1975 Class D Football Film Finds Way Back to MHSAA for All to Enjoy Again
By
John Johnson
MHSAA Communications Director emeritus
April 11, 2023
Chasing history was one of the most enjoyable parts of serving at the MHSAA for nearly 34 years. Researching information, but especially what I considered for a long time to be talking to the “old guys” (now I’m one of them) and soaking up their verbal histories of our games.
It also involved chasing down old photos, broadcasts and game films – especially those which preceded our more modern video era beginning in the 1990s.
When I arrived at the MHSAA in 1987, there was a shelf of old 16mm film canisters of an assortment of Boys Basketball Finals from the 1950s to the 70s – certainly not a complete set. The Association would shoot some game action from each quarter and the trophy presentations. They’d be sent out to the participating schools to show to the students (I remember watching a Mt. Pleasant Sacred Heart game in 1967 when I was in fifth grade). Some would find their way back to the office – most would not.
Will Robinson, the legendary Detroit Public School League coach who led Pershing High School to the league’s first MHSAA titles (in 1967 and 1970) after a district-imposed hiatus from 1931-61 from statewide tournaments, would pull my chain every time we saw each other about those games featuring Spencer Haywood and Ralph Simpson, among others. We never found them.
So it became a project to try and track down as many old game films of state championships as we could.
Any conversation with someone with a history tone always included a question about the whereabouts of a game film or video. One of those recently bore fruit.
When Crystal Falls Forest Park played in the 8-Player Football Finals at the Superior Dome in Marquette back in 2017, I spent a lot of time talking with living legend Bill Santilli, who led the Trojans to the Class D crown in the very first year of the tournament in 1975, and who would later coach the school to a second state title (2007) and serve as athletic director. He said he had a box on his desk collecting dust that he didn’t know what to do with – that box contained an old video tape from that game.
I uttered four little words – “Send It To Me.”
After a while the tape arrived in East Lansing, and I got our video production friends at When We Were Young Productions/Rush Media in Wisconsin on it. This winter, they found someone who could convert it and sent me a file that was recently posted to the MHSAASPORTS Channel on YouTube. You can watch the Trojans play Flint Holy Rosary by Clicking Here or watching above.
There are all kinds of old game films/videos and artifacts in attics, closets, garages, etc., in every town. Two of our Muskegon historians – Ron Pesch, the MHSAA’s history guy; and the old broadcaster, Jim Moyes, who called games on the radio for years in the Port City – can tell stories of their own about discoveries they have made. Moyes found all kinds of mementos while working on his book on the history of high school track & field in Michigan, and sitting with Ron at this year’s Girls Basketball Finals, he told a story of finding the mother lode of photographs from one of his other historical passions – silent film star Buster Keaton – who spent ten summers in the Actor’s Colony in Muskegon.
Pesch found a listing for Eleanor Keaton, Buster’s widow, using a telephone book (remember those?), made a phone call and shortly thereafter, on a vacation to California, was in her living room where he was loaned a photo album and family scrapbook containing all kinds of images from their time in Muskegon. Many of those images appear in a soon-to-be-released documentary, while the album and scrapbook now reside in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library in Beverly Hills, Calif. You can preview the film by Clicking Here.
So if you think you have something of a state championship that could be utilized on a bigger platform and enjoyed by everyone, drop a note to [email protected]. If something needs to be converted to a more modern format, you’ll get a copy back, and the footage will be eventually viewable on the MHSAA’s YouTube channel.
To help guide your search, think in the following terms:
► Just about anything before 1990. But there are gaps during the 90s that need to be filled as well.
► Only Championship games and Semifinal games, unless something momentous occurred (like Richie Jordan’s 60-point game for Fennville against Bridgman in a Regional Semifinal in 1965, which is still an all-time tournament single-game record for boys basketball).
► For a list of what’s in the MHSAA archives prior to 2000 – Click Here. A long-term project is to get all of the games on the list and up to about 2010 uploaded to the YouTube channel. Most games from 2013-14 on can be viewed on the NFHS Network, and some games between 2010 and 2013 are available for purchase as DVDs from PrepFilms.com.
PHOTO Posing with the championship trophy after the 1975 Class D Football Final are (left to right): Forest Park tight end Bryan LaChapelle, quarterback Richard Mettlach, head coach Dick Mettlach and running back Bill Santilli.
Century of School Sports: State's Storytellers Share Winter Memories
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
December 31, 2024
As part of our school year-long celebration of a “Century of School Sports” and the MHSAA’s 100th anniversary, we’re connecting every season with members of Michigan’s sports media, our historian and longtime communications staff to present some of what they remember most from their time covering our games.
Below is our second installment, covering several of their winter sports memories.
Never Underestimate How Much These Moments Mean
Jack Doles, WOOD TV (Grand Rapids)
In one of my first years covering sports for WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Allendale High School went on a deep run in the 1991 basketball tournament. Joe Modderman was the star player for Allendale. He played his heart out, but the team ended up losing (in the Class D Final, 62-48 to Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard). During our postgame interview, Joe got very emotional. I saw just how important this game was to him. Joe ended up playing at Iowa State and eventually Grand Valley, so he knew he had a lot of basketball left to play. His tears were for his teammates, who had played their final game.
I still bump into Joe and we talk about that moment we shared afterward. It was a great lesson in how impactful those moments are.
Memorable All-Time Matchup, Unforgettable Scores
Tim Staudt, WILX (Lansing), in 53rd year of broadcasting
Picking one from the winter is easy – the District-opening game of the 1977 state basketball tournament at Don Johnson Fieldhouse and Lansing Everett’s Earvin Johnson versus Eastern’s Jay Vincent. Everett won 63-41 after losing 70-62 to Eastern in Jenison Field House before 10,000 fans the previous Friday to end the regular season. Both those scores I still remember to this day.
‘C-O-O, L-E-Y, Cooley, Cooley, Cooley High’
Mick McCabe, Detroit Free Press since 1970
March 28, 1987, Crisler Arena
Detroit Cooley 82, Detroit Southwestern 77, OT.
This time it was in the bag. Losers in five consecutive state championship games, Southwestern was certain to win its first state championship against a Cooley team that seemed to have no business playing in the state finals. After all, Southwestern had already beaten Cooley twice and the second victory came only a month earlier when the Prospectors destroyed Cooley by 35 points in the Detroit Public School League title game. Yes, 35 points!
But behind the play of sophomore Michael Talley (23 points) and senior Rafeal Peterson (22 points), Cooley took control early and led by 11 points at halftime The Cardinals led by eight heading into the fourth quarter and thought they had the game won before Doyle Callahan scored for the Prospectors an instant before the buzzer to force overtime. Southwestern scored the first basket in overtime and it would have been the perfect time for Cooley to call it an afternoon. But Peterson countered with the biggest basket of the day to tie the score and kept Southwestern from extending its lead. Instead, Southwestern had consecutive turnovers, missed a shot and committed a foul as Cooley took a five-point lead with 38 seconds remaining as chants of: “C-O-O, L-E-Y, Cooley, Cooley, Cooley High” reigned down from the Crisler rafters. It was the first of three straight Class A state championships for Cooley and Talley, who as a senior went on to become the Hal Schram Mr. Basketball Award winner.
Future U-M Teammates Face Off to Finish High School Careers
Greg Miller, formerly of 9&10 News (Cadillac)
The girls basketball Class C state championship game in 2011 pitted future college teammates Nicole Elmblad (St. Ignace) and Madison Ristovski (Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett) in a shootout for the ages. Ristovski scored 30 points, while Elmblad put up 33 points to go along with a 19-rebound effort, as the Saints pulled away in the fourth quarter to earn a 65-54 victory. Elmblad scored 14 of her 33 points in the deciding quarter to lead St. Ignace to the championship. It was a great back-and-forth matchup of two evenly-matched teams led by two outstanding athletes. The following year, the pair began to play as teammates at the University of Michigan and were both part of some of the winningest teams in program history.
Coles' Shot Goes the Distance
Perry Farrell, MHSAA.com and formerly of Detroit Free Press
I didn't cover the event, but Saginaw Buena Vista's Chris Coles made a shot from about 65 feet in the Class B state boys championship basketball game to defeat arch-rival Flint Beecher 33-32. It is the greatest shot in Michigan high school basketball history. And being a graduate of Buena Vista it was one of the highlights of our school.
Competitive Cheer Finals Atmosphere has Few Rivals
Geoff Kimmerly, MHSAA Communications Director and formerly of Lansing State Journal
I moved to the MHSAA during the 2011-12 school year after more than a decade at the Lansing State Journal, where among other areas of coverage we produced team-by-team previews for all of our area varsity sports – including the addition of a competitive cheer preview as that sport began to gain popularity and participation in the mid-Michigan area. But before leaving the LSJ, I had never covered a competition.
The new job, and a new venture of covering all of our MHSAA Finals for our previous Second Half website, brought me to the Grand Rapids Delta Plex on a Friday night in early March, 2012. I had covered Finals in several other MHSAA sports – although 2011-12 would also see my debut at lacrosse, swimming & diving, gymnastics, cross country, hockey and bowling championship events – so I’d been around some of the larger and loudest crowds for high school competitions over the previous decade or more.
But WOW. The Division 1 crowd, which reached into the Delta Plex rafters, was as charged as anything I’d seen at Ford Field or the Silverdome, or Breslin aside from the oft-recalled Detroit Renaissance/Wyoming Park boys basketball game in 2004. Coming close on atmosphere were some of the Team Wrestling Finals I’d experienced. But this night had people seemingly piled so high I thought they might roll out of the stands onto us. Dads were leading full sections in chants, and when their teams took the mat they were even more electric, and all of that took the typical emotions of a season-ending event to another level.
And of course, the competition was outstanding. Southgate Anderson won its first of what would be three straight Division 1 titles (and if you still don’t credit this as being a sport, try to do anything these athletes make happen on the mat). I was definitely a little awestruck by the whole evening, and left with a whole new appreciation for how another of our sports energizes its community.
Vikings Find Stride at Tournament Time
Brian Calloway, Lansing State Journal
Watching Lansing Everett defy the odds and make an improbable run to the boys basketball state Semifinals at Breslin Center in 2016 is one of the most notable things I observed from the winter sports season. Everett lost 10 regular-season games that year and at that time had become the first team in a decade to reach the state Semifinals despite double-digit losses in the regular season. Everett wound up falling to North Farmington in the Semifinal in what was its second-straight appearance in the final four in Class A.
Never-Ending 2008 Hockey Championship Game Ends with 2 Champions
John Johnson, MHSAA Communications Director from 1987-2020
On the ice that night, the busiest championship weekend the MHSAA has known came to an end with the longest game in the history of the Finals. Marquette and Orchard Lake St. Mary’s skated for 109 minutes and eight overtimes before administrators ruled the game a 1-1 tie and awarded co-championships in the name of safety for two exhausted teams who had earned victory. Ironically, the contest was just 1:32 from ending (in regulation) when Tim Hooker of St. Mary's knotted the score at 1-1. His tally equaled a power-play goal by Marquette’s Mike Peterson in the second period.
Coming home at the end of the weekend, and feeling like everything was wrapped up as I got closer to Lansing, I’ll never forget my phone blowing up with calls from folks wondering about what was happening with hockey. And then rushing into the house to punch up the audio of the game on the computer, I listened to a very hoarse John Kreger announcing that co-champions had been declared.
Evans’ Game-Winner Still Unbelievable
Lorne Plant – State Champs!
I had the opportunity to get to know then-head coach at Detroit Rogers Steve Hall when I did a State Champs! feature on Brenda Gatlin, who was the first woman to be head coach of a PSL boys basketball team in the (19)80s at Cass Tech. Just so happened, Steve Hall was a player on her team. That took place during the 2002-2003 basketball season, which was the first winter season in the State Champs! era. Two years later, Detroit Rogers had won the state championship the previous two years, so you can only imagine how hard it is to try and win three in a row. As far as I could tell, only two teams had won Class D state titles three times in a row. Chassell did it in the mid 50s, and Detroit East Catholic did it in the late 70s and early 80s. It had been a while. Strange that what only happened three times in 79 years has happened three more times in the last 20 (Class D/Division 4 state champions by a single team three times in a row. No one's ever won four in a row, but I digress).
Back to the '05 final, when the ball went out of bounds with three seconds left in OT and the ball was given to Rogers down a point, I settled in for the final shot. Then the refs overturned the call and gave it to Bellaire, and I thought to myself, "You had a nice run, Steve." And then, the freshman Eric Evans made one of the most incredible plays I've ever seen. He stole the ball and in the same motion threw it up towards the basket and it went in, I couldn't believe it. I will never forget that play.
1 Reporter's Take on Boys Basketball “Games of the Decade”
Brad Emons, Detroit Free Press (formerly of Observer & Eccentric newspapers)
March 6, 1986: In a Class A District Semifinal before an overflow crowd of 2,000 at Alumni Arena, host Wayne Memorial (18-3) took eventual state champ Romulus (25-2) and Mr. Basketball Terry Mills to two overtimes before falling, 93-92. The 6-foot-9 Mills, who later starred at Michigan and played 10 seasons in the NBA, scored 37 points, including 11 in the second OT. The Eagles, who also featured DI players Steve Glenn (Austin Peay) – who added 19 points – and Juan Street (Bowling Green), went on to defeat Detroit Southwestern for the state title at U-M’s Crisler Arena, 72-65. Wayne, which gave up an average height of five inches per man, had three players foul out. The Zebras got a team-high 27 points from Mark Robinson, while Spence Williams and Rod Sommons added 18 and 14, respectively.
March, 18, 1978: Orchard Lake St. Mary’s capped a perfect 27-0 season with a 67-52 Class D championship win over Detroit St. Martin dePorres at U-M’s Crisler Arena. Just a day earlier at MSU’s Jenison Field House, St. Mary’s ousted Mio Au Sable and the state’s all-time career scorer Jay Smith (2,841 points) in convincing fashion, 77-52. In the Quarterfinals at Corunna, OLSM thwarted Saranac and 6-8 MSU recruit Ben Tower, 71-53. The Eaglets’ starting lineup featured Dominican Republic native Evaristo Perez (MSU), Jim Paciorek (Michigan), Barry Bugaj, Dave Kay and Gregg Williamson. After the Semifinal win over Mio, St. Mary’s coach Bob Shoemaker lauded the play of Paciorek saying, “They couldn’t stop Jim even with a blow torch.”
Avoiding Pin, Mason's Jackson Becomes Championship Hero
Rob Kaminski, MHSAA communications coordinator since 1999
During my quarter-century here with the MHSAA, Team Wrestling has always been one of my favorite tournaments. The venue, whether Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek or Wings Event Center in Kalamazoo, is the perfect size for the event, and the crowds are raucous and enthusiastic with the Finals often packed to the rafters.
At one time, the format always began with the lightest weights wrestling first, finishing with the heaviest weights. The format then changed, with the starting weight being drawn right before the competition began, so there was a greater emphasis on strategy: which wrestlers would coaches send out for each weight class?
Such was the case in 2003 at Kellogg Arena. The Division 2 Final between Mason and Lapeer West not only featured two schools always near the top of their sport at the time, but also one of the top individuals in MHSAA history in Lapeer West’s Roger Kish, already a three-time individual champion who ruled the 189-pound weight class.
When 215 was drawn as the starting weight for the Final, the stage was set for a potential dramatic finish as Kish would face Mason’s Tom McDiarmid in the last bout of the meet. However, thinking that Kish would have an easier time against Mason’s 215-pounder and possible getting six points for a fall, Lapeer West sent Kish out for the first match of the dual against Mason’s Kody Jackson. An audible murmur filled the arena, as fans from the other divisions began to take notice of the strategy while also wanting to see one of the best wrestlers in MHSAA history. It seemed as though the first matches on the other three mats might as well have been taking place on Mars, as everyone focused on the D2 circle.
Kish did win the bout, 26-15, but the deafening roar from Mason’s crowd – and other non-partisans in the arena – for Jackson’s effort was something I’ll never forget. The young man had stayed off his back, avoided a pin, and Lapeer West got two points less than it had gambled for.
When it came time for McDiarmid’s turn at 189 to end the meet, Mason trailed 27-25. McDiarmid then took care of business with a 14-1 major decision to give Mason the title, 29-27, and send the crowd into a frenzy.
A week later, Kish and McDiarmid did indeed meet, this time in the MHSAA Individual Finals at 189, where Kish posted a 26-11 technical fall to secure his fourth MHSAA individual crown, and second straight at that weight.
#11 Never Forgotten
Jack Doles, WOOD TV (Grand Rapids)
The last story I'll share deals with a high school athlete who played multiple sports at Grandville high school and left a legacy, not with his play, but his actions.
Ryan Fischer played football and hockey at Grandville. He was a captain and the unquestioned leader of the team. Ryan was also beloved by his classmates, because he was an active listener and friend to everyone in the hallways. Sadly, Ryan died unexpectedly during the (2014) hockey playoffs (on the morning of the team's Division 1 Semifinal against Detroit Catholic Central). The team wasn't sure if they could play, but as they waited outside the Fischer home, Ryan's father brought his jersey to the team and told them Ryan would want them to play.
Grandville lost in the (Semifinal), but they fought and made a community proud. At the end of the game, the team took a knee to say a quick prayer, and then Detroit Catholic Central joined them. An incredible level of sportsmanship. Not long after the Fishers buried their son, they started a scholarship in his name. The scholarship is given to the athlete that embodies Ryan's values and spirit. In a story we did, his brother Connor told us his goal was to win that scholarship. He did, and now he serves in the United States Army. Meanwhile, the Grandville and Wyoming communities hand out an award each year called the 11.
Ryan wore number 11. His legacy lives on around West Michigan and beyond.
Previous "Century of School Sports" Spotlights
Dec. 17: MHSAA Over Time - Read
Dec. 10: On This Day, December 13, We Will Celebrate - Read
Dec. 3: MHSAA Work Guided by Representative Council - Read
Nov. 26: Finals Provide Future Pros Early Ford Field Glory - Read
Nov. 19: Connection at Heart of Coaches Advancement Program - Read
Nov. 12: Good Sports are Winners Then, Now & Always - Read
Nov. 5: MHSAA's Home Sweet Home - Read
Oct. 29: MHSAA Summits Draw Thousands to Promote Sportsmanship - Read
Oct. 23: Cross Country Finals Among MHSAA's Longest Running - Read
Oct. 15: State's Storytellers Share Fall Memories - Read
Oct. 8: Guided by 4 S's of Educational Athletics - Read
Oct. 1: Michigan Sends 10 to National Hall of Fame - Read
Sept. 25: MHSAA Record Books Filled with 1000s of Achievements - Read
Sept. 18: Why Does the MHSAA Have These Rules? - Read
Sept. 10: Special Medals, Patches to Commemorate Special Year - Read
Sept. 4: Fall to Finish with 50th Football Championships - Read
Aug. 28: Let the Celebration Begin - Read
PHOTOS Clockwise from top left: (1) Earvin Johnson brings the ball upcourt for Lansing Everett. (2) Nicole Emblad gets a shot up for St. Ignace. (3) A Grandville teammate of Ryan Fischer wears his jersey for the Division 1 Semifinal after Fischer died that morning. (4) Southgate Anderson competes at the 2012 Competitive Cheer Final. (5) Mason's Kory Jackson (red) and Lapeer West's Roger Kish wrestle during the 2003 Division 2 Final. (Middle) Detroit Cooley celebrates its 1987 Class A boys basketball championship. (Below) Marquette and Orchard Lake St. Mary's hockey players shake hands after their record-setting championship game. (MHSAA file photos.)