Flights, Flexibility, Fun & New Friends All Parts of Beaver Island's Sports Story
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
August 27, 2021
Chartered flights and overnight stays for all away games are part of the normal routine for one northern Michigan high school’s student-athletes.
Opportunities to make lots of new friends always come with the games too.
That’s the norm for Beaver Island athletes representing the Lakers in soccer, volleyball and basketball while competing in the Northern Lights League.
“We fly everywhere, and it is awesome,” says second-year soccer coach Bryan Doughman. “I thoroughly enjoy the travel.
“The biggest challenge is the kids forgetting something, and I am ultimately responsible for ‘How am I going to fix this?’”
Beaver Island is the largest island in Lake Michigan, northwest of Charlevoix in the Lower Peninsula and southeast of Manistique in the U.P. The island is home to 600 year-round residents, with 60 students kindergarten through 12th grade, including 17 in grades 9-12 this school year.
Doughman manages a restaurant on the Island. He is a native of Cincinnati. Coaching the co-ed soccer team has permitted him to make his first trips to the Upper Peninsula and Mackinac Island.
But social aspects provide the most benefit for the student-athletes. The Islanders will make their first trip of the season Sept. 15 to Concord Academy Boyne. As they do at home, the Islanders will play a game Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. The overnight experience is provided by the home school.
“The kids will be seeing and meeting new friends,” Doughman noted. That’s what they ultimately look forward to … socially with different people.
“We all know the situation of going to work where you interact with the same people over and over again and can’t wait to meet new people,” he continued. “That’s what they kinda go through their whole lives.”
Beaver Island’s girls volleyball team opened its season Aug. 27 with a pair of losses at Maplewood Baptist in Kinross, located in the eastern Upper Peninsula.
The soccer and volleyball teams will open their home seasons Sept. 10 and 11, hosting Hannahville Nah Tah Wahsh, another U.P. opponent.
“The island community enjoys being able to come and cheer on the island teams,” noted second-year volleyball coach Bridget Martin.
The boys and girls basketball teams will go through their seasons this winter similarly. Athletics and social opportunities are a source of satisfaction for Kerry Smith, Beaver Island’s athletic director. She grew up on the Island and competed for the Islanders.
“The best part of being an AD on an island is the great deal of satisfaction I get from watching our kids be able to connect with other kids their age and play a sport and have a great time doing it,” Smith said. “The kids here know what a privilege it is to be able to have a sports program, and they show their appreciation through their outstanding sportsmanship – and that makes me beam with pride!”
Dianna Behl, Beaver Island’s language arts teacher, will take over the girls basketball team this winter. She has served as the school’s Nordic ski club advisor the past four years and has practiced with the basketball team frequently. She was a three-year letter winner at Charlevoix High School.
She’s expects her team to benefit from players taking part in fall sports.
“I am very excited for our season because many of the players are participating in soccer and volleyball, so they should be in great shape for basketball season,” she said. “I hope to build on their solid base.”
Dan Burton will be entering his seventh season as the varsity boys basketball coach. He’s also developing an elementary basketball program and guiding the middle schoolers. He expects to have a middle schooler or two join the high school team to fill out the roster this winter.
“The best part of coaching is getting these the students an outlet for sports,” said Burton, a business owner on the island. “Otherwise, there’s nothing much else to do in a small town like this.
“Keeping a sports program is the most important thing.”
The soccer team also is relying on middle schoolers as it attempts to find enough players to compete. The co-ed roster is dominated by girls, and the Islanders have only two seniors and one junior on the squad.
“I just hope we can improve a lot on our basics this year,” Doughman said. “I hope to just have fun. The biggest challenge is they’re all first and second-year players, except for a handful.”
Weather is the most difficult challenge of being an island-based sports team, the coaches acknowledged.
“The greatest challenge of coaching an island team is Mother Nature,” Behl said. “The girls practice hard for days and then at the last minute bad weather comes in and the planes aren't flying us out, or our competition in, for the games.
“It is heartbreaking and happens every season,” she continued. “Nonetheless, I am so impressed with how well the girls handle it. It is a life lesson in flexibility, and they are pros.”
Because of those frequent weather changes, spotting the athletic director in the school hallways often is a bad sign.
“The weather is a major frustration and always a factor for us,” Smith said. “On game day, I try not to show my face down in the high school wing because the kids always think I am coming to deliver bad news.”
The school often chooses which teams will go on to MHSAA postseason play based on their success in the league. Beaver Island sent its boys basketball team to Districts last season.
The last Beaver Island team to move past the first round of Districts was the volleyball team in 2013. The Islanders beat Mackinaw City and went on to play Engadine before seeing their season come to an end. The school’s best-ever tournament run was by the soccer team in 2005.
“They were District winners; this was the farthest any team has ever gone,” Smith recalled. “It was a huge celebration. The team was greeted by the fire trucks, parents and pretty much the whole community when they flew home that day.”
Beaver Island anticipates sending the boys basketball team to Districts again this year, and possibly the girls basketball team as well.
Mackinac Island is the Islanders’ favorite place to travel, according to coaches’ consensus. That’s the host for the volleyball and soccer Northern Lights Conference tournaments.
“One of our favorites would have to be Mackinac Island because the girls enjoy flying to another island, riding in the horse drawn carriage and the rare treat of getting to go to a Starbucks,” she said.
Mackinac Island will host conference tournaments for soccer Oct. 16 and volleyball Oct. 23.
Tom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Beaver Island's Ella Moon passes during a volleyball match this fall. (2) Olga Burton winds up to serve. (3) Beaver Island plays its lone home soccer game during the 2020 season. (4) The Beaver Island boys basketball team participated in District play this past winter. (Photos courtesy of the Beaver Island athletic department.)
Russell Twins Set High Bar Standing Tall Together for Mona Shores Sports
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
April 16, 2026
Maddie and Laynie Russell have been such a big part (literally) of Muskegon Mona Shores girls sports over the past four years that it’s difficult to imagine the Sailors without them.
Opposing basketball and volleyball coaches certainly won’t miss them, as figuring out a way to handle the “twin towers” was Job 1 when playing Shores.
Laynie (6-foot-3) and Maddie (slightly shorter at 6-2½) are fraternal twins and four-year varsity players in both volleyball and basketball, having entered the starting lineup four years ago as 14-year-olds. Both made an immediate impact and progressed to become Muskegon All-Area “Dream Team” volleyball players the past two years.
“They looked like grown women, but they weren’t,” said Mona Shores girls basketball coach Mike Phillips, who met with the family to talk about moving both girls up to varsity when they were still just 13 years old.
“It would have been easy for them to crumble under that kind of pressure, but they handled themselves unbelievably well.”
And the twins, who are both near the top of their class academically with weighted GPAs greater than 4.0, are not quite done helping Shores sports.
Currently, Maddie is an attacker in lacrosse and Laynie is playing No. 1 doubles in tennis. Both will graduate in June with 11 varsity letters.
Then they will have a few months to enjoy their summer passions for jet skis and water skis, before heading in different directions.
Laynie has committed to play volleyball at Northern Michigan and is undecided about her field of study. Maddie will play volleyball at Indiana Tech, where she plans to major in pharmacy.
Intense Maddie
Maddie is more emotional and expressive and wears her heart on her sleeve.
She was “super tenacious” way back in youth soccer and in another one of her loves, swimming, where she was a state champion in the breaststroke at age 7.
Then it appeared for some time that softball would be “her thing,” excelling as a power hitter at the plate and with her long stretch playing first base.
“Sports has always been our life, and it’s just natural for us to go from one sport to another,” said Maddie, who didn’t start playing volleyball until middle school.
“I love being a part of different teams because you meet different friends in each one. Plus, I think it has helped me physically and to avoid injuries because I wasn’t just doing the same thing over and over.”
Maddie made her mark in basketball as a dominant inside force, particularly as a defender and rebounder. In volleyball, she was an outside hitter who could move around and was an excellent passer, finishing her career with 681 kills and 166 blocks.
Her favorite memory is winning four straight city volleyball titles and then helping her team break through and win a Division 1 District volleyball championship her junior year, as the team finished 32-10.
She believes her busy high school experience has prepared her for college. In addition to being a three-sport athlete at Shores, she also played travel in three sports (volleyball, basketball and softball), took AP classes, was a member of National Honor Society and worked as a lifeguard and babysitter.
“I don’t know how she did it some of those days,” said dad Mike Russell, shaking his head. “But we were lucky because both girls are very self-motivated. We didn’t have to get on them very much.”
Poker-faced Laynie
Laynie is more even-keeled and keeps her emotions in check, and it’s hard to tell whether she is having a rough game or is going off for 31 points, which she did in an early-season basketball win last season.
Laynie, who was born two minutes after Maddie on Aug. 14, 2008, was bigger at birth (she was 7 pounds, 4 ounces and Maddie was 5 pounds, 7 ounces). Then Maddie shot up and was taller in elementary school, they were about even in middle school, and now Laynie is about a half-inch taller.
Their height came as no surprise as Mike is 6-5 and their mom Jennifer is 6-1.
The tallest member of the Russell family is older brother Donovan, a 2022 Mona Shores graduate who is 6-8 and plays on the Michigan State men’s club volleyball team. “Dono” will graduate in May with a civil engineering degree.
Like her sister, Laynie is happiest when bouncing from sport to sport. She remembers briefly considering not playing a spring sport as a freshman.
“I didn’t do anything for like a week after basketball season and I was so bored,” said Laynie, who is serving her school this year as the National Honor Society chapter president. “That’s when I knew I had to be doing something, so I went out for tennis.”
Basketball was her favorite sport for many years, and she certainly left her mark on the hardwood, finishing as the 12th-leading scorer in school history and setting the school’s single-season rebounding record her junior year. Laynie, who could handle the ball like a guard and made 38 3-pointers during her career, was a two-time Ottawa-Kent Conference Green all-league selection.
It wasn’t until the past couple years that volleyball became her clear focus. Laynie is a dominant hitter and blocker at the net, finishing with 711 kills and 224 blocks.
Her most memorable games both came during her junior year, and both were big wins in front of rowdy crowds at the Sailor Center – a volleyball victory over No. 6-ranked Jenison, which featured a wild 38-36 win in the final set, and then a basketball upset of rival Muskegon.
But she said her most meaningful memory is time spent volunteering at youth volleyball and basketball clinics.
“We always worked a ton of youth camps, and I always loved that,” said Laynie, who is considering becoming a teacher and coach someday. “It’s fun seeing how excited (kids) get when they figure something out. And now some of those girls have grown up and they’re going to be taking our place.”
Separate ways
The “Russell twins” will, in many ways, truly will become Maddie and Laynie for the first time this fall.
Maddie will journey 216 miles south to Indiana Tech, which is in Fort Wayne, and Laynie will venture 417 miles in the opposite direction to Northern Michigan in Marquette.
“It’s going to be hard, for sure, but I’m trying to focus on what a unique opportunity it will be for both of them,” said Jennifer Russell. “For the first time, they will each have their own separate life, and I am excited for that.”
One thing is for certain: mom’s day-in, day-out Google calendar will free up immensely.
Right now, it’s somewhat comical when she calls up her color-coded family calendar on her phone (Maddie is purple, Laynie is pink, Dono is green, etc.) and it looks like a rainbow, with a crazy blend of school activities, school sports, travel sports, family obligations and work.
Dono will graduate from MSU next month, the twins will graduate from Mona Shores in June and then they will head off and begin their college journeys in August.
Mike and Jennifer, both 1988 Shores graduates and high school sweethearts, will be empty nesters, but at least will still have the family’s two dogs, Scout and Coco. The biggest challenge will be finding a way to be in two places at once – with the twins playing volleyball 633 miles apart.
About one mile away from their home at Mona Shores High School, the Sailors girls sports programs will need to replace two standouts who gave everything they had to their school – as individuals, teammates and role models for little girls in the community.
“Maddie and Laynie always put their school and their teammates above themselves,” said Phillips, whose three daughters played with and became friends with the Russell twins. “Their focus was, how can I help my school? In the spring it was, how can I help another one of our teams?
“What I will remember most about them is the great people and teammates that they were. I will be forever grateful to them for that.”
Tom Kendra worked 23 years at The Muskegon Chronicle, including five as assistant sports editor and the final six as sports editor through 2011. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Muskegon, Oceana, Mason, Lake, Oceola, Mecosta and Newaygo counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Senior twins Laynie Russell (left) and Maddie Russell (right) have left their mark on the Muskegon Mona Shores athletic program as standout three-sport athletes. (2) Laynie (left) and Maddie are all smiles for a much earlier photo. (3) Maddie (left) and Laynie (right) are dominant forces at the volleyball net, shown here going up for a double block. (4) Jennifer, Maddie, Laynie and Mike Russell pose for a photo with the Sailors' Division 1 District championship trophy Nov. 7, 2024, at Coopersville. (Top photo courtesy of Billinghurst Photography. Family photos courtesy of Jennifer Russell. Action photo by Eric Sturr.)