Beginning Another Tourney Journey
August 8, 2016
Below is the introductory commentary to the MHSAA's spring issue of benchmarks. Histories of MHSAA tournaments published in that issue have been appearing on Second Half every Tuesday and Friday.
By Jack Roberts
MHSAA Executive Director
Concussions and cutbacks. Participation fees and part-time employment. Student safety and specialization. International students and interstate travel. Transfers and trials.
Through a myriad of issues which periodically cloud our mission, the foundation on which the MHSAA was built still shines brightest three times each year: Tournament Time!
It can be daunting and overwhelming to make a living at this business of interscholastic athletics these days, not to mention a tad confusing. Do we need legal degrees? Medical degrees? Business degrees? Marketing degrees? There seems to be no escape from threat of legislative mandates which continually change the landscape of our product and how it’s delivered. Demands pile up, resources dwindle.
Add the daily challenges of scheduling issues, inclement weather and pleasing teenagers and their parents on a daily basis, and it’s easy to lose focus of the primary missions for the MHSAA and its member schools.
And then, scenes like this happen:
• Holly Bullough, a senior cross country runner from Traverse City St. Francis takes her second straight Division 3 championship, winning by 36.4 seconds ... with a stress fracture in her left foot.
• Detroit Martin Luther King QB Armani Posey directs a game-winning drive to give his school the Division 2 football championship ... a drive which started on his own 3-yard line with 37 seconds left and ended with a 40-yard heave to receiver Donnie Corley on the final play of the game.
• Leland sweeps the Class D volleyball title match 3-0 over Battle Creek St. Philip ... ending a string of nine straight titles for St. Phil, the 10th longest national streak in history.
• Davison’s Taylor Davis becomes only the fourth person in MHSAA Girls Bowling history to roll a 300 game in the Singles portion of the tournament ... and the first ever in the championship match.
• The Upper Peninsula’s Hancock HS wins the Division 3 ice hockey title in its first trip to the Final since 2000 ... a trip funded in part from a “Go Fund Me” web page that raised $6,620 from 99 donors in two days.
• Junior Kierra Fletcher of Warren Cousino carries her team to the Class A girls basketball championship with 27 points in the Final ... after scoring 37 of her team’s 60 points in the Semifinals and totaling 198 during eight tournament games.
That’s just a sampling of the magic from last fall and winter.
These moments shine through the current challenges and the unseen future that awaits us as they always have. The uniforms and faces are different, but the tournaments have always yielded the fruits of our labors, and the memories for our mental scrapbooks.
PHOTO: Leland's volleyball team hoists its Class D championship trophy last fall at Kellogg Arena.
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.)