ski teams have stood toe to toe in the biggest meets of the season.
Central may have edged Marquette by just three points in the Regional two weeks ago, but Marquette got payback at Monday’s MHSAA Division 1 Finals at Schuss Mountain, slipping past the Trojans 51-55 to win their fourth straight championship.
“Honestly, it came down to that very last run,” said Marquette girls ski coach Dan Menze. “I told the girls that they had to lay it all out. There was nothing else to do than go for it and they did, and they ended up moving up from where they were after the first run of GS and were able to squeak by. So it was awesome.”
Three of Marquette’s four counters improved their standing in the second run of the giant slalom, including Jacey Johnson, who had the fastest time in the second run to jump from sixth to second with a 49.49. The Redettes ended up with 27 points to Traverse City Central’s 29 in the giant slalom.
“We were kind of down in the dumps on our first run on GS,” said Johnson, who was also second in the slalom (1:03.94). “We were thinking maybe TC Central would take it, but then we really turned it on in the second run. I’m really happy we got to take it.”
Marquette held a 24-26 lead over the Trojans after the slalom, helped by the top two finishers in Ainsley Kirk and Johnson, both juniors. Kirk repeated as the girls slalom champion, finishing in 1:03.69.
“It was really an honor,” said Kirk, who added a fourth-place finish in giant slalom (49.82). “There’s so many great people out here. I’m thankful for Dan for coaching us all this year. It was a great time. I thought we did pretty well. We had some scares in there after the first GS run. We definitely picked it up for the second run.”
Natalie Robinia, the only senior among the four counters for Marquette, placed ninth in the slalom (1:07.89) and was 11th in the giant slalom (51.74). Ava Bernard chipped in with a 16th-place finish in the slalom (1:09.33) and an 18th in the giant slalom (53.44).
“We knew it was going to be really close,” said Menze. “I don’t know if I thought it was going to be as close as it was, but they skied phenomenal. (Traverse City Central) stacked pretty much all six of their skiers in the top 10 or 15 skiers. That’s incredible. We were lucky to come away with the victory today. I won’t lie. I think we skied really well. The girls did what they needed to do. Definitely some nerves early in the day, but I think that they skied well enough. Lot of hard work this year. It’s been a tough season this year with the weather. A lot of cancellations. They put in the time. They deserve it.”
Traverse City West’s Hannah Schramski finished as the giant slalom champion with a time of 49.27. Schramski, who was also fifth in the slalom (1:07.43), led West’s third-place finish overall with 87 points.
Traverse City Central had brilliant performances in both disciplines to put itself in position to steal the team championship from the Redettes. Emma Dutmers led four Trojans finishers in the top 11 of the slalom with a fourth-place time of 1:06.91. Sarah Beattie was sixth (1:07.61), Elle Craven took eighth (1:07.88) and Maddy Craven finished 11th (1:08.52).
Brynn Rowell had the best giant slalom finish for the Trojans, coming in sixth in 50.73. Maddy Cox added a seventh (50.92), Elle Craven was ninth (51.41) and Dutmers was 13th (51.92), but it just wasn’t enough to hold off the two-time reigning Division 1 champions, who had an inkling they would be holding the first-place trophy again after their strong finish to the second half of the day.
“I won the second run for GS and I was like, ‘OK, I think we’re OK now,’” said Johnson. “We’re really happy we won.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Marquette junior Ainsley Kirk races to the title in the slalom during the Division 1 Finals at Schuss Mountain. (Middle) Traverse City Central's Sarah Beattie races the slalom. (Photos by Jake Atnip. For more from Monday's Finals, see Sports in Motion.)
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.)