Southwest Schools Begin League Shuffle
By
Wes Morgan
Special for MHSAA.com
December 6, 2016
Just when it seemed that the waters had calmed concerning conference realignment in Southwest Michigan, two area leagues are expected to lose a chunk of their respective memberships with the berth of a new alliance.
It was announced in June that Bronson would be leaving the Berrien-Cass-St. Joseph League at the end of the 2016-17 school year to join the Big 8 Conference. The BCS began in 2014.
Now, all three St. Joseph County schools — Centreville, Mendon and White Pigeon — along with Cass County seat Cassopolis, are expected to exit the BCS this year as well. Those schools are joining Southwestern Athletic Conference defectors Bangor, Bloomingdale, Eau Claire, Hartford, Decatur and Marcellus to form the Southwest 10 Conference.
Seven of the 10 school districts have already voted in favor of the new league, with the last three unnamed schools expected to vote the same way later this month.
Once again, football was a driving force, though several other factors sparked the initial discussions back in August. It was important for Centreville, Mendon and White Pigeon to stick together after a long run dating back to the St. Joseph Valley League.
Competitive fairness and logistics were two other key concerns.
“(The SAC schools) came into this meeting stating the No. 1 goal is to not have a mega conference,” Mendon co-athletic director Glen Samson said. “They tried to get us to strike while the iron is hot. At the same time they are discussing this with us, the superintendents of the SAC and the BCS wanted us to all get together and form an even larger league, like 35 schools.
“We’ve just not had a whole lot of luck with this large conglomerate. It’s not really a league. You can see people voting on party lines, so to speak.”
A big obstacle in the BCS was football scheduling. The BCS did not make it mandatory that teams play cross-divisional games, which left some schools in the lurch when it came to filling out a nine-game schedule.
For instance, Mendon had to drive to the Upper Peninsula in Week 9 to play Manistique after finding no takers from similar-sized schools and with no desire of its own to compete against the likes of Class B programs up to three times a year.
Current BCS schools like Berrien Springs, Buchanan, Comstock and Parchment — all with about 450 students or more — are twice the size of schools like Mendon (203) and Cassopolis (278).
“This idea came across our table, so we took a look at it,” Samson said. “The schools involved want to keep it to 10 teams. The more we got into it, the more it made sense.
“When Bronson left, it left us with four teams in our division in football. All that guaranteed Mendon, Centreville and Cass were three games. We’re sitting here with three games, and we have to find six and we have to now play two or three Class B schools to fill out a schedule in a league of 18 teams. This is not right.”
A 10-team league solves that issue and makes for easier organization of all other sports. More often than not, Samson and Cassopolis athletic director Matt Brawley agreed, coaches didn’t even know what division their school was in as the groupings changed by sport.
“Scheduling and getting the bylaws in order,” are at the top of the priority list for Brawley. “Right now, things seem to be running pretty smoothly. We have a great group of athletic directors and superintendents working diligently.”
If all goes according to plan, schedules will take care of themselves in the Southwest 10 since most schools offer the same sports. There are five schools that offer soccer with a sixth considering adding it for next season. A positive byproduct would be less travel time.
“For Cass, logistically, our furthest drive (would be) 37 miles,” Brawley said. “Marcellus and Decatur are our next-door neighbors. It doesn’t make much sense not to play them (as is the case now).
“I’m very excited,” Brawley said of a new league without divisions. “What I’m most excited about is being in a league where you’ve got to (likely) win nine games to win the conference championship or go 17-1 or 16-2 in basketball. It holds a lot more weight. The BCS is a great bunch of people, but this opportunity makes the most sense for us.”
Wes Morgan has reported for the Kalamazoo Gazette, ESPN and ESPNChicago.com, 247Sports and Blue & Gold Illustrated over the last 12 years and is the publisher of JoeInsider.com. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Berrien, Cass, St. Joseph and Branch counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Centreville and Marcellus face off in a girls basketball nonleague matchup. (Middle) Mendon and Casspolis will bring their football rivalry to the new Southwest 10 Conference. (Photos courtesy of Wes Morgan.)
Former Siena Heights Coach Kohn Excited for Next Phase as Lenawee Christian AD
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
June 3, 2026
When Matt Kohn found out that Siena Heights University was closing its doors at the end of the 2025-26 school year, he was on vacation at a southern Indiana campground with his family.
He got out of the water, answered a call from one of the Siena Heights assistant coaches and was given the shocking news. Within minutes, he dried off and was packed and in his car, making the four-hour drive back to Adrian to meet with his coaching staff and players.
“I did it for my coaches,” Kohn said. “It was important for us to be on the same page and get together a game plan.”
Kohn, 44, is putting together a new game plan these days. The Adrian native began his new job this week as the athletic director at Adrian Lenawee Christian schools.
It’s a significant change from being head coach of the NAIA Saints, a position he held for the past decade. At Siena Heights, his football team typically had 120-130 players. Lenawee Christian, a Class D-size school, will have an enrollment of 114 this fall.
“It’s all relative,” Kohn said.
Instead of overseeing a team with 14 assistant coaches, he will lead an athletic program that has had incredible success over the years. Over the past decade, the Cougars have won two Division 4 girls basketball championships and three 8-Player football title. LCS won two Girls Volleyball Finals in the early 2000s, and the boys basketball program has 11 Regional titles and a Finals appearance since 1998.
The school takes tremendous pride in its athletic program and Kohn, who lives just minutes from campus, is excited to be a part of the LCS family.
“This is a great opportunity for myself and my family, and truly is done by God,” Kohn said. “Being able to stay home and continue into the next phase of my professional career is really all I could have asked for.”
Kohn finished out the school year at Siena Heights, helping find new schools for his remaining football players and new homes for his coaching staff.
“They made a commitment to me by coming to Siena Heights,” he said. “I felt it was important that I remained committed to them.”
As the end of the school year became closer and closer, however, he started searching for his next career move. He didn’t want to move out of the Adrian area but also knew he needed to find a job. When previous LCS athletic director Craig Anderson was promoted to principal, Kohn applied for the administrator position.
“I have so many connections to LCS,” he said. “I couldn’t be more excited.”
While growing up in Adrian, his dad, Bill Kohn, was a head football coach at multiple schools in Lenawee County, including Morenci, Adrian – and Lenawee Christian.
On its campus on the west side of Adrian off US-223, LCS has what it calls The Centre, which offers fitness and training facilities, youth and adult sports leagues, an indoor pool and outdoor water recreation area. The Centre opened in 1988. Kohn said his parents would drop him off at The Centre when he was a kid to play sports. It’s where he developed his love for athletes.
Eventually he became a record-setting quarterback at Adrian High School and played in the Michigan High School Coaches Association East-West All-Star game. He went on to play quarterback at the University of Indianapolis and spent time with the Ohio Valley Greyhounds of the United Indoor Football Association and two seasons in the Arena Football League with the Nashville Kats and Kansas City Brigade.
He returned to the University of Indianapolis to coach for three seasons before returning to Adrian to join the fledgling Siena Heights football program. In 2016 he was named the interim head coach and took over the job full-time in 2017. Over 10 seasons overall, the Saints won 50 games and had just one sub-.500 finish. They were often ranked nationally and nearly made the NAIA playoffs a couple of times.
“I can honestly say I showed up to work every single day for 15 years, and I gave it everything I had,” Kohn said of being a college head football coach. “There's not a drop of me left that I did not spend in investing in my coaches and investing in my players and getting our guys ready for games and training them and recruiting. That program got every last drop of Matt Kohn. So, I don't have any regrets in that regard.”
Kohn is part of a bit of a transition at Lenawee Christian. The Cougars named a new varsity football coach this week, and with Anderson becoming principal, the school has also hired Noah Beaudrie, an Erie Mason graduate and former quarterback at Adrian College, as the assistant athletic director. Beaudrie comes from a family of athletes. His father is the football head coach at Monroe Jefferson, which had its best season in years last fall, and his sister won a Finals championship in track & field last weekend.
“I’m blessed to have someone like Noah by my side,” Kohn said.
Kohn said in his new role, he will bring his passion for developing student-athletes to the high school level.
“I'm coming into an incredible situation with incredibly strong team members,” he said. “That definitely motivates me every morning, to come to work and just get a little better every day because of the team I have around me.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a news and sports reporter at the Adrian Daily Telegram and the Monroe News for 30 years, including 10 years as city editor in Monroe. He's written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. He is now publisher and editor of The Blissfield Advance, a weekly newspaper. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS (Top) New Adrian Lenawee Christian athletic director Matt Kohn, left, and assistant Noah Beaudrie post for a photo in front of the school’s stadium gate. (Middle) Kohn huddles with his Siena Heights football team. (Top photo courtesy of Lenawee Christian Schools. Middle photo courtesy of the Siena Heights athletic program.)