Reigning Champ Mendon, 1st-Time Finalist Brown City Set to Match Aces
By
Dean Holzwarth
Special for MHSAA.com
June 12, 2026
EAST LANSING – A pitching duel broke out between Mendon’s Rowan Allen and Hillman’s Gretchen Weiland in Friday’s first Division 4 Semifinal.
Allen got the best of it, and her strikeout to end the game sent Mendon to the championship game and a chance to repeat.
The Hornets (31-3) survived to edge Hillman 2-1 at Secchia Stadium and will play Brown City in Saturday’s Division 4 Final at 5:30 p.m.
“As soon as I got it, and I knew we were going back-to-back (to the championship game), it was the best feeling,” said Allen, who scattered five hits over seven innings of work and struck out eight.
“As a senior it feels awesome to be able to play for another state title.”
Mendon entered the final inning up 2-0 after single runs in the first and fourth innings, but Hillman closed the gap.
Allen struck out two of the final three batters to secure the win.
“It was a big stressful situation, but I knew I just had to take some deep breaths and do my job because I knew my team was going to back me up,” Allen said.
The matchup pitted the top-two ranked teams in Division 4 and was a rematch of last year’s Semifinal, which Mendon won 4-2 en route to the championship.
Hillman senior pitcher Gretchen Weiland was dominant Friday and kept the Tigers in the game with 14 strikeouts.
She allowed only three hits and one earned run.
“If you ask me, you just watched the best two pitchers in Division 4,” Mendon co-coach Mike Smith said. “Gretchen is a stud, and she's done a fantastic job all four years. And Rowan's body of work speaks for itself. Just unbelievable.
“A lot of stress in that last inning, but these girls have battled all year and they had nerves of steel.”
The Hornets prevailed despite managing only three hits.
A first-inning RBI single from Cienna Nightingale put Mendon up 1-0. The Hornets tacked on another run in the fourth when Nightingale tripled and scored on a ground out.
“As a team we think ‘win the inning,’” Allen said. “We wanted to get on top early and then just win each inning. We did the best we could, and we wouldn’t give up.”
Hillman didn’t go away quietly in the final frame.
Madelyn Oswald smacked a one-out triple and then scored on an error to make it 2-1.
A two-out single from Payton Banks put two runners on base, but they were stranded after the final strikeout.
Hillman, which outhit Mendon 5-3, was making its third-straight trip to the Semifinals and finished 33-10.
“Mendon is a good team,” Tigers coach Jason Weiland said. “But I think we are a little more than just up-north good. These girls came hard, and we just fell short offensively. We came back at the end and tried to manufacture some runs, but I couldn’t be more proud of these girls and the team and the sisterhood we’ve created these years.
“The girls are going to remember this for a lifetime, and the bar is raised for these girls now that we’ve been here three years in a row.”
Mendon has the opportunity to join its football and volleyball programs among those that have won back-to-back championships for the school.
“To add softball would be very special,” Smith said.
Brown City 7, Fowler 1
Senior pitcher Maddie Hohne has been a standout player all season for the Brown City softball team.
However, in Friday’s second Division 4 Semifinal, she played like Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani with her two-way performance.
Hohne shined on the circle and at the plate in helping lead the Green Devils to a resounding win over Fowler.
“She’s played a lot of good games this year, but she played her best game of the year today,” Brown City coach Scott Parr said. “She was phenomenal, and I will say flawless. She hit her spots better than she has all year, and I’m proud of that kid for her pitching and what she did at the plate.”
Hohne allowed one run on two hits over seven innings while striking out 13 batters.
At the plate, she went 3-for-4 with an RBI.
“Honestly, I think it was my best game,” said Hohne, who didn’t issue a walk and threw 95 pitches. “It was a different feeling today. It was like, ‘You deserve to be here so show that you deserve to be here.’ I’ve been struggling at the plate, so it feels better to have the confidence back.”
The Green Devils will make their first appearance in a Final.
“This is surreal, and this is an unbelievable feeling right now,” Parr said. “My girls were just pumped and they never get down. I can’t say enough about these kids, and their energy is contagious. The way these girls are playing right now … there’s not a doubt in my mind we can win.”
Junior Sydney Maybee homered in the top of third inning to put Brown City on the board, but Fowler rebounded with a run of its own in the bottom of the inning on a two-out RBI single from senior Selena Stump.
From there it was all Brown City, as it scored four runs on five hits in the fourth inning.
The Green Devils, who banged out 14 hits, added two more in the fifth on a throwing error.
“I knew as soon as we hit the home run that this was our day,” Parr said. “They just kept hitting the ball, and we knew they were going to hit well. They wanted to be here. They wanted to win Regionals, they wanted to win Quarterfinals and so why not win a Semifinal game. That’s where we are at.”
Hohne, who returned this season from a torn ACL, appreciated the run support from her teammates.
“Pitching without a cushion is just hard and you’re more stressed, so when these girls started getting on base I knew we had this,” she said. “I love them so much, and I was so excited to come back this year after my injury and be with these girls.”
The Eagles returned to the Semifinals for the first time since 2014 and also were looking to play in the program’s first Final.
Stump had both of Fowler’s hits.
“As soon as they (Brown City) won I jumped right into my coaching duties and scouted them,” Eagles coach Brian Miller said. “I watched three different games and in all three games they were solid, so I knew when we came in here they were going to be a tough team.
“They have a great pitcher, and we just had an off day at the plate and had a couple errors in the outfield. But it’s a huge accomplishment to come back here, and they can be proud of that.”
PHOTOS (Top) Mendon’s Rowan Allen makes her move toward the plate during her team’s Division 4 Semifinal win over Hillman on Friday. (Middle) Brown City pitcher Maddie Hohne winds up to throw a pitch.
Jenison Reaches 1,000 Wins & Surging
May 23, 2019
By Dean Holzwarth
Special for Second Half
JENISON – The Jenison softball team wrapped up an Ottawa-Kent Conference Black outright title Tuesday night by sweeping Muskegon Reeths-Puffer.
The championship shouldn’t come as much of a surprise because the Wildcats have racked up wins at a consistent pace for the past 45 years.
Jenison has experienced another successful campaign thus far, and reached a program milestone earlier in the season.
The Wildcats notched the program’s 1,000th win by beating Zeeland East in mid-April.
Longtime coach Kari Kossen has been a part of several of those victories, as a former player and now in her 19th season at the helm.
“Our players had an idea, and it was told to them at the beginning of the season that it was coming up,” Kossen said. “We really didn’t make it known, but for us coaches and the whole program it was a really cool thing. They knew about it, but not enough to count it down.”
Jenison began as a program in 1974 and emerged as a perennial powerhouse during the late 1980s and mid 1990s.
Under the direction of legendary coach Jerry Hoag, who collected 529 wins from 1981-1999, the Wildcats won six MHSAA Class A titles over a nine-year span.
They’ve appeared in seven Finals, also including a runner-up finish to Okemos in 1999. Only five teams in MHSAA history have played in more.
Jenison stockpiled state crowns with superb pitching and defense, posting five shutouts in its six championship game wins and allowing only one run overall.
Back then, Georgetown Little League opened up a new facility and was the feeder program.
Kossen, a pitcher who helped the team win back-to-back titles in 1987 and 1988, said pitching guru Ray Sheler had a huge impact in producing a dominant pitching staff.
“He taught the windmill (style),” Kossen said. “Slingshot was well known, but we learned from him and he taught us how to pitch like that and that played a big role in Jenison’s success, just learning how to do the windmill pitching. A lot of other schools didn’t know how to do it back then.”
The Wildcats continue to seek their first Finals appearance since 1999, but have continued to churn out quality players and competitive teams.
A change during the past eight years has been the development of the Wildcat Pride Program, and it has paid dividends on the diamond over the last four.
While various travel teams are abundant throughout the state and include players from different high schools, the Wildcat Pride program is designed to keep girls playing together on the same team in the Jenison community.
“The parent support has really helped with this and has helped make an impact in our success the last two or three years,” Kossen said. “It was something everybody had to buy into eight years ago.
“My sister (Karla Wojtas) and I had a vision to just play together as a community and see if we can learn how to win together, because eventually they’re going to have to do that anyway in high school. We just wanted to come back as a community, and parents have helped coach these teams.”
The idea is to have the girls playing together for several years and creating a bond and trust, much like what occurred in the past.
“We just played so well together because we played together since we were 10 years old,” Kossen said. “In today’s culture girls are playing for different teams, so it feels good to go back to that.”
Former Jenison standout Alexis Hylarides, a 1991 grad and member of the 1990 Class A championship team, said elite coaching in little league with the likes of Ed Kiscorni and Sheler, and then in high school with Hoag, helped catapult the program into a dynasty.
“It starts with good coaching and Ray Sheler took it to a whole other level because without him then they don’t have all those great pitchers,” she said. “The whole goal growing up was to play for Jenison softball because they were the dynamo, and if you played for them then you made it to the big show. It was an honor to play for them, and they don’t make coaches like that anymore.”
Hylarides wasn’t shocked to learn that the program had surpassed 1,000 wins.
“Not one bit,” she said. “This has been such a strong program for many years.”
Jenison produces elite talent as several girls have gone on to play at various levels in college, but fundamentals are the main focus of the current program.
“We’re scrappy, and we teach fundamentals,” Kossen said. “We do the little things that allow us to be that much better, and we do what we need to do to be in every ball game.”
The Wildcats improved to 30-3 with Tuesday’s wins and earned honorable mention in the latest Division 1 rankings.
Jenison has been led by seniors Evelyn Blood, Addison Hansen and Emily Mouat, juniors Kassidi Hill and Emily Siler and freshman Maria Griffore.
“I think we’ve been playing so well together as a group, and they know their roles,” Kossen said. “I can count on all of them to come in and get a hit when they need to or play good defense. They get along so well and are just fun. They want to win, and they have goals.”
Dean Holzwarth covered primarily high school sports for the Grand Rapids Press and MLive for 16 years and more recently served as sports editor of the Ionia Sentinel and as a sports photojournalist for WZZM. Contact him at[email protected] with story ideas for Allegan, Kent and Ottawa counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Jenison players huddle on the field during a game this season. (Middle) A Jenison base runner slides safely into third base. (Below) The Wildcats welcome a teammate crossing the plate. (Photos courtesy of the Jenison athletic department.)