Marvin Seeking Record-Setting End to Marvelous Byron Career
By
Tim Robinson
Special for MHSAA.com
June 1, 2021
BYRON — In a bare-bones weight room that appears more like a garage to passers-by, Sarah Marvin is working to finish her quest to rewrite the record books in the shot put for girls track & field.
Not just in the Lower Peninsula’s Division 3, in which she won Finals titles in both the shot put and discus in 2019, but for all divisions.
Marvin, who has a track scholarship to the University of Michigan, has had 11 throws this season beyond the LPD3 Finals record of 46 feet, 9 inches, set by Becky Breish of Edwardsburg in 2001.
She twice has surpassed the all-Finals record of 49 feet, 11.75 inches set by Division 1’s Corinne Jemison of East Kentwood in 2018 – the first time during last summer’s National Scholastic Athletic Foundation’s virtual meet, and then again May 26 at a meet in Comstock Park with a throw of 50 feet, 9 inches.
“Throwing is so technical,” she said, “and you have those days where you’re just clicking and firing on all cylinders. I think I’ll be close to being there soon in these few meets I have left.”
It starts with the Division 3 Finals on Saturday at Jenison.
Marvin and her fraternal twin sister, Becky (a strong thrower in her own right) are familiar with the Jenison layout, which was the site of the 2019 Division 3 Finals.
“We’ll get there Friday,” Marvin said. “We like to go to the throwing rings and feel it out, get a good dinner, then stay at a hotel so we don’t have to ride for an hour and a half in a car (before the competition).”
Throwing is a sport that comes naturally to the Marvins, both for the twins, their sister Jessica and their mother, Theresa, who competed at Michigan after winning two state titles in the discus for Byron during the 1990s.
“Their older sister (Jessica) and brother T.J.) did AAU, which isn’t as big here, but is in the Detroit area,” Theresa Marvin said. “We started a club and had kids that weren’t ours on the team as well. It was a lot of fun for us. Other families were doing T-ball and soccer, and we were doing track.”
The Marvins installed a pair of throwing rings on their property about a decade ago, and the twins picked it up from there. The family took its vacations at AAU national meets, driving all over the country.
Both of the Marvin twins (Sarah is two minutes older, Becky an inch taller) played multiple sports at Byron. Becky also ran cross country and played basketball and wrestled, while Sarah was a starting offensive lineman on the Byron JV football team and did some wrestling in addition to playing basketball, where she was a three-time Owosso Argus-Press Player of the Year.
After her junior year, Sarah gave up football and wrestling.
“I had switched my (shot put) technique to rotational, and I needed more time, more months that I could devote to throwing,” she said. “I tried to train and throw during football season, but I was just too physically tired to do it the way you need to do it. I decided to put my effort and time into throwing.”
As she mentioned, Marvin had switched her throwing from a glide technique, where one effectively pushes the shot in the throw, to the rotational, where the shot comes out like it is slung.
“I’m very comfortable with it now,” she said. “But I’m looking forward to getting more comfortable with it. It’s so technique-heavy. You have these guys who have been doing it for more than a decade, and I’ve been doing it for two years. The more you do it, the more you develop the muscle memory.”
Certainly the results have been there. All of Marvin’s throws this season have been well beyond the 44-11.5 she threw to win at the 2019 Finals.
“It’s helped me make a big improvement,” she said. “But we knew that it would.”
But Sarah Marvin also has a key element in her makeup that has spurred her success.
Asked what she thinks makes her sister stand out, Becky Marvin said, “her work ethic, for sure. She’s always working harder than everyone else. She’ll go out and lift without me sometimes. She has talent, for sure, but her drive makes her stand out.”
During last year’s pandemic, the Marvin sisters were without a place to work out after Byron High School closed.
“We got online and on Facebook Marketplace and put the word out,” Theresa Marvin said. “People gave us stuff, and we made an at-home weight room in our barn.”
Their sister Jessica, who competes at Northwood University, came home along with her boyfriend, who like Jessica is a thrower at Northwood. They all worked out.
“It was a houseful,” said Theresa, a mother of six.
Theresa Marvin realized early on that her twins would need more specialized coaching than what she could provide, and for the last couple of years they have worked with Dane Miller, a private coach based in Fleetwood, Pa.
“I do still coach them at meets, and I try to facilitate what Dane’s trying to do,” said Marvin, who also coached her daughters on the Byron varsity girls basketball team the last two years.
Speaking of basketball, the extension of the season into late March cut into the Marvins’ training time for track.
“Her strength levels go down in basketball from all the running,” Theresa Marvin said of Sarah. “It took her a good 4-6 weeks to get back to speed, and I don’t think she’s there yet. Last year, she didn’t peak until mid-July.”
The Marvin sisters, whom Byron girls track coach Byron Schartzer calls “The Wonder Twins,” feed off each other in competition.
“Just to have another person to hold you accountable to train with definitely helps,” Sarah said.
And while they’re serious about their sport, they also keep things light-hearted.
“If I throw big, she throws big, sometimes,” Becky said. “I made fun of her at the Comstock Park meet; I fouled on my first throw and made the second.
“Then she fouled on her first throw and made the second, and I’m like, ‘OK, you can just copy me, then,’” she added, chuckling. “But if one of us hits a big throw, we try to drive off that.”
While there are other amateur meets later this month, the Marvins have their attention set on Saturday’s Finals.
In the shot put, Sarah Marvin has the top throw this season entering the week, but Becky Marvin is in the top 10, seventh in a pack where spots 3-8 are within 21 inches.
Sarah also is ranked No. 1 in the discus, while Becky is ranked sixth.
“They’re both having great seasons,” Theresa Marvin said. “But you never know. You just can’t take anything for granted. We focus on being healthy, being ready to peak, and then being ready to go on that day.”
And then, before they know it, the twins will be separated. Sarah is going to Michigan to study movement science with an eye toward, perhaps, a medical career.
Becky is going to Tiffin University, where she plans to compete on the track team while pursuing a business degree.
“It’s like 2½ hours from Byron,” Becky said. “Ann Arbor’s on the way home, so if I’m driving by and she wants to come home, I’ll pick her up.”
It’s family, after all, that Sarah cherishes the most about her athletic career.
“I can’t imagine where I would have been in my sports, or my success in sports, without my family,” she said. “In basketball, it was my older sister playing. My three brothers are all wrestlers. I have huge family support and a huge extended family that comes to all my games. They’ve all grown up playing sports, and it’s just fun.”
PHOTOS: Byron senior Sarah Marvin shows her shot put form; she’s the reigning Division 3 champion in the event. (Middle) Sarah and twin sister Becky Marvin are workout partners and make up one of the top throwing pairs in the state again this spring. (Photos by Tim Robinson.)
'Lapeer Through and Through,' Schmidt Surpasses Half-Century in Coaching
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
April 2, 2025
Manny Schmidt still wants to be at track practice.
After 50-plus years coaching in Lapeer, the man they call Coach Manny has not lost his love for helping student-athletes – and at this rate, he might go another 50.
“I told my wife years ago that the first day I don’t feel like going to practice, that I’d rather be somewhere else, that’s the day I’m done,” Schmidt said. “And it hasn’t happened yet. Obviously, you have bad days and things like that. But track, and right now practice, it just keeps me going.”
Schmidt, who is the head boys track & field coach at Lapeer, began coaching track as an assistant in 1974, and has remained there – and Lapeer East, then back at Lapeer when the schools merged back together – ever since. On Friday, April 11, he will be honored at an event at Lightning Rounds in Lapeer for his years of service to Lapeer athletes. The event begins at 7:30 p.m., following the Lapeer Lightning Co-Ed Relays.
“Manny has been a staple of Lapeer Athletics through many different renditions over the years,” Lapeer athletic director Shad Spilski said. “His willingness to help student-athletes grow and achieve their goals is all he wants out of his athletes. Manny spends, and has spent, countless hours over several decades providing athletes multiple opportunities to hone their skills. He not only coaches, but he is one of Lapeer athletes’ biggest fans and supporters. You will always find him at other sporting events cheering on athletes and his coaching colleagues. He truly is Lapeer through and through.”
Schmidt came to Lapeer to teach English in December of 1972 after graduating from Western Michigan University. He had attended high school at St. Joseph Catholic, and was unfamiliar with Lapeer.
But it didn’t take long for him to fall in love with the school community after receiving the assignment.
“Almost immediately,” he said. “I started in December; the teacher had left and I got the job in December. Three days later, they had a staff Christmas party that I got invited to, and all of my close friends over the years, many of them, I guess, I met at that party.”
Coaching was always something Schmidt wanted to do. He played basketball and ran track in high school, and had a basketball coach who made a big impact on his life. He wanted to do the same for others.
In the spring of 1974, during his first full year of teaching English at Lapeer, he got that chance as the assistant track coach. He has since coached cross country – working to start the Lapeer East girls program in the 1990s – junior varsity football and middle school basketball. He also served as a basketball official for more than 30 years.
“I just liked being part of it,” he said.
Throughout his five decades coaching track, Schmidt has worked with athletes in every event. While middle and long distance are what he’s long enjoyed coaching, he’s currently working with the Lapeer throwers and high jumpers, as head cross country coaches Russ Reitz and Bill Spruytte are also coaching track.
“In our program, we have four of us (Schmidt, Reitz, Spruytte and Anthony Merlo), and we all have equal voice, we all coach together,” Schmidt said. “On any given day, and that’s the nice thing, I could be with anything. I could be with the hurdlers.”
This past year, Schmidt returned to the Lapeer cross country staff as an assistant, saying he was honored that the current coaches respected him enough to call him back.
But for them, it was an honor to have him.
“Working with Manny is like having access to decades of knowledge,” said fellow cross country assistant Christine Cerny. “It is such a privilege to be able to draw from that and learn from that myself. It’s so awesome to be able to coach alongside him after he has coached my kids.”
During his time, Schmidt has coached multiple generations of Lapeer families, including his own. His children Corrinne and Jennifer both ran for him, as did his grandchildren Morgan, Mason and Colton.
And by his side the entire time has been his wife, Val, who worked as a scorekeeper during meets.
“When I started coaching, she would be the person at all our home cross country meets and all our home track meets who sat there and kept track by hand,” Schmidt said. “Probably the happiest person with this new technology is my wife – now she doesn’t have to do it. When we have invites, she’ll do medals and stuff like that.”
Technological changes have been abundant for high school athletes over the past five decades, not just in competition but outside of it. Schmidt recalls returning to Lapeer from away meets and having athletes line up at the school’s two payphones to call their parents.
“Now, when we get back, everyone has called home and their rides are there waiting,” Schmidt said.
Throughout his time, Schmidt has done plenty of winning and coached several athletes who have moved on to compete at the college level. But the relationships he’s created are what he values most.
“Nobody’s luckier than I am with where I taught and where I coached, and who I’ve coached with over the years,” Schmidt said. “You have to look forward to going to work, and I hate to use the word ‘work’ with coaching. It is, I guess. But there’s just so much good with it.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Clockwise from the top left: (1) Manny Schmidt (standing, second from left) coaches the Lapeer White Junior High girls basketball team. (2) Schmidt, top middle, takes a photo with Lapeer’s boys track & field team last spring. (3) Schmidt, left, has coached three of his grandchildren including Morgan Turk. (4) Schmidt, far left, takes a photo with the 2011 Lapeer East cross country teams. (5) Schmidt, standing far right, coaches Michelle Brundage during the 1991 Meet of Champions. (Middle) Schmidt looks on during an event. (Photos provided by the Lapeer athletic department.)