Lowell Enters Another Elite Group of Champs with 11th-Straight Finals Win
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
February 24, 2024
KALAMAZOO – There’s nothing quite like the roar of a crowd after your team has clinched an MHSAA Team Wrestling Finals title.
That’s true whether it’s for title No. 1, or, in the case of Casey Engle and his Lowell teammates Saturday, for their program’s 11th-straight Division 2 championship.
“It’s unreal,” Engle said. “It’s something I look forward to every year.”
Lowell extended its record run of wrestling team titles by defeating Freeland 49-21 in the Division 2 Final at Wings Events Center.
The Red Arrows joined the Grosse Pointe South (1976-86) and Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett (1980-90) girls tennis programs in winning 11 straight Finals titles. Only East Grand Rapids boys swimming & diving, winning 15 straight from 1948-62, and Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice boys lacrosse – with 13 straight from 2005-17 – have longer Finals championship streaks in Lower Peninsula or statewide competition.
“I mean, it’s possible (to reach 15),” said sophomore Jarrett Smith, whose pin at 106 pounds clinched the title. “It’s hard to predict that far, four years into the future. We’re losing some key guys, but we graduated 14 last year, five this year, so we’re returning some firepower.”
Lowell is always returning firepower, and it’s consistently adding it, too, giving new waves of Red Arrows the chance to raise a wooden mitten.
That’s why for coach RJ Boudro, each title remains just as sweet as the last.
“Why would it get old?” said Boudro, who has been in charge for 10 of those titles. “Look at the crowd. When I first walked in here, I looked up, and you see that we have more fans here than anybody else, and that’s what it’s about. Next year will be fun, too. When you can still bring crowds in and you can do it 11 years in a row, there’s more to that than just winning. If it was just about winning, why else would they come? They would probably think it was a foregone conclusion. They love the kids; they love the community.”
One could forgive an outsider for believing it’s a foregone conclusion when Lowell takes the mat for the Division 2 postseason, as it’s won the Final by more than 20 points in each of the past five seasons and in seven of its 11 straight championship victories.
So to avoid that feeling creeping into his wrestling room, Boudro makes it clear the Red Arrows’ responsibility isn’t just to win on the mat, but to strive for something bigger.
“We’re not doing it to just win state championships,” Boudro said. “We’re trying to find out who we are, we’re trying to be better men, better women, better coaches. So, it’s not just about winning, it’s about being a better person. Whether I’m a coach or a kid, just trying to find a way to be better. When you’re doing that all the time, you get better, but you feel like you have a purpose. Every single guy on the team feels like they have a purpose, and that’s really important.”
Just 14 wrestlers can step onto the mat in a single dual, and the same number is the max a team can enter into the individual postseason, so accomplishing that can sometimes be as tough as anything else for Lowell wrestlers, and certainly helps motivate them throughout the season – foregone conclusions or not.
“One of our signs up there I saw, it says, ‘Tradition never graduates,’ and it’s true,” Smith said. “We just keep the kids coming. Even our B Team, C Team are competing at the highest level. At the beginning of Districts, we had 17 ranked guys, and you can only send 14. So we have just great partners all around.”
Freeland, meanwhile, was making its first appearance in a Final, after getting to the Quarterfinals for the third time in program history.
“Outstanding. Outstanding. They’ve been giving their all every match,” Freeland coach Scott VanLuven said. “They’ve been doing it all year. We beat Brighton, we weren’t supposed to. We beat (Bay City) John Glenn in our conference, then we had to beat them again in our District Final when we weren’t supposed to. No one gave us really a chance down here, I think. But they believed, and they did well.”
The Falcons (25-3) still had a shot with three matches to go, trailing 31-21. But Smith put a quick end to that with his pin at 106, and that was followed by a pair of pins from Cole and Carter Cichocki at 113 and 120, respectively.
Of the Arrows’ nine wins in the dual, eight came by either pin or technical fall, as Jackson Blum (138), Jared Boone (165) and Engle (190) also won by pinfall. Logan Dawson (132) and Owen Segorski (144) each won by tech. Cody Foss (126) opened the dual with a win by decision for Lowell (22-3).
Fabian Facundo (150) and Bringham Smith (285) each won by pin for Freeland, while Noah Graham (157), Gibson Shepard (175) and Elijah Murphy (215) all won by decision.
PHOTOS (Top) Lowell’s Cole Cichocki, left, lines up against Freeland’s Michael Wilson at 113 pounds Saturday. (Middle) The Falcons’ Elijah Murphy, left, locks up Lowell’s Ari McFarland at 215. (Click for more from High School Sports Scene.)
Midland's Spears Catches Up Quickly to Become Nationally-Recognized Finals Contender
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
January 22, 2026
Halle Spears may have had a later start when it comes to wrestling, but she’s starting to lap the field.
The Midland senior is a three-time placer at the MHSAA Individual Finals and ranked No. 3 in the country at her weight class, all despite not starting until her freshman year.
“It was good to start off with a good, athletic, foundational base,” said Midland wrestling coach Mike Donovan, who oversees the school’s program as a whole and coaches the boys in competition. “She had done other sports before, and that helped her a great deal. When she really kind of committed to finding high results in wrestling, it really took off. She kind of made eight seasons of work into her four here with all of her offseason work, lifting and practices. She caught up on the experience very fast.”
Spears was the Finals Girls Division runner-up at 190 pounds in 2025, and has packed in multiple seasons’ worth of experience at major tournaments since then.
During the offseason, she placed fourth at Fargo Nationals, won the Super 32 Challenge in Greensboro, N.C., and placed fifth at the Midlands Championships, an open tournament in Evanston, Ill., that features some of the best collegiate competition in the country.
“I was just kind of looking for college tournaments and to go where I thought I could get good competition,” Spears said. “I could still get better wrestling here, but it would be so much more fun to wrestle somewhere with really, really good competition.”
It’s an incredibly quick rise from the volleyball player and former gymnast who took up wrestling after some convincing from her older brother Hunter, who also happens to be the Midland girls wrestling coach.
“At first, I did not want to do wrestling at all,” she said. “My main sport was volleyball, but my parents have this rule that you have to have two sports every year, so I was like, ‘I guess I’ll do wrestling since my brother is the coach.’ Then I ended up loving it so much.”
A big part of that love is getting to work with her brother. Hunter wrestled at Midland and graduated in 2019, and said his style was a very different one from how his sister wrestles. But as she’s grown in the sport, he’s adapted his own style to better prepare Halle.
“I think that the first year it was kind of frustrating because we were always siblings, and now he had a little more authority over me and he had to figure out how to coach me,” Halle said. “After that first year, it was so fun because we just got to hang out every day. It means so much to me, I love him so much and I’m grateful he has spent this time to figure out how I want to wrestle, and put in the time to learn it and adapt to it with me. I’m so grateful.”
Now, Spears is ranked No. 3 nationally at 190 pounds by FloWrestling. She’s 12-0 this high school season with nine pins, one technical fall and two major decisions. She’s ranked No. 2 at 235 pounds by Michigan Grappler, a ranking that should flip in the next update, as she recently defeated the No. 1 wrestler, AnnMarie Green of Clare, 12-3 at the Girls Wolfpack Challenge in Bay City.
“She’s constantly comparing herself to the people that are above her,” Hunter Spears said. “She’s chasing an image of Sabrina Nauss (three-time MHSAA champion from Brighton) that led Team Michigan to such great things. She’s super confident when she’s wrestling her peers right now, but she hasn’t let (the national success) get to her head in a way. She’s still fighting for something.”
That something, partially, is a title at the MHSAA Finals.
Spears placed fourth at 190 pounds as a freshman and sixth as a sophomore.
Her junior year ended in the Finals with a 4-2 loss against Kanata Richardson of Bloomfield Hills, who is currently ranked fifth nationally at 190.
“I don’t really think about it that much anymore,” Spears said. “At first, it didn’t really motivate me, it just made me really sad. After, I sort of just started to let it go. I don’t really think about it anymore. I just want to get better for myself.”
Winning it all at Ford Field on March 7 to become Midland’s first female Finals champion, and first in general since 1994, would mean a lot to Spears. But she also now sees it as another step on her bigger journey, which includes wrestling collegiately at Grand Valley State University.
“It would be really nice to have my name on the banner and have my name in the trivia that Donovan does every year,” she said. “But I think somewhere last year after I lost my state finals match, it started to matter a little less to me. Not because I didn’t want it, but because I realized there are so much bigger things to strive for. It would be great, and I would be so thankful to get a state title. But sometimes, I think there are bigger things, and I’d rather strive for a national championship.”
As she continues working toward that, she continues to set an example for those who come behind her, no matter when they start.
“Just to kind of show that opportunity does exist here to do the biggest things in the sport and be on top of that,” Donovan said. “It’s not a sport where, if you didn’t do it as a youth you’re completely lost in terms of any kind of top goals. If you put the time in and the dedication in, while it can be a bit delayed and growth isn’t always linear in our sport, but given that example, that roadmap, if you invest in yourself, that will do a lot for future Chemics wrestlers.”
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) Midland’s Halle Spears, in blue, wrestles during the Girls Wolfpack Challenge. (Middle) Halle takes a quick photo with her older brother and coach Hunter Spears. (Photos courtesy of the Spears family.)