AD Inducted to National Hall of Fame
May 7, 2014
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Winter gets hectic so quickly that we’re forced to save some intriguing items that come our way for a sunnier day – and that day is today.
Following are news, notes and a few key links collected over the last few months, including the national Hall of Fame induction of a longtime Michigan athletic director, local recognition for another and statewide acclaim for a group of students putting their video production equipment to good use benefiting all.
Ann Arbor AD Honored Nationally
Former Ann Arbor Huron athletic director Jane Bennett was among five inducted into the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association Hall of Fame in December.
Bennett served 26 years as a teacher, coach, athletic director and assistant principal in Michigan before spending the last decade as a principal at two schools in Montana. She served as athletic director at Huron for 15 years through 2002-03. The NIAAA reported that during her final decade in that position, participation in athletics doubled.
Bennett, who received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan, began her career at Huron in 1977 as varsity softball coach and became a math teacher and the co-director of athletics a year later. She coached the softball team 14 seasons before moving into the full-time athletic director position. Bennett was co-founder of the Michigan High School Softball Coaches Association and served as MHSSCA president from 1982-87.
Among other achievements at Huron, Bennett was a leader in a successful campaign to gain voter approval of a $60 million bond package, which included $20 million to improve and expand athletic facilities. She also developed curriculum for an annual varsity captains/head coaches leadership training program and composed handbooks/guidebooks for coaches, athletes and parents.
Bennett also was a valuable contributor to the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association and the NIAAA. She was president of the MIAAA in 1993-94 and a state conference speaker on several occasions. Bennett also served in various NIAAA leadership positions including on the committee that developed the Leadership Training Institute in 1996.
Bennett was named MIAAA Athletic Director of the Year in 1998 and received its State Award of Merit in 1997. She received the MHSAA’s Women in Sports Leadership Award in 1995 and was inducted into the MHSSCA Hall of Fame in 1995. Prior to her selection to the NIAAA Hall of Fame, Bennett was honored with the NIAAA Distinguished Service Award in 1998 and the NIAAA Thomas E. Frederick Award of Excellence in 2000. In 2005, she was inducted into the National Council of Secondary School Athletic Directors Hall of Fame, having served as its president in 2003 and been selected as its Athletic Director of the Year in 1998.
PSL's Ward: 'Pillar' of Detroit Athletics
Alvin Ward, the executive director of athletics for the Detroit Public School League and a member of the MHSAA Representative Council, received a 2014 Pillar in the Community Award in April from the Coast II Coast All-Stars, a Detroit-based pro basketball team that plays in the American Basketball Association.
Ward has served as a teacher, assistant principal and principal as well for Detroit Public Schools, and directs programs with a combined 500 coaches and 4,500 athletes.
Linked up
- This winter, the MHSAA Representative Council adopted a number of football practice rules changes aimed at improving player acclimatization at the start of fall and reducing head trauma and injuries. The Adrian Daily Telegram’s Doug Donnelly got responses from a number of coaches from that area of the state; click to find out why they feel these changes are important.
- Port Huron Times Herald writer Paul Costanzo let people know about our Student Advisory Council through the experience of Marlette’s Connor Thomas, one of our juniors and a great contributor this school year.
Power of Awareness
The Kimberly Anne Gillary Foundation works to educate Michigan schools on sudden cardiac arrest and train personnel in CPR and the use of an AED (automated external defibrillator). The video below teaches us again about the importance of awareness.
Saginaw Heritage was awarded $5,000 in April as the winner of the Gillary Foundation’s High School AED Contest. Students were asked to create a 3-minute video emphasizing the importance of Michigan high schools being adequately prepared to respond to a sudden cardiac arrest or related event on school property.
Randy and Sue Gillary created the foundation after their 15-year-old daughter Kimberly – an athlete at Troy Athens – died after suffering sudden cardiac arrest in 2000. The contest judges were Kimberly’s sisters Emily Kucinich, Jennifer Gregroy and Katie Gillary.
As of April 1, the Gillary Foundation had raised $1.2 million and donated 650 AEDs to schools – with three lives having been saved with donated AEDs. For more, click www.kimberlysgift.org.
In 'Turn & Burn,' Kent III Gives Voice Again to Father's Life Lessons, Coaching Wisdom
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
August 29, 2025
As his son, his player and during their time coaching together, Warren Kent III was front row for the words of wisdom often shared by his father Warren Kent Jr., who coached a multitude of sports at seven schools over more than three decades.
But as the years have rolled on after his father’s death in 2017, Kent III began to realize something most disheartening – he’d forgotten the sound of his dad’s voice.
In an attempt to regain that memory, Kent III has given us all an opportunity to listen.
His book – “Turn & Burn” – is the story of a son growing to love baseball under the tutelage of his father, a teacher and coach of the local varsity. The seeds for that love of the game are planted during the summer of 1984 – coinciding with the Detroit Tigers’ most recent World Series championship season.
Technically, the story is fiction. But it’s set in Fulton Township, which lies just west of US-127 between St. Johns and Ithaca, where Kent Jr. was indeed a coach and Kent III grew up and attended Fulton High School. And all of the information on the Tigers’ historic run that season – including game-by-game synopses of all 162 plus eight in the playoffs – is true as well and easily will connect with fans who, like Kent III, grew up during that unforgettable summer.
“That was my thing. I wanted people to get the feelings I had with the ’84 Tigers and sharing that with my dad as I was growing up,” he said. “My outlet is writing, so this is really a catharsis, just to get this out there, to let other people know the love of the Tigers but more the love of my father and things we went through together.”
Kent III was five months old when the Tigers won their 1968 World Series championship, but 16 in 1984. He said his book is about 70 percent factual, but even the imagined is rooted in reality.
The main character in “Turn & Burn” – EJ – is 12 years old because that seemed a more reasonable age to fall in love with the sport, and by 16 Kent III was well into his baseball fandom. The father in the book is a teacher and coach. Kent Jr. was a special education teacher for more than four decades and his son’s baseball coach at Fulton High School but just for freshman year before moving into the stands for the remainder of Kent III’s four-year varsity career.
Kent III began coaching baseball himself when he was 18 and served as North Muskegon’s varsity coach for 15 years, including 11 with Kent Jr. as his assistant. At one point in “Turn & Burn” players write EJ’s dad’s initials on their hands because he had been hospitalized after a heart attack; North Muskegon players did the same when Kent Jr. had a heart attack prior to a Pre-District game in 2005.
“Some of it’s been changed. Some of it’s been realistic,” Kent III said. “(But the dad) is definitely my dad’s voice.
“I put him in charge of the outfielders at North Muskegon, and that was his one motto – ‘Turn and burn.’ The kids could probably tell you that over and over, (that’s) the one thing Coach Kent would always say.”
A source of many of the fatherly pearls of wisdom found in “Turn & Burn” came from a journal-style “father’s legacy” book Kent III had purchased for his dad years before and asked him to fill out. Kent Jr. passed those on not only to his children but during a coaching run that took him to Hudsonville, Ashley, Fulton, Vestaburg, Blanchard Montabella and Greenville, where notably he led the football program to its first playoff appearance in 2000.
Writing has long been a love for Kent III, who taught English and journalism for 32 years – and served as a yearbook advisor for three decades – while at Battle Creek Central and then the final 27 years at Muskegon Mona Shores. Prior to becoming a teacher, Kent III was “Journalist of the Year” at Ferris State while sports editor of the student newspaper and then moved on to study and serve as sports editor of the paper at Michigan State.
He has written for the Big Rapids Pioneer, Lansing State Journal and Battle Creek Enquirer, among others over the years, and after retiring from teaching at Mona Shores this spring took a position with Walsworth Yearbooks helping schools all over the state with their yearbook programs.
Kent III also is in his 34th year as an MHSAA registered official. He wrote a piece once for Referee Magazine about his experience officiating the 2011 Class D Girls Basketball Final at Breslin Center, home of his beloved Spartans. He’s more recently officiated Basketball Semifinals at Breslin during the 2023 and 2024 seasons and has returned to the baseball diamond as an umpire as well after umping baseball and softball earlier in his career.
Writing a book came to Kent III during the COVID-19 pandemic, as he like many searched for something to occupy spare time. “Turn & Burn” is available exclusively via Amazon; click for details.
The venture was never about making money, but he’s sold 152 books – well above his goal of 100. And while Kent III still has not come across any recordings or voicemails of his father’s voice, “Turn & Burn” has given him a chance to hear Kent Jr.’s words once again.
“The sound, no. But the things and the ways he would say them, yes,” Kent III said. “Everybody else says they can picture his voice. I think it’s because, I’m assuming being his son, my voice probably sounds familiar to his to other people, but I can hear the things he’s saying. And in that book, the way he’s saying them.”
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Warren Kent III sits in the front row of a team photo as manager for dad Warren Kent Jr.'s 1979 Fulton baseball team; Kent Jr. is sitting far left of second row from bottom. At right, Kent III today. (Middle) "Turn & Burn" is Kent III's first published book. (Below) The Kents anchor a photo with North Muskegon players and their District championship trophy in 2009. (Photos provided by Warren Kent III.)