After Finals Face-Off, Teammates Working to Earn Championships Together
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
January 3, 2025
Clarkston senior wrestlers Archer Anderson and Preston Lefevre hope to do something this season that they couldn’t last year – spur each other on to Individual Finals titles.
So, why couldn’t they do so last year? Because only one of them could win it all.
Anderson and Lefevre both advanced through last year’s Division 1 Individual Finals field at 120 pounds to reach the championship match, where they ended up running into … each other.
The two squared off for the title in a battle of teammates, with Anderson earning a 10-8 win in overtime.
“It was pretty cool,” said Anderson, recalling the match during the first day of this season’s Oakland County meet last month. “It was really tough because you know exactly what he was going do. But that was in the past. We are just trying to get better and focusing on improvement.”
Added Lefevre: “I wouldn’t say it was awkward as much it was bittersweet. It was cool that one of us got to win.”
This year, it’s possible both will celebrate Finals championships.
The two started this winter in different weight classes, with Anderson wrestling at 126 pounds and Lefevre at 132.
“Whatever weight is best for the individual, that’s where they are going to go,” Lefevre said. “We just figured out that 126 and 132 was where we were going to be. I just got bigger.”
At the Oakland County tournament, Anderson won the title at 126 pounds, while Lefevre advanced to the championship at 132 pounds before losing to Jace Morgan of Rochester Adams. Morgan was a semifinalist at 126 pounds at last year’s MHSAA Tournament and has signed to wrestle for Michigan State.
Both Anderson and Lefevre look primed to be among the best in the state in their weight classes. They had an active offseason, with both competing among other decorated high school wrestlers at the Super 32 Challenge in North Carolina in October.
“We got some chances at some nationally-ranked wrestlers, so that was fun,” Anderson said.
Anderson and Lefevre both were voted team captains, and both have embraced the extra responsibility of leading the others on the squad.
“Just trying to get better and we’ve been setting a good example for the underclassmen,” Anderson said.
Of course, that starts with leading by example with how they train with each other every day in practice.
The weight classes might have changed, but the fact that the two are still training partners and go at it regularly hasn’t changed a bit.
It’s all for the best though, where their technique, and physical and mental toughness is honed.
“Iron sharpens iron,” Lefevre said. “We are in there every day scrapping and getting better. Everything gets better. Even your mindset. I got to hate losing.”
Clarkston head coach Brian Gibbs has seen the two push each other in practice ever since they were freshmen, and it will obviously be a strange sight not to see them do so in the Clarkston wrestling room once they graduate.
“They have been true competitors year over year and continually work on refining their craft,” Gibbs said. “The fact they finally wrestled each other in the state finals has only increased their competitiveness and drive to be better. They are great friends and drill partners. Both of them have done tremendous things for this program, and I’m extremely grateful to have them with us.”
Having two of the state’s top wrestlers in the lower weights is an advantage many teams don’t have, and both Anderson and Lefevre hope that means they’ll take Clarkston to a place the Wolves haven’t been during their high school careers – the Team Finals in Kalamazoo.
“It’s been a goal of ours to make states because we haven’t done it,” he said. “That’s always been a goal.”
Whether or not Clarkston is in Kalamazoo as a team, expectations are Anderson and Lefevre will once again be center stage at Ford Field for the Individual Finals.
This time though, the plan is for both to be raising an arm in victory after the championship match.
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Clarkston teammates Archer Anderson (left) and Preston Lefevre compete against each other for the Division 1 championship at 120 pounds last season. (Middle) Archer and Lefevre top the awards podium at Ford Field. (Click for more from High School Sports Scene.)
Cros-Lex's Lieber Readies for Final Shot
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
November 30, 2016
Croswell-Lexington wrestling coach Joe Lilly saw championship potential in Collin Lieber when he was in sixth grade.
Donnie Corby, the best to ever come through the Cros-Lex program by any metric – for now anyway – saw it, too.
The rest of the state had to wait until Lieber’s freshman season in 2013-14, when he entered the MHSAA tournament with a single loss and made a run to the 135-pound Division 2 title match before losing against DeWitt’s Austin Melton.
It was at that point Lieber himself realized he had the ability to reach his goal of becoming an MHSAA Finals champion, something that seemed more likely than not after such an impressive start.
As he starts his senior season, however, that individual championship still remains unchecked on Lieber’s list.
“It was funny, because I really didn’t know what to expect going into the state tournament (as a freshman), and I really didn’t think I was that good,” Lieber said. “I remember waking up that morning thinking, ‘I might be a state champ today.’ Then going into sophomore year, losing in the semifinals, that was hard. Then last year (in the finals) in overtime, that was rough.”
Lieber is among the state’s best wrestlers, ranked No. 3 across all divisions by Michigan Grappler at 171 pounds. He has a career record of 165-7 and three top-three Finals finishes to his name. In 2015, he was third at 152 pounds in Division 3, and in 2016, he was second at the same weight.
He has signed to wrestle at Central Michigan University, the same place Corby put together an impressive career by qualifying for the NCAA tournament three times and winning one Mid-American Conference championship. With 35 more wins, Lieber will unseat Corby as the all-time wins leader at Cros-Lex.
“He’s gonna kill me,” said Corby, who is now an assistant wrestling coach at the University of Northern Colorado. “He’s gonna kill me. I knew that freshman year. If anybody could do it, I want it to be Collin.”
Corby is not only Cros-Lex’s all-time wins leader, he’s also its only MHSAA Finals champion, having won in 2008. Like Lieber, he placed second as a junior, something he used as motivation for his title-winning senior year.
Lieber is hoping that same driving force can help him replicate Corby’s senior success.
“It’s just more motivating that I lost,” he said. “Because now it’s like I have to win states at least once.”
Lieber’s loss in the 2016 title match came with added heartache. After a hard-fought 6 minutes that left Lieber and Dundee’s Sean Sterling tied at 2, it was Sterling who was able to get a takedown in overtime to win the match. It not only handed Lieber his second loss in a Finals title match, but also ended his unbeaten season (54-0).
“He was better at takedowns than me. I was better at top/bottom,” Lieber said. “I was really tired, too. I should have conditioned more last year. I don’t know how much time was left in overtime, but I was kind of banking on getting to double overtime because I wanted to get to top/bottom.
“The whole year, I’m going to keep thinking about that match, over and over again.”
It was a crushing loss, one that was felt off the mat, as well.
“It was devastating,” Lilly said. “Devastating. Just because I know what he’s put in, and what his desires and goals are, and ours as coaches have been the same for him. Once you get a kid like Collin, that knows what his goals are and knows where he wants to be, you push him on a regular basis to meet that. Then you’re there – we were in the same boat, just crushed. I had no idea what to say to him.”
Despite the losses at the highest level, losing is not something Lieber has had to deal with much during his wrestling career. He began wrestling at 6 years old and won a state championship that year.
“I hated losing,” he said. “I would always cry when I lost.”
The crying has stopped, but the desire to win has not. If anything, this season, it has intensified.
“I’ve sure seen so far this year in the practice room and running that it’s a step up,” Lilly said. “He’s not a kid that gives into pressure; he thrives on it. He loves it. I watch him warm up for big matches, and the routine is the same. I never notice him getting anxious or uncomfortable. He keeps it in real well.”
Lieber has focused on being better conditioned this season, and said that wrestling at 171, a weight that is more natural for him, should help.
“I think not cutting weight will honestly help me a lot, because I won’t be as tired,” he said. “I’ll be able to condition a lot better in practice. I’ll be happier. I’ll want to come in more. I’ve been lifting a lot more, too.”
Lieber feels confident heading into the season. There’s pressure to reach the top of the podium, of course, but he said he feels less of it thanks to having his college decision out of the way. He’s proud, he said, of what he has accomplished to this point in his high school career. Now he simply wants to win for himself and those who have helped him get to this point.
Lilly wants it for him as well. He said that when Lieber was in sixth grade, he had pegged him as the program’s next Corby – a wrestler with the tools to win an MHSAA Finals title. Even without a championship, Lieber has proven his coach to be correct.
“I keep telling him that to be at the state tournament is such an accomplishment,” Lilly said. “Then to be there three years in a row and place, and now we’re looking to go in his senior year, it’s a heck of an accomplishment. You’re in an elite group to begin with.
“So that has comfort for me. I’m hoping it has a burning desire in him to say, ‘I’m going to win it this year.’”
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) Croswell-Lexington’s Collin Lieber (top) wrestles Dundee’s Sean Sterling during last season’s Division 3 championship match at 152 pounds. (Middle) Lieber warms up before his match at The Palace of Auburn Hills. (Click to see more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)