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.
West Bloomfield Shows Multiple Ways It Wins In Pulling 1 Closer to Potential Repeat
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
March 17, 2023
EAST LANSING – The versatility of West Bloomfield was on full display during Friday afternoon’s first Division 1 Semifinal at Breslin Center.
In the first half, the Lakers pounded the ball inside to 5-foot-11 senior forward Sydney Hendrix, who scored 12 of her 20 points during the first quarter – and, on the rare occasion she did miss, her teammates continuously grabbed offensive rebounds until they scored.
In the second half, it was time for some full-court pressure featuring multi-talented junior twins Indya Davis (a team-high 23 points and 12 rebounds) and Summer Davis (20 points), who swarmed the Salem guards, producing one easy basket after another.
The end result was a great afternoon for green-clad West Bloomfield on St. Patrick’s Day, as a comfortable 78-53 victory put the Lakers in position to capture a second-consecutive Division 1 title Saturday.
“We’re not satisfied with that,” said West Bloomfield coach Darrin McAllister, who is now 51-3 in his two seasons as coach. “We’ve done better. We hold ourselves to a higher standard.”
West Bloomfield, 26-2 and champion of the Oakland Activities Association Red, advanced to Saturday’s 12:15 p.m. Division 1 title game against Rockford.
Hendrix, a four-year varsity starter who has committed to Division I Florida A&M, asked for the ball in the post repeatedly to start the game, leading her team to a 16-8 lead after one quarter.
The Lakers were relentless on the boards, completing the first half with a better than 2-to-1 rebounding advantage and finishing the game with a 47-27 edge on the glass.
“Going into the game, we had that mentality to go to the rack,” said Hendrix, the daughter of Niki Sevillian-Hendrix, who starred at Flint Northwestern and then won a national title at Stanford in 1992. “My plan was to go to the hoop until they stopped me, and they weren’t stopping me.”
After building a comfortable 33-19 halftime lead behind their dominant inside game, McAllister and the Lakers shifted gears in the third quarter – showcasing the team’s full-court skills.
Led by the Davis twins – who McAllister has called “Swiss Army knives” because of their ability to do so many different things – the Lakers gave Salem fits with a suffocating press, forcing six turnovers in the first three minutes of the third quarter as a 14-4 run made the lead 24 points.
“That (press) got us going on offense and got everyone pumped up,” said Summer Davis, who finished with a team-high four assists.
West Bloomfield, which also has a Class A runner-up finish from 1989, had a comfortable 57-34 lead entering the fourth quarter.
Salem, which finished 2-15 just two seasons ago, received an impressive individual performance from Madison Morson.
Morson, an athletic 5-9 junior, scored all eight of her team’s points in the first quarter and never slowed down, finishing with a game-high 31 points and six rebounds.
“I was looking forward to it,” said Morson, who tweaked her ankle in the Rocks’ Quarterfinal win over Riverview on Tuesday but showed no ill effects. “We knew they were going to crash the boards hard and be reaching their hands out for everything.”
Senior guard Shahd Bakkar scored 15 points, but no other Salem player scored more than three.
“This is a dream; this is a movie,” said second-year Salem coach Rod Wells. “Think about it: these seniors won a combined four games in their freshman and sophomore years. So they went from winning four games to the Final Four.”
Wells is also excited to have Morson back for one more year.
“Madison is a hidden gem,” Wells explained. “She is one of the best players in the state, and she does it so smooth. Her teammates love playing with her because she’s not a ball-hog.”
The Rocks shot just 34 percent (compared to 47 percent for West Bloomfield) from the floor and hurt themselves with 20 turnovers, many coming against the full-court press in the third quarter.
West Bloomfield, whose closest tournament game was an 18-point win over Lake Orion in the Regional Final, has now won its six tournament games by an average of 29.5 points.
McAllister hopes his team has enough left in the tank for one more big win and a second-straight championship.
“We didn’t want to come out right away today with our full-court press, having to play back-to-back games,” explained McAllister. “We know we always get the other team’s best effort as defending state champions, and we have to be ready.”
PHOTOS (Top) West Bloomfield's Kendall Hendrix gets up a shot during Friday's first Division 1 Semifinal at Breslin Center, with Salem's Abby Resovsky defending. (Middle) The Lakers' Indya Davis (24) is among those defending as Madison Morson pulls up for a jumper.