Port Huron Unified Providing Opportunity

By Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com

December 4, 2019

Growing up in Yale, Trevor Sugars never thought about playing high school hockey. He bounced around Sanilac, St. Clair and Lapeer counties finding house leagues to stay involved in the sport he loved, as Yale didn’t have a team.

But a year ago, thanks to an expansion of the Port Huron Unified cooperative team, a new option arose, and Sugars has taken full advantage.

“This is great for Yale because we get to come out and have a hockey team, and younger kids can get into the sport of hockey,” said Sugars, a junior defenseman. “They’re able to go further without having to pay all the money for AAA.”

Three players from Yale and six players from St. Clair join the 11 from Port Huron in donning the Big Reds jersey this season. It’s the fourth that Port Huron has collaborated with East China School District – St. Clair and Marine City – and the second it has collaborated with Yale. The collaboration has given players from those schools an opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have, while saving the Port Huron program.

“I went to a coaching clinic before the season started, and we actually had a roundtable about unified hockey programs,” Port Huron coach Ben Pionk said. “It was kind of interesting, because we all had one common theme. Most of us were all there for survival. That’s why we’re unified. A lot of the teams were in the same boat. Some of the other unified programs, they have like seven schools and you’re getting two kids from each school just to make a team. Honestly, it was all for survival, and that was solely ours. It wasn’t to build a superpower team; it was to make sure we had a team we could even put on the ice.”

Pionk has been at Port Huron for two decades, most of which spent coaching a team solely from his school. But numbers began to dwindle not long ago, threatening the future of the program.

“I can’t remember what year it was, but we had tryouts and I had eight kids standing here,” Pionk said. “I went to our former athletic director and talked to him and said, ‘What do you want us to do here? You really can’t put a program on the ice.’ We actually started the season that way and then we picked up a few more; I think we ended up with 12 that year. We got through the year, and kind of the next year was the same way. You go back four or five years and people weren’t working a lot, so what are you going to do? Are you going to play hockey or pay your bills?”

Not only was it hard to be competitive with so few players, but Pionk was worried about the safety of his players, who were forced to take longer shifts. He said he knew there were players in St. Clair – a school that had a program through the 2012-13 season – so Port Huron became a unified team for the 2016-17 season. 

It didn’t happen overnight, but the team has now nearly doubled in size.

“Even after the first year or so of being unified with St. Clair, we still weren’t getting really good numbers,” Pionk said. “We just found that a lot of the older kids down there had been with their teams, and at this point they were established where they were and didn’t want to leave to come play high school hockey. They would love to have played high school hockey but didn’t want to leave at that point. Through Port Huron Minor Hockey’s help, they knew there were a couple kids in Yale who had kind of aged out and weren’t going to have anywhere to play, so we kind of approached their school about it and next thing you know, we had Yale as well. Now, a few years into it everybody knows we’re unified and the kids are coming out. We have 17 skaters and three goalies this year.”

The six players from St. Clair this season make up the biggest group Port Huron Unified has brought in from another school besides Port Huron High. While they may have grown up expecting to one day be Saints, they’re grateful for the opportunity they now have.

“The high school experience is so much fun,” said Duncan McLeod, a junior defenseman from St. Clair. “It’s just fun to play for something – something big.”

While players from out of town are excited about a newer opportunity, those within the program are excited to see their team growing again.

“My freshman year, my sophomore year, we were really struggling on numbers,” Port Huron junior Kevin Schott said. “It was tough having to double shift a lot and pretty much play wherever Coach needed you to play. This year I was really excited to hear that we had a lot of kids coming from St. Clair and Yale – some better skating kids that I knew had played travel. So, I was really super excited to see that we were going to have a full and deep team this year.”

With all the new faces and multiple schools combining to create one team, not a lot of the players had played with one another prior to high school. That hasn’t been an issue, though.

“We all came together real quick, because we all know how to play hockey – we've all been playing hockey for at least four years,” Sugars said. “We all know our positions, got together and figured it out.”

This year’s team has already enjoyed as much success as any of its unified predecessors. The Big Reds opened the season with a pair of wins, eclipsing last year’s win total (one). 

“We’re trying to be at least .500 this year,” Sugars said. “I wanted to be the best Yale high school team, but we already did that.”

A flu bug hit the team right before Thanksgiving, which didn’t help during a busy week. But even sitting at 2-3, there’s optimism about the season and the future, as without a senior on the roster, there’s a possibility everyone could come back next year.

“It’s looking positive for the year,” McLeod said. “We have a good team going.”

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) Port Huron Unified’s Noah Gunderson (19) is among Port Huron High School students who help make up the program again this winter. (Middle) Duncan McLeod, a St. Clair student, controls the puck. (Photos by Jeremiah May.)

Martin Makes Home in Goal for Monroe St. Mary's Boys Lacrosse, Ice Hockey Teams

By Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com

April 29, 2025

Lacrosse isn’t the best sport to choose if you don’t like coming home with bruises every once in a while.

Southeast & BorderFor Chloe Martin, the bruises are just part of the deal.

“I love it,” Martin said of lacrosse. “It’s a fast game and a challenge. I love that.”

Martin is a senior on the Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central boys lacrosse team. SMCC doesn’t offer girls lacrosse, so she plays on the boys team. That’s nothing new to her, either. She was also a member, representing SMCC, of the Downriver Unified cooperative boys ice hockey team this past winter.

“I didn’t expect to enjoy (lacrosse) as much as I did, but once I started playing and started playing with the boys, I fell in love with the sport,” Martin said.

Martin picked up ice hockey at the age of 8 while a student at Triumph Academy, a K-8 school near Monroe. She was hooked, but under one condition – she wanted to be in the net.

“When I was younger, I played forward and defense, but I didn’t really enjoy it,” she recalled. “When someone on the team said they needed a goalie, I raised my hand right away. It’s a lot of fun. I don’t think I would be playing if I wasn’t playing goalie.

“I like getting shots coming at me. It’s fun.”

Martin, from Monroe, joined the SMCC lacrosse team as a high school freshman. She played ice hockey as a sophomore and again as a senior. “I played travel hockey my junior year and, to be honest, I kind of regret it,” she said.

As a sophomore, she was able to be teammates with her brother, Walker.

Martin, without a protective mask, which she wears for two sports.“He was one of my biggest inspirations playing hockey,” she said. “We had a strong connection, and I wanted to play with him and his friends. That was one of my favorite teams to ever play on.”

Her brother also got her started in lacrosse.

“The reason I joined lacrosse was because of my older brother,” Chloe said. “Our coach saw that I was a goalie for hockey and wanted me to be a goalie for lacrosse. I agreed and played lacrosse.”

Lacrosse – for both boys and girls – is played in the spring in Michigan. The sport involves a ton of running and highly-skilled passing and catching. It also takes teamwork.

Martin prefers the boys game over the girls game. She’s tried both.

“I love playing against the boys. I tried playing girls lacrosse, and it wasn’t my thing,” she said. “For girls, there are different rules and I don’t really like it. I’m trying to get into it because I want to play either college hockey or lacrosse.”

She’s not sure which sport she likes better: “It’s not that big of a difference. There is more padding for hockey and less for lacrosse. You have a crease, and you are moving in the same type of direction. Lacrosse is less wear-and-tear on my hips. I have bad hips.”

While lacrosse has a bigger field, Martin said there is more action.

“Lacrosse is quicker than hockey,” she said. “You can have the ball in the other zone but three seconds later they can be down shooting on me.”

This season has been a strong one for Martin in net.

Earlier this month she helped the Falcons to a one-point win over Jackson at Albion College, recorded her first varsity shutout April 16 against Brownstown Woodhaven and made a school-record 19 saves on April 4 against Ypsilanti Lincoln. That save total was high enough to make the MHSAA record book.

“Nineteen is kind of a lot of shots,” Martin said. “I’ve faced more than that in hockey. I’d say facing 19 shots in lacrosse is kind of like facing 50 shots in hockey.”

SMCC athletic director Jared Janssen said Martin has been a key factor in the team’s success and that she’s an inspiration to others.

Martin monitors the puck while in net for Downriver Unified.“Chloe stands out as an excellent player with the boys and performs at a high level in both hockey and lacrosse,” he said. “She has been a leader for hockey and lacrosse, and that has led to more girls participation in both programs. Our girls lacrosse program has grown from only one girl to four this year.”

Goalie remains her favorite position.

“It’s a lot harder to be goalie than you think. You don’t expect the ball coming at you as hard and as quick as they are. You kind of get used to it. You don’t get used to getting hit, but you get used to seeing the ball and where the players are shooting from.”

The 17-year-old daughter of Alison and Nathan Martin loves mountain biking, fishing and baking. She has her sights on playing a sport in college and becoming a nurse. That stems from the time her dad got COVID and pneumonia at the same time.

“He was in the ICU for three months,” Martin said. “When that happened, I just decided I wanted to be a nurse and help people. That’s what I love doing.”

As for the bruises, Martin is getting used to them. She wears a chest plate, elbow pads, glove and mask. There are no shoulder pads in lacrosse and little other protection, especially for the legs.

After a recent game, she had a bruise the size of softball on her leg.

“It’s rough. I get a lot of bruises, but I love it,” she said. “It’s mostly on my legs. It hurts a lot, but after a few seconds it goes away. There are so many bruises I get in lacrosse. I’ve never gotten this bruised from hockey.”

Doug DonnellyDoug 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) Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central’s Chloe Martin defends her team’s goal during a lacrosse game. (Middle) Martin, without a protective mask, which she wears for two sports. (Below) Martin monitors the puck while in net for Downriver Unified. (Action photos by Stephanie Hawkins; posed photo provided by Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central.)