Summerfield Girls Find Their Stride, Claim 1st League Title Since 1990
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
May 20, 2026
David Raymond has heard it before.
“I always laugh because I've definitely gone on the recruiting trail in our hallways and tried to get kids to come out (for track & field), and one of the answers I always get was, ‘I don't even like running.’ I tell them, ‘Great, you'll fit right in because there's a bunch of kids that run track that don't like running.’”
Running track is a little more fun these days, however, at Petersburg Summerfield, where Raymond is the head coach. His Bulldogs recently celebrated winning their first league championship in more than three decades and have a bunch of qualifiers heading into next week’s Lower Peninsula Division 4 Finals.
“When you win, people start talking it up positively within the hallways,” Raymond said. “That helps when you're trying to recruit kids. It's kind of funny how when you win, all of a sudden people are a little bit more interested and want to see what it's all about.”
Raymond is a 1999 Summerfield graduate. He played multiple sports in high school and was part of teams that won District basketball and a Regional track titles his senior year. He was named the Summerfield varsity girls basketball coach at age 23 and eventually switched to become the boys varsity coach. He would coach the Bulldogs for seven seasons, win 100 games, and become the winningest coach in school history before stepping down to spend more time with his family, which includes three daughters.
Two of those daughters are now on the Summerfield varsity track team. Both are headed to the Finals meet next weekend – Abby in the low hurdles and three relays and Grace in the 800 and three relays.
“I'm very blessed to be able to coach my daughters,” Raymond said.
When Grace was a freshman, she was Summerfield’s only Finals qualifier. This year she and Abby lead a parade of nine Bulldogs who have earned a trip.
Grace set a school record in the 800 at Friday’s Regional and was part of the 3,200 relay with her sister, Makenzie Wolfe and Allison Ost that set a school record and qualified as well.
Grace and Abby are part of the Finals-qualifying 400 relay with Emma Jacob and Sophia Stanger and part of the 1,600 relay with Alice VanCamp and Ost. Abby Zilka (high jump), Ost (1600), Wolfe (3200) and Gabi Myshock (discus) are other qualifiers. Abby will also compete in the low hurdles next weekend.
“Having nine girls qualify for the state meet shows how far the program has come over the last 3-5 years,” Raymond said. “It’s been incredible. The team has come a long way. We’ve had good kids come in, obviously. You need talent in order to be successful, and we have that. The girls have worked hard and put the time in. I am thankful they have been able to put it all together this year.”
Winning Summerfield’s first girls Tri-County Conference track championship since 1990 was a pleasant surprise.
“Winning a league title was a different experience for us because a lot of times, we kind of knew going into certain meets we didn’t have a chance,” he said. “Our focus has always been Regionals. This year, we had a much different mindset that we were going to try and win it. The hard work paid off. That’s what was so exciting.”
While he ran on the track team in high school, he didn’t start coaching the sport until about five years ago as an unofficial assistant to the previous head coach, Kelly Thompson. She stepped away from the head coaching role when her son started running in college. He has surrounded himself with several great assistants, he said, including two classmates from high school.
“There was an opening, and it was an opportunity for me to, again, be with my kids a little bit more, and that's kind of how I ended up in the role,” he said. “I learned that track is not a sport where you can coach by yourself; you need quality people around you.”
Raymond decided he wanted to be a teacher and coach in high school.
“I had good coaches growing up,” he said. “Ron Estes was my varsity basketball coach when I decided to go into teaching. I had a number of people like him that influenced me and showed me that teaching can be a great career and, when you get the opportunity, to coach.
“I've obviously loved sports my entire life. At first coaching was a way to be around sports. As you grow older, you start to see the impact that you can have on kids, which is even different than what the impact that you can have on somebody in a classroom is. It's always been an avenue that has allowed me to impact kids in a positive way.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a news and sports reporter at the Adrian Daily Telegram and the Monroe News for 30 years, including 10 years as city editor in Monroe. He's written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. He is now publisher and editor of The Blissfield Advance, a weekly newspaper. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Petersburg Summerfield coach David Raymond encourages Allison Ost during a relay race this season. (Middle) Summerfield 1,600 relay racers (left to right) Abby Raymond, Alice Van Camp and Ost get together to “Triple A Power Up.” (Below) Grace Raymond (left) and Abby Raymond hold up Summerfield's first league title trophy won since 1990. (Photos by Tom Westrick.)
'Fleet Feet' Tells Story of State HS Track
August 30, 2019
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
As a Hall of Fame radio broadcaster, Jim Moyes has told stories of high school sports for more than 50 years – and helped others do the same with his contributions as an authority on Michigan high school track & field history.
In the latter role, Moyes decades ago endeavored to uncover the names of every champion in MHSAA Finals history. And amid that research, he uncovered stories he knew he must share from the state’s rich tradition.
Moyes’ initial inspiration added to the expertise of another of the state’s foremost historians in the sport – Michtrack.org creator and Track & Field News associate editor Jeff Hollobaugh – has culminated in a 439-page must-have tome covering more than a century of the state’s best.
“The Fleet Feet of Spring: Michigan’s High School State Championships in Track & Field, 1895-2018” is co-authored by Moyes and Hollobaugh and tackles exactly that – more than 100 years of track & field results, beginning with an era before the MHSAA was created during 1924-25, with summations of championship meets, photos and features along the way that paint an all-encompassing picture.
“My initial project was simply to develop a data base of state champions in track & field, but it soon mushroomed into much more. While delving into the research I was inspired by many of the vast accomplishments dating back over the years,” Moyes said. “It wasn’t long before I realized that this was a story that should be told, and it soon became a labor of love.
“Before my research, I had never heard of many of these great athletes of the past. I was dumbfounded to learn that Alan Smith, an eight-time state champion, was killed in action in World War II, as well as deeds of others both on and off the athletic fields.”
Moyes said he first was “piqued” to write during his days as a student at North Muskegon, where at his school library he picked up a copy of “Athletics in Michigan High Schools: The First Hundred Years” by Lewis L. Forsythe, the first president of the MHSAA Representative Council.
Moyes’ gathering of names began long before the internet and led him to libraries all over our state. He also wrote hundreds of letters as he tracked down thousands of names – mostly first names, as often only the last names of competitors were listed in newspaper reports during the early eras.
With Hollobaugh’s imprint, all of those years of research became not just an encyclopedia, but a story.
“What Jeff has accomplished with this book cannot be thanked enough with just words,” Moyes said. “Jeff took this data base and created a format for state champs that took him many hours, days, weeks, months and even a couple of years to finalize.
“He laboriously fact-checked this entire book and created many of those amazing ‘nuggets’ that gave this publication the character that goes beyond boring our readers with just stats.”
“The Fleet Feet of Spring” is available from Amazon for $24.99. The first 268 pages are filled with stories of every meet dating back to events conducted by the Michigan Inter-School Athletic Association. The next 170 pages are packed with every championship listing imaginable, including names of contributors to winning relays through the years and a list of total individual champions per school.