Champ Lilly Honed In on Historic Quest
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
January 15, 2020
Chris Lilly could have plenty of thoughts racing through his mind as he goes through his senior wrestling season at Croswell-Lexington.
It’s his final year wrestling for his dad, Cros-Lex coach Joe Lilly, who has been in his corner since he began wrestling at 7 years old.
It could be his final year wrestling competitively period, as he’s not sure he’ll continue with the sport in college.
He’s a returning MHSAA Finals champion, having won the Division 2 title at 135 pounds a year ago, which has placed a target squarely on his back. Lilly is also the first Cros-Lex wrestler to ever have the chance to win a second title, as the school’s previous two champions – Donnie Corby and Collin Lieber – won as seniors.
But Lilly isn’t thinking too much about any of that. He’s just thinking about wrestling.
“I’m just going to do what I do,” Lilly said. “I don’t feel pressured. I just feel like it’s my last season, so I’m going to work hard, and the outcome will be what it is. I know I have the opportunity to (be the program’s first two-time MHSAA champion), and that’s another motivation. But I don’t think about it like that all the time. I just feel free. I feel like if it happens, it happens. I want it to.”
Lilly’s approach is working as he’s 24-0 on the season and recently recorded his 150th career victory. While the possibility of creating Cros-Lex history is in front of him, what he’s already done makes him one of the program’s greatest of all-time.
“That’s awesome,” Joe Lilly said. “That’s beyond words and beyond my expectations. That’s never been put on the plate that it was what the expectation was. The main expectation for my kids is to put their best effort into everything they do. To now see where he’s come with that is phenomenal.”
As noted above, Chris began wrestling when he was 7 and has been coached by his dad the entire time. But he has been around the Cros-Lex program essentially since birth.
“I was actually looking through pictures for graduation with my mom, and she kept pulling up pictures of me in (Dad’s) arms in the middle school gym with the wrestling team,” Chris said. “Ever since I was little, I was with him there.”
It was in sixth grade, Joe said, that things really started to click for Chris. That was the year Corby, a 2008 graduate, came back to coach after finishing his career at Central Michigan University.
“I looked up to Donnie a lot,” Chris said. “I remember coming in when I was really little, and he’d mess around with me. When he went away and wrestling season would roll around, I’d always remember him and I’d look in the hall, look in the wrestling room and see his picture on the wall and think that I wanted to be that. When he came back, it made me want to buy in. Then (Lieber) comes around, and he was just another perfect role model for me. He was (a senior) my freshman year. He was a really good friend and role model.”
As a freshman and sophomore, Chris qualified for the MHSAA Finals but didn’t place. He entered last year’s tournament as a Regional runner-up with a 48-7 record, but battled through his bracket, defeating Madison Heights Lamphere’s Matthew Tomsett 6-3 in the final.
“If you would have told me that I was going to be a state champ my freshman year, I probably would have called you silly,” he said. “Honestly though, before states we were running in the wrestling room and I turned the corner and looked toward the door – that's where Collin’s picture and Donnie’s pictures are at – and that’s where I wanted to be. I felt like I had the stuff to do it. Checking into our hotel, the other wrestlers were there and I looked at every one of them and I wanted to wrestle them all in the lobby. I knew I could (win) it. We get there, and something just clicked. It was amazing. I felt like I couldn’t be stopped.”
While Chris was confident, it didn’t stop his dad from taking part in what has become a pre-Finals ritual of sorts.
“In all of my state championship matches that I’ve had kids wrestle, I’ve thrown up before we stepped on the mat,” Joe Lilly said. “In all three of them. With Chris, I was thinking I was fine, then they called his name and I threw up in the garbage can and went and met him at the mat. The component of it being your son, it’s a whole new dimension. But actually, once we got wrestling, it was the same as coaching him all year.”
Chris has a video saved on his phone of the post-match celebration, when the emotion of the moment started to hit and he jumped into his dad’s arms. It’s a video he said he watches every night.
He’s motivated to enjoy that feeling again. But more than that, he’s motivated to show everyone that he can earn it once more.
“I feel like I still have something to prove,” he said. “I feel like people kind of doubt it. I was ranked seventh, and they say it was a fluke. I have to go back, and I have to prove it wasn’t.”
To do that, he’s focused on keeping things normal and not worrying about all that surrounds this season.
“It’s business as usual,” Chris said. “I get in the room and do what needs to be done. We work hard, but I kind of try to keep it light. That’s been kind of my key this year, is to have fun, like I did last 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 Chris Lilly has his hand raised in victory during last season’s MHSAA Division 2 Individual Finals at Ford Field. (Middle) Lilly’s father and coach, Joe (front), celebrates his son’s win. (Click for more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
Rep Council Wrap-Up: Winter 2015
April 1, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
The selection of a new venue for its Team Wrestling Finals highlighted actions taken by the Representative Council of the Michigan High School Athletic Association during its annual Winter Meeting on March 27 in East Lansing.
The Team Wrestling Finals will be hosted by McGuirk Arena at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant for two years beginning with the 2016 tournament. The Team Wrestling Finals previously had been hosted by Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek since their inception in 1988.
McGuirk, formerly Rose Arena, is part of the CMU Events Center and reopened in 2010 after the facility underwent $22.5 million in renovations. McGuirk seats 4,867 fans for wrestling competitions, and the building also features adjacent practice areas that will be utilized by teams competing at the MHSAA Finals.
Rose Arena formerly served as host of the MHSAA Girls Basketball Finals from 1997-2003.
“We are grateful to the athletic directors, staff and volunteers whose time and energy factored heavily into creating and growing the Team Wrestling Finals at Kellogg Arena,” MHSAA Executive Director John E. “Jack” Roberts said. “The decision to move from Battle Creek was not an easy one. However, we believe Central Michigan University offers us a fantastic opportunity to continue growing one of our most popular championship events.”
The Representative Council also continued discussions on three issues which may require action at meetings later this calendar year.
Continuing its examination of athletics at the junior high/middle school level, the Council discussed recommendations submitted by the MHSAA’s Junior High/Middle School Committee, including one which may come up for vote at the Council’s May meeting. It is a request for a membership vote to amend the MHSAA Constitution to allow for school membership beginning at the 6th grade. If the Council approves, the amendment vote likely would occur in late October after another round of membership meetings.
The Council also continued its discussion of potential changes to out-of-season coaching rules and considered results of surveys taken during the MHSAA’s Update Meetings in the fall and by athletic directors and leaders of leagues and conferences during the late fall and winter. The major changes in rules that were proposed for discussion last summer have not gained traction with the MHSAA membership, but three modifications intended to give school coaches longer and more flexible contact with their student-athletes out of season during the school year will receive Council action in May.
Continuing its work regarding the eligibility of international students, the Council also approved that MHSAA staff continue reviewing school-operated international student programs for the purpose of granting students athletic eligibility at MHSAA schools. A proposal first approved at the March 2014 meeting granted the MHSAA authority to grant athletic eligibility to students placed through an Approved International Student Program that had not been accepted for listing by the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel (CSIET), so long as that Approved International Student Program is not eligible for CSIET consideration and listing. CSIET will only review existing programs, but the MHSAA’s supplemental process will allow programs too new for the CSIET process to gain approval for 2015-16.
Those international students placed through an Approved International Student Program are eligible for a maximum of the first two consecutive semesters or three consecutive trimesters at any secondary school in the United States, after which the student is ineligible for interscholastic athletic competition at any MHSAA member school for the next academic year. International students who do not meet one of the residency exceptions recognized by the MHSAA or are not enrolled through an Approved International Student Program or CSIET-listed program may become eligible after one semester to participate at the subvarsity level only.
The Representative Council is the legislative body of the MHSAA. All but five members are elected by member schools. Four members are appointed by the Council to facilitate representation of females and minorities, and the 19th position is occupied by the Superintendent of Public Instruction or designee.
The MHSAA is a private, not-for-profit corporation of voluntary membership by more than 1,400 public and private senior high schools and junior high/middle schools which exists to develop common rules for athletic eligibility and competition. No government funds or tax dollars support the MHSAA, which was the first such association nationally to not accept membership dues or tournament entry fees from schools. Member schools which enforce these rules are permitted to participate in MHSAA tournaments, which attract more than 1.4 million spectators each year.