Jackson Area Efforts Net New Officials
February 16, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Recruitment of new high school officials to eventually take the reins from those currently conducting MHSAA events is a challenge faced all over Michigan.
The Jackson Area Officials Association is working to restock its ranks by recruiting directly from local schools and developing them with help from veteran mentors.
Eight new officials – ages 15 to 24 – who worked a series of youth and middle school games together earlier this month, are among those who have been introduced through a program that begins with a meeting at the end of the high school basketball season between JAOA official Bill Walker and local athletic directors, coaches, fellow officials and other young adults he’s made contact with over the course of a season. From that meeting, Walker builds a list of potential candidates to become officials and then invites them to the annual JAOA Legacy Camp in June.
The camp includes two days of scrimmages between local teams, plus classroom and mechanics teaching. Similar to the MHSAA Legacy program, new officials are paired with veterans, and clinicians evaluate their work during scrimmage play. Walker then keeps in touch with the new officials during the rest of the summer, plugging them in for local youth tournaments and scrimmages, and uses as many as possible while assigning officials for youth tournaments over the winter.
All eight officials who worked the event this month are part of the JAOA legacy partnering, and some of the group already are working games at the junior varsity level – with one, a 19-year-old, recently completing his first varsity game. They come from a variety of Jackson-area schools – Parma Western, Napoleon, Jackson Christian, Michigan Center, Concord and East Jackson. Walker said the recruiting effort has a 60 percent success rate so far. (This June’s legacy camp will be the third.)
“By next season, all (eight) will be official MHSAA registered officials,” he said, noting most currently are registered. “It’s great to have these schools support this program. We all benefit from added, good officiating.”
Passing it forward
Our Battle of the Fans trip to Charlotte on Friday included a conversation about a Feb. 2 game between the Orioles and Mason, which has a pair of athletes fighting cancer. The Charlotte student section dressed in blue that night in support of junior Storm Miller, and during halftime passed buckets to raise money for Miller’s GoFundMe account set up to help pay for his care.
Mason, in turn, provided support Friday to an Owosso alum, 2012 graduate Cody Greger, who remains hospitalized at University of Michigan’s hospital with injuries sustained during a house fire in November. Fans and students collected donations to assist Greger’s family with his care.
“This event was yet another example of the values that school sports teach young people,” Owosso athletic director Dallas Lintner wrote on the school’s website. “And it stands as a testament of the integrity of the young adults that represent our schools and the (Capital Area Activities Conference.)."
100 years of hoops
A decade before the formation of the Michigan High School Athletic Association, Eastern Michigan University – then known as Michigan State Normal College – hosted what is believed to be the first organized high school basketball tournament in state history.
EMU will celebrate this anniversary Saturday in conjunction with the Eagles men’s basketball game against Toledo. Game time is noon at EMU’s Convocation Center, and during a break in play the athletic department will recognize the 12 schools that took part in that 1916 tournament – Marine City, Dundee, Milan, Mancelona, Farmington, Elkton, Royal Oak, Middleville, Lansing, Mount Clemens, Wayne and Saline.
More history, courtesy of EMU:
The game of basketball was developed by James Naismith in 1891 at Springfield College in Massachusetts. As a means of promoting the game throughout the country, physical education professor and EMU's first athletic director Wilber Bowen asked his good friend Naismith to bring the game to the Michigan State Normal College (now known as Eastern Michigan University).
The first basketball game west of the Allegheny Mountains was played at Michigan Normal in 1894 to recognize the new physical education program and to dedicate the new gymnasium on campus.
Then in 1916, Bowen, along with instructors Elmer Mitchell and Lloyd Olds (who was also credited with the introduction of the striped referee jersey), organized the first high school basketball tournament in Michigan. A total of 300 invitations were sent out to all Class B schools in the state. Twelve schools responded, and the first high school boys tournament was held on the Ypsilanti-based campus on March 23-25, 1916.
Entrance to the tournament was free and (the event was) played at the Michigan State Normal School Gymnasium. However, expenses related to transportation, room, and board had to be provided by the participating schools. The MSNC's Physical Education Department made it easier for schools to participate by making arrangements with local residents to provide food at 20 to 25 cents a meal and lodging at 25 cents a night for each player.
That first tournament saw Marine City defeat Dundee in the championship game, 23-22.
The winning team was awarded a silver shield mounted on an oak base. Second prize was a silver cup, and the third place team received a banner. Individual participation awards to all players were also provided. The Ypsilanti Press at the time felt the Normal School "went first class with the awards."
For tickets to Saturday’s game and event, which will be followed by the EMU women’s team taking on Northern Illinois, call the EMU Ticket Office at (734) 487-2282 or visit EMUEagles.com/tickets.
Following up
• Second Half’s Chip Mundy this fall wrote a story on the emergence of Ida’s football team on the way to making the Division 5 Semifinals and finishing its best season ever. A theme of that story was Ida’s philosophy of building “brick by brick,” coined by defensive line coach Gary Deland, who himself was building back after emergency triple-bypass heart surgery.
“From that very first practice in the summer to the last game as a senior, everything is built brick by brick,” Deland said for that story. “I can draw a correlation between that and my recovery, what I’ve gone through. It’s the same thing. It’s brick by brick.”
Kim Farver sent along this photo of Deland holding up a brick after the team’s 43-20 Regional Final win over Buchanan.
• We released the last batch of this year’s MHSAA-Farm Bureau Insurance Scholar-Athlete Award winners today, and one of the highlights during the 27 years of the contest came two years ago when we caught up with some of our winners from the first 25 years – including Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood’s Abby Cohen, who has gone on to co-found a company and help develop a smartphone application, Wing, to help asthma patients monitor their lung function.
Here’s a look at a video describing the technology she’s helped create:
Bedford Boys Lacrosse Continues Spectacular Rise with 1st Regional Title
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
June 17, 2025
Steve Ullery isn’t the president of a company or chief executive officer of a corporation. He doesn’t sit on any boards of directors.
However, what Ullery has done during his decade with the Temperance Bedford boys lacrosse program would make any CEO or chairperson of a board envious.
The Kicking Mules season ended against eventual Division 2 runner-up Detroit Country Day. But reaching the Quarterfinals for the first time in school history capped a monumental journey for the Bedford lacrosse program, that only this season climbed out of “club” status and became an official varsity sport at the southeast Michigan school.
“It’s been a long journey,” Ullery said. “And its not one that’s over. It’s one we are going to continue to try and improve on.”
Four or five years ago, Bedford was happy to go into halftime tied with Southeastern Conference opponents like Saline or Ann Arbor Skyline. Now, the Kicking Mules have won back-to-back conference titles.
“Eventually, we got better,” Ullery said. “The deficits got less. Maybe we were tied in the first quarter or we were winning the second half.
“About three years ago, we beat Saline for the first time. I think it was then that we started to realize, these teams aren’t invincible. That was the turning point of our program and the mindset of the players. We just need to go out and grab it.”
With back-to-back Southeastern Conference Red championship banners in hand, the Mules reached for another goal this season – reaching the MHSAA Finals.
A 16-1 win over Grosse Ile in their Regional Semifinal earned them a trip to the Regional Finals. A goal with 40 seconds left by freshman Kyle Burger sent the Mules to the Quarterfinals with an 11-10 win over Byron Center.
Country Day beat Bedford 19-1 in that Quarterfinal, but this still marked the greatest season in school history.
Ullery is from a small town outside of Dayton, Ohio. He played soccer, ran track and played basketball in high school. He attended Bowling Green State University in northwest Ohio and settled just across the state line in the Bedford school district. He was introduced to lacrosse when his oldest son came home one day with a sign-up sheet and said he wanted to give it a try.
“I picked this up by accident,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about lacrosse. My son wanted to try lacrosse, and they needed a coach. I was sort of volunteered to coach, jumped in and never looked back. It became a family endeavor. I have two sons and a daughter who played Bedford lacrosse.”
Ullery and another parent started watching YouTube videos about lacrosse to learn the technical side of the game to teach to youngsters.
“We tried to learn everything we could about the sport,” Ullery said.
He eventually moved up as a middle school coach and, as his own son reached high school, threw his hat into the mix to be the varsity coach. He was hired by the district.
Bedford athletic director Mark German said the program has taken off.
“Our boys lacrosse program revived the junior high team about four years ago … and we are now seeing the results of that feeder system,” German said. “At the high school level Steve Ullery and his staff, along with the players, just made the decision that they were no longer going to finish last in the SEC. They went to work and willed themselves to be champions.”
Although the program began in 2007, this is the first year boys lacrosse was funded by the school district. Prior to that it was considered a club sport by the district, although the school did allow the team to use the stadium and players to earn varsity letters and compete in the MHSAA postseason.
“We were privately funded,” Ullery said. “They took us under their umbrella this year.”
Coaching grew on Ullery, who surrounded himself with a mix of former high school and college lacrosse players and parents who wanted to be involved.
“Once we got a little bit of knowledge under our belt, we started developing a little bit of a culture,” he said.
As a coach, he said, he reflected on his own days as an athlete as well as a parent.
“Quite honestly, when I took the coaching position, I looked back and thought what are some things that used to drive me nuts about coaches and how can I be better than that,” he said. “The last thing I wanted to be was one of those coaches that other parents were hollering at, ‘Why is he doing this? Why is he doing that?’ From the onset, I tried to get as many parents into the team as possible. The more hands, the better.”
Ullery said he and the other coaches also wanted to build a well-rounded team.
“Bedford was never short on talented players,” he said. “The problem is they were never a talented team.”
In 2022, the Mules started six freshmen.
“We were a very young club,” he said. “We knew the odds were not in our favor, but we kept pushing. We promoted the assists over the goal. We promoted ground balls and takeaways, good defensive skills instead of only looking at goals and wins and losses.”
As head coach, he divided responsibilities among coaches for offense and defense and created a culture everyone wanted to experience. His assistant coaches this season – Josh Vislay, Aaron Kaun, Justin Burger and Romeo Ybarra – all played key roles.
“It was a good mix,” Ullery said. “We worked well together.”
Bedford, which finished 13-5, had a well-balanced team, although three of those 2022 freshmen (Blake Dlugosielski, Brady Weirich and Brennan McIntire) all finished their careers with more than 100 goals.
“We would have games where we might have seven or eight different scorers,” Ullery said. “That makes it hard for the other team to try and figure out who are we going to shut down.”
Bedford will lose nine seniors from this year’s team, but Ullery says the success of the program will keep rising as long as the feeder programs remain strong and keep things fun.
“It was busy, but I had the support of my family,” he said. “I would change nothing. It’s been an absolute joy and one heck of a ride. I’m humbled about where the team is and the successes we’ve been able to do as a group.”
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) Bedford’s Noah Puccetti (15) brings the ball upfield during a Regional Semifinal win over Grosse Ile. (Middle) Kyle Burger considers his options with the ball in his possession. (Below) The Kicking Mules take a team photo with their Regional championship trophy at Ypsilanti Lincoln. (Photos courtesy of the Temperance Bedford boys lacrosse program.)