Ramping Up for Prepapalooza 2014
May 27, 2014
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Over the next five days, thousands of teams representing more than 700 MHSAA high schools will compete for championships at the District, Regional and Finals levels in 11 sports in what annually is the busiest week in Michigan high school sports.
MHSAA.com and Second Half are the places to be for results, coverage and live video from championship events all over both Peninsulas.
Total, 26 Finals champions will be crowned in girls and boys tennis, girls and boys track and field and Upper Peninsula girls and boys golf, with 36 Regional champions rewarded in girls and boys lacrosse and Lower Peninsula boys golf and 320 winners earning trophies in softball, baseball and girls soccer. All tournament rounds combined, more than 8,000 medals will be presented to individual winners or contributors on those team champions.
Game scores as they are reported for baseball, softball, soccer and lacrosse will be available on the MHSAA Score Center throughout the week. Full results from golf Regionals also will be posted over the next five days, as will Finals tennis and golf results as we receive them from Lower and Upper Peninsula hosts (Lower Peninsula tennis opening rounds late Friday evening). Track and Field Finals results will be posted Saturday evening.
All MHSAA Finals from both peninsulas will be covered with stories and photos on Second Half by a crew of valuable correspondents from around the state. Second Half will continue its coverage at the Lacrosse and LP Boys Golf Finals on June 14 and the Baseball, Softball and Girls Soccer Finals from June 19-21.
Live championship races from all seven sites of MHSAA Track and Field Finals will be available on a subscription basis on MHSAA.TV, beginning with the 3,200-meter relays at 10 a.m. at each site. The rest of the Upper Peninsula races then will continue, with Lower Peninsula championship races beginning again at 1 p.m. Highlights from this week's golf and tennis championship events will debut on MHSAA.TV in July.
PHOTOS: (Top) Runners push toward the finish during the 2013 LP Division 3 Final. (Middle) Members of the Bloomfield Hills Academy of the Sacred Heart tennis team hold up number ones to signify their place at last season's LP Division 4 Final.
After String of Second Places, Big Bay Takes Big Step to Top Finals Field
By
Jason Juno
Special for MHSAA.com
May 28, 2026
WATERSMEET — Big Bay de Noc’s girls golf team has finished runner-up the past three years at the Upper Peninsula Division 3 Final.
First, the Black Bears finished second to a Cedarville team in the last season of a three-year championship run. Then the last two years, they took second behind traditional U.P. power Ontonagon.
Wednesday, it was finally their turn.
Big Bay de Noc won at Lac Vieux Desert Golf Course in Watersmeet, breezing past the second-place Gladiators 475-532 to win its first Finals title since 2005.
“Ontonagon’s been a great golf team,” Big Bay de Noc coach Alex Ranguette said. “They’ve actually beaten us the past two years for U.P. Finals, so it feels good to finally get one.”
The Black Bears did it with four golfers placing among the top 10 compared to two for Ontonagon. Junior Payton Pederson placed second with a 108, senior Caragan Thill tied for third with a 110, eighth grader Ivy Gates carded a 121 to finish seventh and another eighth grader, Karlee Kuehl, was 10th with a 136.
“The girls came out, started slow,” Ranguette said. “It was a little shaky to begin with, but they really turned it around. I got five girls — two eighth graders this year that just joined who have been very strong for me, two seniors who have been wonderful all year, a junior who placed second. My senior Carrigan placed third.”
Pederson and Thill alternated as Big Bay de Noc’s lowest-scoring golfer all year.
“They both shot well,” Ranguette said. “They just played unreal. They started slow, but they held it together and it was pretty awesome to watch them finish strong.”
Ontonagon graduated important seniors last year, but so did his team. Ranguette said it then came down to the younger golfers – and the results speak for themselves.
“I was fortunate enough to have two young kids that really played well,” he said.
The Gladiators, of course, still went home with a couple of trophies. Besides the runner-up hardware, junior Summer Stites repeated as a U.P. champion.
She shot a 103, which was five strokes better than Pederson.
“It’s exciting, it’s fun,” Stites said.
She was expected to win this year after being a bit of a surprise winner emerging from a strong competition with her own teammates last year.
“I feel like there’s more pressure on me to play better than I did last year. But I didn’t meet that goal,” said Stites, who won with a 98 a year ago.
Ontonagon coach Jim Jessup is excited she has a chance to make it a three-peat.
“She deserves it, she works really hard,” he said. “She’s improved, unfortunately not to where she wants to be, but she can play really well. We have some more stuff to work on. We got another year for her, so we can do a three-peat, if we’re lucky, if she keeps working on it.”
PHOTOS (Top) Big Bay de Noc’s Caragan Thill lines up a putt during the Upper Peninsula Division 3 Final on Wednesday. (Middle) Ontonagon’s Summer Stites follows her shot. (Photos by Jason Juno.)