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.
Lake Orion Serving Up Impressive Start as Boys Volleyball Takes Off in Metro Detroit
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
April 21, 2026
Lake Orion volleyball coach Tony Scavarda now has a little more to talk about when he has an information table at the high school's annual eighth-grade orientation each February.
“I’ve usually sat at the table for just girls volleyball, but now it’s also boys,” he said. “I’m trying to get boys knowing in middle school that this is something you can do next year.”
Indeed, as is the case with boys volleyball coaches around the state, Scavarda is trying to spread the word about the newest sport – debuting this spring – to have a postseason sponsored by the MHSAA.
The luxury Scavarda enjoys at Lake Orion compared to many other programs is that there already is a standard of success that can be boasted to players interested in coming out for the team.
In just its second season as a club program last year, Lake Orion advanced to the state semifinals, losing to eventual state champion Hudsonville in what was the final year of boys volleyball being conducted by the state’s coaches association.
Despite only one returner from that team, Lake Orion already looks like a threat to go on another deep run as one of the top teams in Metro Detroit this inaugural season, getting off to a 9-0 start without dropping any sets.
“We had three returners last year that kind of got people in the gym with them before the season to get them some reps and stuff,” Scavarda said. “We didn’t really have that much this year. So they’re more (young) on the court. We have played a lot of games in a short period of time, learning as we go. But they’re improving. It’s just a matter of are they going to improve enough to get us where our expectations are.”
The lone returnee from last year’s semifinal team is senior outside hitter Kuba Wolski, but the Dragons have a good combination of younger players new to the program and others who are performing well in expanded roles after sitting behind the top group last year.
Lake Orion also has an impact newcomer in senior Jan Ludvik, a foreign-exchange student from the Czech Republic who is a tall and powerful outside hitter.
Not only has the excitement of boys volleyball becoming an MHSAA sport buoyed the players this year, but so has last year’s run to the semifinals – making them hungry for more playoff success.
“I think we need to just stay motivated even through our hardships,” Wolski said. “We fell short in the (semifinal match), but this year we have players that are consistent and real and we can make it that far again.”
Lake Orion isn’t the only program off and running during the inaugural MHSAA-sponsored boys volleyball season, as other teams are similarly striving for success this year while trying to establish a foundation to build on in their communities.
“We don’t have any feeder programs going yet,” Scavarda said. “That’s the plan, to come up with some type of camp program or something to get kids, at least at the middle school level, interested in volleyball.”
One of the opponents Lake Orion defeated this season, Auburn Hills Avondale, is in its fourth year overall as a program and is also using this inaugural MHSAA spring to further get the word out.
Avondale head coach Jessica Stefanski said 25 players came out for tryouts and there was enough depth to have a JV program this spring.
“In open gym, there are new guys almost every single day,” Stefanski said. “Even at our middle school, word is getting out because middle schoolers are coming out to see what it’s like. It’s really big at the school.”
Stefanski added that because more boys knew that the sport was going to be MHSAA-sponsored this spring, younger players pushed this year’s group of seniors and made them better once tryouts began in March.
“I think some of them got a little scared,” Stefanski said. “The seniors we have, they’ve been playing for four years now and (younger players) hit a lot harder and faster, which they weren’t prepared for.”
But that has been a good problem to have.
Seeing strength in numbers and competition is all that programs such as Lake Orion, Avondale and first-year teams can ask for as seeds get planted for boys volleyball in the Detroit area and around the state.
“We’re going pretty fast here,” Stefanski said.
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) Lake Orion and Auburn Hills Avondale volleyball players battle at the net during a Thursday match. (Middle) Dragons junior Owen Dyer tracks down a loose ball. (Below) Avondale players break out of a timeout. (Photos by Keith Dunlap.)