Wozniak 'Crew' Serves Together in Stripes
May 1, 2019
By Tim Miller
Mio teacher, former coach and graduate
If you were to attend a high school basketball game in northeast Michigan, or watch the local sports highlights from the evening on TV, you might see a member of the Wozniak family running up and down the basketball court.
You won’t see them dribbling the ball, or pulling up for a jump shot. The pressure to get a rebound, or to play defense, is no longer part of the game plan for them. The red jersey they once wore so proudly in high school has been replaced by a black and white uniform that’s worn only by referees.
Take a drive north on M-65 and you will eventually reach the home of the famous Potato Festival, located in Posen, Michigan. Don’t expect to see a McDonald’s, Subway, or even a stoplight when you arrive. The town consists of a few small businesses, managed by a group of people who take pride in calling Posen their home.
One such family is Stanley and Virginia Wozniak, who just finished celebrating 68 years of marriage. During this time, they became the proud parents of Chuck, Ken, Cheryl, Frank, Donna, Mary Ellen, Michelle, and Linda.
Although I’ve never met Mr. and Mrs. Wozniak, it’s obvious to me, and anyone who knows their children, that they instilled some very important life lessons in them while raising them. One such lesson was getting involved. At one time Stanley was an official, so I guess it’s no surprise to see his children follow in his footsteps.
Living in northern Michigan during the winter can be brutal. Frigid temperatures and a large accumulation of snow can make it challenging. The key to surviving these long hard winters is staying busy. One such way is to attend a high school sporting event, and like so many people throughout the area, I watch as many games as I can.
Whether I’m attending a home game, or traveling out of town to an away game, it’s not uncommon to walk into a high school gym and see the Wozniak officiating crew from Posen standing courtside, patiently waiting to start the game.
What’s been striking to me over the years is to see them working as a unit, game after game. Rarely have I seen one of them working on another crew. Another lesson learned from home: family staying together. Years of experience has allowed them to officiate a regular-season game or much-anticipated playoff game with confidence.
When the game begins, I like sitting by myself. I look for the little things that players do or don’t do. I also watch the officials and compare my observations with their calls. Having watched them for many years in a variety of games, I’ve been impressed with their ability to call a game, regardless of whether it’s two teams battling to stay out of last place or a championship game packed full of screaming fans. Their passion for the game and commitment to getting it right has earned the respect of coaches, players and fans throughout northern Michigan.
They would be the first to admit they’ve made a mistake or missed a call here and there. Another lesson learned from home: be honest and stay humble. There have been games where the fans, players and coaches have disagreed with them, and a variety of facial expressions and comments have been made. It doesn’t stop them; they just keep moving forward.
They know this type of behavior comes with the territory, even though it’s the reason why so many officials have decided to quit. Another lesson learned from home: don’t give up.
The same drive that earned Donna and Mary Ellen both Female Athlete of the Year at Posen Consolidated Schools – in 1978 and 1981, respectively – fuels them on the court. While attending a girls junior high game, I witnessed Donna put an end to a loud-mouth fan. She calmly stopped the game, walked over to him, looked him square in the eyes and said, “Are you done?”
To which he replied “yes.” After speaking with him and making her point, she continued to officiate the game all by herself. For some reason, she was the only official for the game. She didn’t complain or make excuses; she simply made the best of the situation in front of her. Another lesson learned at home: don’t complain and do your best.
I’ve also seen Mary Ellen straighten out a few coaches and players during her career. Like her sister Donna, she’s not afraid to put an end to poor sportsmanship during the game.
Being an official isn’t easy. They’re constantly under scrutiny and harassment by unruly fans, coaches and players. The sacrifices they make to officiate a game often go unnoticed or are rarely even discussed. I wonder how many dinners they’ve missed with their families.
The technology used at the games has changed over time. From the Kodak camera, to the 35 millimeter, to the camcorder. And now the popular cell phone, perhaps the best and worst device ever created. Now anyone can snap a picture or record a video of an official. Spend a few minutes adding disrespectful comments, and post it online. Even through this evolution of tasteless unwarranted behavior, the Wozniaks keep rolling on.
Like all officials, they don’t do it for the money! What little they make can’t possibly offset the cost of maintaining their vehicles, gas, tires and worn out parts along the way. They do it because they love and respect the game. As spectators, we often place the blame on officials when we lose. However, I’ve never heard anyone say we won because of the officials. In my 40-plus years of watching sports, I have never seen an official miss a free throw or turn the ball over during the game, nor have I seen an official play sloppy defense. I’ve never seen them get out-coached or out-hustled by the opposing team.
We also have a tendency to undervalue the officials. Instead, we put our focus on the coaches, players and the games. That all changes in a split second when we think a foul should be called. Then, all eyes are fixed on the official, and immediate results are expected. The official is expected to see everything, which is an unrealistic expectation.
As officials, the Wozniaks do an outstanding job. Running up and down the court with a whistle in your mouth can’t be easy. I wonder how many of us could do that. I can only imagine how many inadvertent calls would be made as we tried keeping up with the players. Trying to spot every rule infraction is impossible, and yet, they keep striving to do their best. They’re not perfect, nor would you ever hear one of them claim to be. However, they’re doing something that the majority of fans, coaches and players would never even consider! They’re willing to put that official’s uniform on and have the courage, determination and commitment to doing the best job they can.
Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know them. They have the ability to look past those negatives. They choose to remember the big games, the respectful players, the quality coaches, the new friendships they made, and most important of all, spend time on the court with one another.
Here are some of their amazing accomplishments:
• Chuck has been an official for 46 years. During this time, he has officiated multiple playoff games for girls and boys basketball, including MHSAA Semifinal and Final games. He was the track coach at Posen Consolidated Schools for 38 years and is currently a member of the Posen Fire Department.
• Ken has been an official for 43 years. He has officiated multiple playoff games for girls and boys basketball as well, including Semifinal and Final games. He currently serves on the Posen Consolidated School Board and has for the last 19 years – 17 as school board president.
• Frank has been an official for 42 years and has been selected to work a Basketball Semifinal. He coached junior varsity boys basketball for four years and umpired youth softball and basketball for many more. He was also the director of the local softball tournaments in Posen for 13 years.
• Donna has been an official for 41 years, working multiple playoff games for girls and boys basketball including Semifinals and Finals – including a boys Semifinal. She may be one of the most respected officials in Michigan, at any level! She coached softball at Posen Consolidated Schools and coached youth softball and basketball in the community for many years.
• Mary Ellen has been an official for 34 years and was selected to officiate a Girls Basketball Semifinal. She coached the varsity girls basketball team at Posen Consolidated Schools for nine years. She is currently an assistant coach for the Alpena Community College softball team.
• Linda officiated volleyball for 13 years. She volunteers at a variety of youth events throughout the community. She runs the scoreboard at athletic events, along with keeping the books. She is currently the class advisor for the graduating class of 2019 at Posen Consolidated Schools. She’s also involved in the chamber of commerce, where she served as treasurer for eight years.
• Although Cheryl doesn’t officiate, she’s involved in her community in many ways. She volunteers her time in the sports booster program and the little league programs. She was the secretary of the sports boosters for 15 years and selected as its “Volunteer of the Year.” She’s a strong supporter of promoting youth sports in her community.
• Michelle is also a strong supporter of youth programs in Posen and Alpena. She was selected as Female Athlete of the Year at Posen Consolidated Schools in 1983 and was appointed by former Governor Rick Snyder to serve on the Michigan Public Health Advisory Council. Like the rest of her siblings, she continues to stay involved in her community and volunteers in a variety of ways.
Aside from high school basketball games, the Wozniaks also have officiated other sports such as volleyball, track, and softball, and basketball at the college level.
I’m not sure how many more years the Wozniaks will continue to officiate. Hopefully for the coaches, players and fans, they’ll continue until they can’t run up and down the court anymore.
I can’t imagine how many whistles they’ve went through, or how many shoes they’ve bought along the way. The miles they’ve put on their vehicles, or the worn out tires they’ve replaced. The time they’ve missed with their families, or the TV shows they couldn’t watch. The quick meals eaten on the road, or the leftovers waiting at home.
Jonathan Lockwood Huie once said, “The path to your own happiness is usually found in service.” With all those years of officiating games and volunteering in their community, the Wozniaks understand the value of service. My guess is they’ve never heard of Johnathan Lockwood Huie, but his quote is deeply embedded in their DNA. They learned it from their parents; it’s the Wozniak way. Get involved, stay close to family and cherish your time together.
It’s the same formula that Stanley and Virginia used to spend 68 years together in marriage. So, Mr. and Mrs. Wozniak, thanks for teaching your children all those life lessons. To their spouses and families, thanks for sharing them. To the Wozniak crew, thanks for all the years you’ve dedicated to high school sports!
I can only imagine what they’ve seen and experienced during this time span. My guess is they could write a book filled with memories. The long drives, the late nights, the fall colors, the cornfields, the pumpkin patches, the icy roads, the snowstorms, the road construction, the price of gas, the vehicle mishaps, the missed deer, the big bucks, the coaches both good and bad, the great players and the not-so-great, the big games, the ejections, the technicals, the broken scoreboards, the athletic directors, the uniform styles, those ugly tube socks, the hairstyles, the rule changes, the news clips, the gyms, the good fans and the bad ones, the songs on the radio, the tickets, those aching body parts, who drove the most, who napped the most and the friendships made along the way.
Finding a family like the Wozniaks is rare. Becoming an official is one thing; doing it for 30 to 40 years is remarkable. What an impressive run – what a commitment to high school sports. So many games, so many stories, a lifetime of memories in the gym, on the track, at the softball field and in the car.
Eventually, the time will come when they decide to hang up their whistles for good. After it happens, I can picture them all sitting around the table on a cold winter night, drinking a cup of hot coffee, reflecting on their careers and all those games, all those memories, all those years, the stories, the laughs, and the time spent together as a family.
PHOTOS provided by Tim Miller.
Century of School Sports: MHSAA's Home Sweet Home
By
Rob Kaminski
MHSAA benchmarks editor
November 5, 2024
Visitors to 1661 Ramblewood Drive for the multitude of MHSAA committee meetings, in-services and other functions are sure to see the faces of Michigan’s renowned educational athletics leaders throughout the years on various recognition boards.
Absent from any of those displays is the late East Lansing resident Thomas Reck. Yet, Reck and the long-range vision of Jack Roberts were equally as vital in “restructuring” the MHSAA in the late 1990s; quite physically.
“I really wanted something along US-127 – visible from 127 – and there was a good deal of open land where the building sits now that looked to be about the right size,” recalled Roberts, who at the time was just finishing the first decade of what would be an iconic 32-year run as the executive director of the MHSAA.
There was one potential roadblock to Roberts’ dream location: There was no indication of any kind that the property was for sale; no billboard, no realty listing.
That’s because it wasn’t for sale – yet.
“I contacted a realtor, Martin Property Development, and I suggested one of their employees call upon Mr. Reck,” Roberts said. “He did that, and got a purchase price of $600,000. To me, the excitement really took place before the first shovel went into the ground.”
The deal was then approved by both parties, and development began in 1996, with Reck’s residence remaining in place atop the small hill south of the new road leading to the proposed site of the MHSAA building.
“When we bought the land, there was no road,” Roberts said. “One of the reasons it curves is that Mr. Reck was given a life lease, so we had to go around his house. It also had to navigate some protected wetland areas.”
As for the name of the road, that was the MHSAA’s choice, one which actually came quite easily. The city of East Lansing had some concerns with the new development, and expanding on an existing name for the road was the first show of good faith by the newest tenants. Keeping the name Ramblewood made sense as there was already a Ramblewood Drive at the exact intersection to the east of Coolidge Road.
“We didn’t want to come in and change a lot of things, or inconvenience the residents in that area,” Roberts said. “We kept development back from the road and kept as much nature intact as possible. Even the signs that are there now are off the road and relatively small.”
Roberts and staff needed no signs to find their way to the new digs just more than three miles north of the previous offices on Trowbridge Road.
Led by Roberts and former assistant director Tom Minter, much of the moving occurred during Christmas break of 1996. Doors to the new building were opened in January 1997, roughly seven years after Roberts first began dreaming of a new home.
The building on Trowbridge was formerly a credit union, and its structure provided some unique problems.
“In the late 1980s, around ‘88 or ‘89, we bought our first major computer, an IBM mainframe, and put it upstairs in the old building,” Roberts said. “It was about five feet high and eight feet wide and had its own room. We had to drill through concrete to wire it. I began to realize that we were going to have a hard time keeping up with things in a building that was so difficult to modernize.”
John Johnson, the MHSAA’s first communications director and a pioneer in that position among state high school associations, also reflected on the early days.
“Anything which was data-driven was jobbed out for awhile,” Johnson said. “Football playoff rankings were delivered to us once a week from a third party. We were doing everything outside the building: school databases, officials databases, penalty databases. The only thing we had inside the walls was word processing. I had the first PC in 1987.”
And, he recalled, the beast of a mainframe that took up an entire room at the expense of personnel. “Yep, it took up the whole room,” Johnson confirmed. “I was in what was called the library, which had historical books, but also old T-shirts left over from previous years’ champions.”
That lack of storage was also motivation for Roberts to find new real estate, and addressing that shortcoming was paramount in the plans.
“We had no storage, and no efficient way to receive shipments like rules books, paper, and the basic supplies we needed to run our business,” Roberts said. “That’s also why we have the lift in its current location at the new building; shipping and receiving were really important to us, along with our drop ceiling which made it much easier to run wiring as needed.”
As sparkling and expansive as the new facilities were, perhaps the best feature of all was its cost. The structure only took up a portion of the land purchased by the association, per Roberts’ vision. That left four parcels on the property for sale by the MHSAA, and with the road and utilities in place, those sections became even more valuable and enticing.
The MHSAA’s expenditures totaled roughly $1 million for the purchase of the land, road construction and utility installations. The parcels then sold for approximately $300,000 apiece.
“In the end, we had our space free of charge, and had $200,000 for furnishings,” Roberts said. The lone cost would then be the actual construction of the building, financed through a bond. And, the MHSAA could choose their neighbors, which was also part of the grand plan.
“We were going to be particular about who moved in, and that they’d be further back; not right on the road,” Roberts said. “Above all, we wanted to be good neighbors to the residents in the area and choose businesses that would be good neighbors as well.”
The other four parcels are occupied by medical practices, and the area remains a somewhat sleepy and hidden subdivision to this day.
Interestingly, and unknown to most, the MHSAA nearly held on to the parcel closest to its front door as a rental venture. That prospect led to spirited but friendly debate among Representative Council members at the time, leading to a vote on the matter of whether to sell the land or construct another building and rent space in that structure.
“There was good-natured discussion on the topic with arguments both in favor of selling and for building and renting on that last parcel,” Roberts said. “I remember on the morning of the vote, I offered the Council this to think about: We were really good at rules, really good at interpretations and administration of school sports. None of us were landlords or experts in that field.”
By a 10-9 vote, the Association would sell the final plot. “We didn’t get greedy, and history showed it was the right decision, what with the housing market landscape years later,” Roberts said. “We’d already won the lottery in a sense. Why enter into an area in which we knew little about?”
The timing of this new gem couldn’t have been any better, as the MHSAA was hosting the Section 4 meeting of state high school associations in September 1997. It was the perfect opportunity to showcase the facility with an open house attended by those in town for the meeting as well as current and former MHSAA staff and dignitaries.
Met with the now-recognizable and unique high-arching “roof” – half copper and half green, open frame – visitors were impressed. “The architect was on vacation in Florida and saw a similar building with the copper roof. When she assured me that it wouldn’t turn green over time, I agreed to do it,” Roberts said. “The design is actually still trendy, so it’s held up over time.”
Indeed it has, as verified by builders and designers currently giving the MHSAA’s home its first facelift.
“When I told people how old the building was, they couldn’t believe it, because its design has held up so well,” said MHSAA Assistant Director Dan Hutcheson, who has worked closely with contractors on building renovations during the last several months.
Even prior to this expansion and cosmetic overhaul, the MHSAA and its technology, staff were looking to the future.
“Ironically, we upgraded projectors and cameras to delve into Zoom and virtual meetings before we really even knew what they were or how valuable they could be,” Hutcheson said. “This was winter of 2020, and a couple months later, Covid hits and by luck we’re kind of prepared, at least communication-wise.”
Following the Covid-19 pandemic, once the MHSAA was back on solid footing, Executive Director Mark Uyl began to outline and identify areas for expansion and updating inside the building.
Roberts’ foresight in the initial storage and expansion areas have paid huge dividends, as plenty of space existed for new offices.
The first meeting with architects post-pandemic was in September 2022, with renovations beginning in September 2023. Now, two years later, the project is near completion.
New color schemes, video boards, LCD displays and touchscreens serve to keep the facility in stride with those to which the MHSAA’s constituents have become accustomed.
There was plenty of work behind the scenes, too, such as fixtures and plumbing which simply had exceeded their lifespan or needed to be brought up to current codes. The overall mission for the changes, as always, was to better serve the membership.
“We serve 750 member schools, with so many from those schools coming here for training, teaching and educational sessions,” Hutcheson said. “As our staff members visit schools around the state, we see video boards, electronic message boards. We needed to keep in step with the schools, and in doing so, better assist our ADs, coaches and officials with their work.”
For two people who didn’t know one another, Reck and Roberts brought countless people together since 1997 to help them do their work.
Previous "Century of School Sports" Spotlights
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 (Top) Clockwise from top left: The former MHSAA office on Trowbridge Road. (2) Work is underway on the new MHSAA building on Ramblewood Drive. (3) The MHSAA office on Ramblewood before recent updates that included a switch from green to gray on the exterior. (4) Now-retired assistant director Nate Hampton, far right, and others walk the upstairs hallway of the recently-built Ramblewood building. (Middle) Blueprints for the Ramblewood office exterior. (Below) Past Executive Director Al Bush (right) and his wife, Lois, were on hand for the 1997 open house hosted by then-Executive Director Jack Roberts (left) and staff. (MHSAA file photos.)