Algonac Diamond Teams Hope Matching Successes Lead to East Lansing
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
May 24, 2023
Kenna Bommarito remembers how many people were in East Lansing a year ago to support her and her Algonac softball teammates at the Division 3 Semifinals.
So, she has an idea of how many people from the town would show up if both the softball and baseball teams were there this time around.
“I think everyone would be,” the junior pitcher said.
There’s a decent possibility that Bommarito’s theory could be tested. The Muskrats softball team is ranked No. 2 in Division 3, and Tuesday night clinched the first Blue Water Area Conference title in program history.
That came one night after the baseball team – ranked No. 1 in Division 3 – also won its first BWAC title. The BWAC was created in 2002, and Algonac was an original member.
“It’s amazing – this town loves it,” said senior baseball player Tyler Schultz. “We’ve got a small community, and everybody is tagging along. I remember last year, a couple of our final postseason games, that was the most people I’ve ever seen at a game. All of the sports here are starting to build up. We have athletes all around the school. I think as time goes on, I think each sport will get better and better.”
Bommarito’s imagined scenario nearly played out a year ago, as both teams made their deepest postseason run.
While the softball team was making its historic run to the Semifinal, the baseball team was making one of its own, advancing to the Quarterfinal for the first time in program history.
The baseball team’s movement toward this started with the 2017 and 2018 seasons, when the Muskrats won back-to-back District titles.
“We had a couple DI (college) players, and when you have those players come through, it generates excitement through the youth,” said Algonac baseball coach Scott Thaler, who took over the program in 2017. “It’s been a trickle-down effect from that initial first two years. That really set the bar. We’ve had some really good baseball players come through, and I have a great staff.”
Thaler had stressed back then that he wanted to build a program at Algonac and not have it be a flash in the pan. That certainly looks like it’s happening, and not just because his Muskrats are winning and sitting atop the state rankings.
Algonac – which has fewer than 500 students in the entire school – has junior varsity and freshman baseball teams. Thaler also said there are 25 eighth graders coming into the program next year.
“I think that when I was smaller in little league, we didn’t really have that where we went out on the field with the varsity players,” said junior pitcher Josh Kasner. “Now, that’s gotten a lot better. A lot of the smaller kids we see around town, they know who we are and about (the program).”
Of course, talent wasn’t enough to get there. Thaler needed to instill belief in his team in order to help the younger generation see what was possible.
“I was a (football assistant) coach under Scott Barnhart, and one of the things we preached to the kids back then is ‘To believe in the things you haven’t seen before,’” Thaler said. “That’s the mantra we brought to them last year, ‘Why not us?’ Just because it hasn’t happened before here doesn’t mean you can’t believe in that. We had to get them to believe.”
The Quarterfinal run provided proof beyond the belief for the Muskrats, and then the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association added to it all, naming Algonac the preseason No. 1 team in Division 3.
Luckily for Thaler, his team took it in stride.
“I mean, it was a great feeling, but part of me had some doubts,” Schultz said “We’ve got some younger kids on the team, and I thought that maybe they might look at that and might get complacent, but me and some of the other seniors have done a good job of keeping all of these guys looking forward. We’ve still got one goal, and that’s to finish (with a Finals title).”
While the softball team didn’t enter the season with a No. 1 ranking, the expectations were certainly there, as was a new target on its back.
But bigger than both was motivation following a walk-off loss to Millington in the Semifinal.
“I think it just shows us that in those big games with those types of teams, you can never say never,” said first-year softball coach Natalie Heim, who was an assistant on last year’s team. “You really have to bear down. That Millington team that beat us, they fought hard. But I definitely think it fuels us more to get back.”
The softball program’s rise may have seemed more sudden to those on the outside, but senior Ella Stephenson said it had been bubbling for a while.
“My sophomore year, we had some talent for sure,” she said. “We had a really good season, but not as good as junior and senior year. The class above me was really talented. But they kind of turned the program around in my eighth-grade year, and it kind of kept building from there.”
During Stephenson’s sophomore season, the Muskrats lost a tough District game against Richmond, which went on to win the Division 3 Finals title. Not only are the Blue Devils a common early postseason opponent for the Muskrats, they’re also a conference rival. As is Almont. And Croswell-Lexington. And … It’s a brutal conference.
So, much like the baseball team, even during the softball team’s historic 2022 season, winning the conference this spring proved to be tougher than making a deep postseason run.
That made Tuesday night’s sweep of North Branch to clinch the BWAC that much sweeter.
“Honestly, it’s a rush of just happiness,” Bommarito said. “We’re all so excited and just can’t believe we did it. We just played game-by-game today, and really took it one pitch, one out at a time.”
Not only has the BWAC prepared the Muskrats for the possibility of another deep postseason run, it helped keep them focused throughout the season.
“I think a lot of teams don’t have that luxury of facing the best competition during the season,” Heim said. “I think it keeps (the Muskrats) not looking too far ahead. We try to have that approach of one game at a time, one inning at a time, one pitch at a time. It helps with having goals that are a little tougher to achieve. Winning our league, it’s tough. It’s not an easy feat. Especially after last year’s success, it would have been easy to look ahead.”
Now, with league titles secured, both teams can focus on their ultimate goals and the postseason that is directly in front of them.
All with the hope that their similarities – on top of the league titles, both teams are 29-2 as of Wednesday, and both have a University of Michigan-bound player (Kasner and Stephenson) – continue through the third weekend of June with matching trips to East Lansing.
“That’d be unreal. That would be so cool,” Stephenson said. “We all have really good friendships on the baseball and softball teams. Our records are identical. We both won our conference. It’s just really cool. I’m really happy for their success, and ours, too.”
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) Algonac pitcher Kenna Bommarito makes her move toward the plate during last season’s Division 3 Semifinal against Millington. (2) Matthew Rix slides into home as a throw comes in. (3) The Muskrats huddle up in the baseball outfield. (4) The Algonac softball team stands together for a team photo. (Baseball photos and softball team photo courtesy of the Algonac athletic department.)
In 'Turn & Burn,' Kent III Gives Voice Again to Father's Life Lessons, Coaching Wisdom
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
August 29, 2025
As his son, his player and during their time coaching together, Warren Kent III was front row for the words of wisdom often shared by his father Warren Kent Jr., who coached a multitude of sports at seven schools over more than three decades.
But as the years have rolled on after his father’s death in 2017, Kent III began to realize something most disheartening – he’d forgotten the sound of his dad’s voice.
In an attempt to regain that memory, Kent III has given us all an opportunity to listen.
His book – “Turn & Burn” – is the story of a son growing to love baseball under the tutelage of his father, a teacher and coach of the local varsity. The seeds for that love of the game are planted during the summer of 1984 – coinciding with the Detroit Tigers’ most recent World Series championship season.
Technically, the story is fiction. But it’s set in Fulton Township, which lies just west of US-127 between St. Johns and Ithaca, where Kent Jr. was indeed a coach and Kent III grew up and attended Fulton High School. And all of the information on the Tigers’ historic run that season – including game-by-game synopses of all 162 plus eight in the playoffs – is true as well and easily will connect with fans who, like Kent III, grew up during that unforgettable summer.
“That was my thing. I wanted people to get the feelings I had with the ’84 Tigers and sharing that with my dad as I was growing up,” he said. “My outlet is writing, so this is really a catharsis, just to get this out there, to let other people know the love of the Tigers but more the love of my father and things we went through together.”
Kent III was five months old when the Tigers won their 1968 World Series championship, but 16 in 1984. He said his book is about 70 percent factual, but even the imagined is rooted in reality.
The main character in “Turn & Burn” – EJ – is 12 years old because that seemed a more reasonable age to fall in love with the sport, and by 16 Kent III was well into his baseball fandom. The father in the book is a teacher and coach. Kent Jr. was a special education teacher for more than four decades and his son’s baseball coach at Fulton High School but just for freshman year before moving into the stands for the remainder of Kent III’s four-year varsity career.
Kent III began coaching baseball himself when he was 18 and served as North Muskegon’s varsity coach for 15 years, including 11 with Kent Jr. as his assistant. At one point in “Turn & Burn” players write EJ’s dad’s initials on their hands because he had been hospitalized after a heart attack; North Muskegon players did the same when Kent Jr. had a heart attack prior to a Pre-District game in 2005.
“Some of it’s been changed. Some of it’s been realistic,” Kent III said. “(But the dad) is definitely my dad’s voice.
“I put him in charge of the outfielders at North Muskegon, and that was his one motto – ‘Turn and burn.’ The kids could probably tell you that over and over, (that’s) the one thing Coach Kent would always say.”
A source of many of the fatherly pearls of wisdom found in “Turn & Burn” came from a journal-style “father’s legacy” book Kent III had purchased for his dad years before and asked him to fill out. Kent Jr. passed those on not only to his children but during a coaching run that took him to Hudsonville, Ashley, Fulton, Vestaburg, Blanchard Montabella and Greenville, where notably he led the football program to its first playoff appearance in 2000.
Writing has long been a love for Kent III, who taught English and journalism for 32 years – and served as a yearbook advisor for three decades – while at Battle Creek Central and then the final 27 years at Muskegon Mona Shores. Prior to becoming a teacher, Kent III was “Journalist of the Year” at Ferris State while sports editor of the student newspaper and then moved on to study and serve as sports editor of the paper at Michigan State.
He has written for the Big Rapids Pioneer, Lansing State Journal and Battle Creek Enquirer, among others over the years, and after retiring from teaching at Mona Shores this spring took a position with Walsworth Yearbooks helping schools all over the state with their yearbook programs.
Kent III also is in his 34th year as an MHSAA registered official. He wrote a piece once for Referee Magazine about his experience officiating the 2011 Class D Girls Basketball Final at Breslin Center, home of his beloved Spartans. He’s more recently officiated Basketball Semifinals at Breslin during the 2023 and 2024 seasons and has returned to the baseball diamond as an umpire as well after umping baseball and softball earlier in his career.
Writing a book came to Kent III during the COVID-19 pandemic, as he like many searched for something to occupy spare time. “Turn & Burn” is available exclusively via Amazon; click for details.
The venture was never about making money, but he’s sold 152 books – well above his goal of 100. And while Kent III still has not come across any recordings or voicemails of his father’s voice, “Turn & Burn” has given him a chance to hear Kent Jr.’s words once again.
“The sound, no. But the things and the ways he would say them, yes,” Kent III said. “Everybody else says they can picture his voice. I think it’s because, I’m assuming being his son, my voice probably sounds familiar to his to other people, but I can hear the things he’s saying. And in that book, the way he’s saying them.”
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Warren Kent III sits in the front row of a team photo as manager for dad Warren Kent Jr.'s 1979 Fulton baseball team; Kent Jr. is sitting far left of second row from bottom. At right, Kent III today. (Middle) "Turn & Burn" is Kent III's first published book. (Below) The Kents anchor a photo with North Muskegon players and their District championship trophy in 2009. (Photos provided by Warren Kent III.)