10 to Remember: Spring 2013
June 25, 2013
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Nine teams won their first MHSAA championships this spring. Birmingham Brother Rice's boys lacrosse team won its ninth in a row.
And those are only among the toppers of the long list that made memorable moments during this season's Finals, which finished up the school year two weekends ago.
Locking down the 10 most significant performances is impossible. But endeavoring to do so, here are one person's guess at those that will continue to be discussed most in the years to come.
Among those that just missed this list: Brother Rice boys lacrosse, St. Ignace's girls track and field team after winning its fourth straight team title, Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett's baseball team after its extra-innings Final win over Beal City, Grandville Calvin Christian's girls soccer team after winning a rematch of last season's Division 4 Final and Port Huron Northern's girls tennis team after it emerged from a loaded field to win the Lower Peninsula Division 1 title.
Sami Michell Shines Once More
In her final high school meet, Reed City senior Sami Michell won four more MHSAA Finals individual titles to finish her career with 12 – two more than the previous Lower Peninsula record. A year after becoming the second female to win four events at one Finals meet, she did so again by finishing first in the 100 and 300-meter hurdles, the 200 dash and the long jump. She scored 40 points to claim the team runner-up trophy for her school. Click to read more.
Best Class of All-Time?
That could be the argument for this season’s girls track and field seniors, as twins Hannah and Haley Meier and Erin Finn joined Sami Michell, Detroit Country Day's Kendall Baisden and a host of others in finishing their careers. The Meiers already are members of a national record-holding relay (which set its milestone in 2012), and Hannah won two more Division 1 individual titles (setting all-Finals records) while Haley placed in the same two races and joined her sister on two winning relays. West Bloomfield’s Finn, considered as well one of the nation’s top high school distance runners, finished third to the Meiers in the Division 1 1,600 before cutting nine seconds off her 2012 time in setting an all-Finals record in the 3,200. Click to read more.
Warriors Earn First Title for Winning Coach
Bay City Western’s baseball team strung together two 1-0 shutouts by pitchers Brett Adcock and then Connor Foley to claim its first MHSAA baseball championship – and the first to go with coach Tim McDonald’s other 563 wins over the last 21 seasons. The 1-0 championship game victory over Brother Rice was Western's 35th straight of the season; Western finished 42-2. Click to read more.
Gull Lake Soccer Makes Mark
Richland Gull Lake hadn’t played in a girls soccer Final since 1999, but survived two overtimes against reigning champion Bloomfield Hills Marian to win the Division 2 championship game 1-0. The title was Gull Lake’s first since 1992 and came against a program that not only won in 2012, but three of the last five Division 2 championships. Click to read more.
Upper Peninsula Ace Shoots Record Round
Snow and rain put a damper on a good portion of the girls golf season in the Upper Peninsula this spring. But no U.P. female golfer has ever finished as strongly as Marquette’s Avery Rochester. She claimed her second straight individual Finals championship with a U.P. Finals-record 69, which was three under par at Portage Lake Golf Course in Houghton. Her score also was just one more stroke than the all-Finals record of 68 shot by Grandville’s Stacy Snider in 1998. Click to read more.
7 ... 2 ... 1 ... Champion Tecumseh
Tecumseh entered the MHSAA Tournament after finishing the regular season an honorable mention in the Division 2 softball coaches poll. But the Indians defeated No. 1 Stevensville Lakeshore in the Quarterfinal, reigning champion and No. 2 Livonia Ladywood in the Semifinal and No. 7 Saginaw Swan Valley in the Final to claim their first championship since 2008. Click to read more.
Bishop Foley Sets Baseball Bar
Madison Heights Bishop Foley claimed its third straight Division 3 baseball championship to become the first in MHSAA baseball history to win that many consecutive titles. Bishop Foley is 112-8-1 over the last three seasons and finished 35-2-1 this spring. The Ventures outscored their Bailey Park competition by a combined 18-5 over Finals weekend – getting junior Garrett Schilling to 15-0 for this season and 31-0 for his career with a 6-0 Semifinal win. Click to read more.
Done Deal for Dundee
The Dundee softball team eliminated two-time reigning champion Clinton on the way to Bailey Park this spring, and then beat three-time champion Unionville-Sebewaing in the Division 3 Final to claim its first MHSAA championship in the sport. In the process, Dundee finished 45-1 – setting an MHSAA record for wins in a softball season. Click to read more.
Troy Moves Up to No. 1
After two-straight Division 1 runner-up finishes, Troy earned its first girls soccer championship since 2003 with a 2-1 Final win over Grandville. The Colts had been outscored a combined 3-0 in the last two MHSAA Division 1 Finals, and began this season 3-6-2 before rattling off 15 wins and a tie on the way to claiming the championship. Click to read more.
Tie-Breaker After Heart-Breaker
The Battle Creek Lakeview boys golf team had finished one stroke behind Birmingham Brother Rice at the 2012 Lower Peninsula Division 1 Final, and found itself tied with Plymouth this month after the final round was complete. But thanks to a fifth-player tie-breaker, Lakeview claimed its first MHSAA championship since 2008. Click to read more.
After Finding Drive for Golf, O'Grady Grows Into GR Christian Ace, Finals Contender
By
Dean Holzwarth
Special for MHSAA.com
September 26, 2024
Lillian O’Grady will be the popular choice to win when she tees it up in this week’s Ottawa-Kent Conference White championship tournament at Thornapple Pointe.
However, at one point in her early life, the Grand Rapids Christian junior standout was admittedly uninterested in the sport in which she would soon thereafter excel.
“I really didn’t like golf when I was younger,” O’Grady said. “I thought it was boring and just not fun. My dad made me go out and practice.”
O’Grady was 7 years old when she started playing golf with her parents and siblings. She got her first hole-in-one a year later.
While that ace is the pinnacle accomplishment for every golfer, O’Grady was less than enthusiastic.
“I remember that I didn’t want to golf that day, and it was the second hole at Cascade Hills Country Club.” O’Grady recounted. “I was hitting off the U.S. Kids Golf Tees, and I hit my 5-iron right of the hole and it just rolled down into the hole. My brothers (Max and Sawyer) are still jealous of it.”
Despite her hole-in-one, which is still the only one she’s ever had, O’Grady still wasn’t fond of golf.
But that all changed a couple years later, when at age 10, she took part in a Drive, Chip & Putt Regional event at historic Muirfield Village Golf Club in Ohio.
“That’s when I realized I was pretty good at this and I could go pretty far with it,” O’Grady said. “From there I was like, ‘I want to play in college and be the best I can at it’.”
O’Grady became engulfed in the sport and kept her promise to be the best she could be by practicing diligently and taking part in several tournaments throughout the summers.
Fast forward to the summer of 2022, just before her freshman year, and O’Grady’s hard work paid off. She was named the 15-and-under Junior Girls Player of the Year by the Golf Association of Michigan (GAM).
“That was super cool and amazing,” O’Grady said. “I just played well and was consistent in a lot of those tournaments. I had a really great summer.”
“Consistent” is the word that best describes O’Grady, according to Grand Rapids Christian girls golf coach Seth Davies.
“I think I’ve seen her maybe hit two bad shots. She would say it was a lot more, but she doesn't have a lot of those kinds of shots,” he said. “She’s a little off-line at times, but it’s part of the competitiveness that makes her so good – and most of the time she’s just consistent.
“She’ll bomb a drive down the fairway, hit something on the green and then she has a really good short game. She has a good feel as a putter, too. If you look at her game, there isn’t anything that you could identify as a major weakness.”
O’Grady wasted little time making her mark on the high school scene.
As a freshman, she placed fourth at the Lower Peninsula Division 3 Final as an individual. Last year, she finished in a tie for second.
“My goal is to always win,” O’Grady said. “I’m a very competitive person, so even though I was a freshman and sophomore. I wasn't going to let that stop me from trying to win.
“My goal coming into high school was to win everything I could and be No. 1 on my team, which was building at that point.”
Over the last three years, O’Grady has been winning – a lot.
The two-time conference and Regional medalist has won all three of her 18-hole tournaments already this season and has a 35.57 scoring average in conference play. She’s had only one round over par.
“The last couple years she has worked a ton just to improve,” Davies said. “She has a goal of playing big-time college golf somewhere, and she has done a lot of work on her own. She enters all kinds of tournaments in the offseason, and she's working out and getting stronger and longer with all of her clubs. She is just someone that puts a lot of time and effort into it.”
O’Grady is thrilled with how she’s been swinging the club this fall and is looking forward to the postseason.
“I’ve been playing really well this year, and that makes me excited for state,” she said. “I always go into the state finals to play my own game and be confident in myself because I can’t control anybody else.”
While O’Grady has qualified for Finals the last two years as an individual, she hopes to have some company this time around.
“I really hope my team can join me this year,” she said. “We are ranked third in our region right now, so that’s a big goal for our team. It would change the experience for me.”
Davies believes O’Grady has all the tools and talent to make another run at the top spot.
“That’s one of her goals this year,” he said. “This year, next year. She has as good a shot as anybody in Division 3 to be a state champ.”
Dean Holzwarth has covered primarily high school sports for Grand Rapids-based WOOD-TV for five years after serving at the Grand Rapids Press and MLive for 16 years along with shorter stints at the Ionia Sentinel and WZZM. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Allegan, Kent and Ottawa counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Grand Rapids Christian’s Lillian O’Grady powers through an approach during last season’s Lower Peninsula Division 3 Final at The Meadows at Grand Valley State. (Middle) O’Grady points out her score, which tied for second among individual competitors. (Top photo by High School Sports Scene; middle photo courtesy of the O’Grady family.)