Special Year Thanks to No Specialization
August 7, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
As we embark on another sports-filled school year Monday, we can look to a recent Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central grad for the value of a school year filled with sports.
As specialization at the highs school level continues to be debated, Bryce Windham will start his college baseball career this fall at Division I Old Dominion University – after playing baseball but also football and basketball for the Falcons.
The MHSAA has long advocated athletes taking on as many sports as they have interest instead of focusing on just one in pursuit of a college scholarship – a position that’s received plenty of public backing of late, be it from stars of the U.S. women’s soccer team after their World Cup championship run or former Lansing Waverly multi-sport athlete John Smoltz during his enshrinement in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
Enter Windham – who easily could’ve been excused for focusing on baseball, or even basketball as his dad is the St. Mary’s varsity boys coach. Instead, Bryce quarterbacked the football team to last season’s Division 6 championship – breaking Ithaca’s national-best 69-game winning streak in the Final – before being named Class C Player of the Year by The Associated Press in basketball and earning a Most Valuable Player honor at the baseball state coaches association all-star game at Comerica Park this spring.
All three of Windham's teams reached at least the MHSAA Quarterfinals.
“His participation in football and basketball helped land a Division 1 baseball scholarship to Old Dominion. They were able to see his athleticism in basketball and toughness in football, and ODU’s coach loved it,” dad and hoops coach Randy Windham said.
“He probably would’ve given up football, and that ended up his greatest memory by winning a state championship.”
Click to read about Windham’s multitude of accomplishments as reported last month by the Monroe Evening News.
Honors Abound
National coaching honors were bestowed on a trio of Michigan coaches over the summer:
- Retired Trenton ice hockey coach Mike Turner – the winningest hockey coach in MHSAA history with a record of 629-126-52 from 1974-81 and then 1995-2014 – was named National Coach of the Year in Special Sports by the National High School Athletic Coaches Association. His teams won 11 MHSAA titles and finished runner-up four times. “I was there when the MHSAA added hockey as one of their sanctioned sports and crowned their first MHSAA state championships in 1975. At that time there were 60-70 high school teams participating, and now there are 170,” Turner said. “It has been great to be a part of the advancements made in the sport of high school hockey, with more teams participating, more player development, and more opportunities that exist for players after high school.”
- Traverse City Central boys track and field and cross country coach John Lober won his second national coaching honor of the 2014-15 school year, named the NHSACA Coach of the Year for track and field to go with a previous honor earned in January from the National Federation of State High School Associations. He has coached the Traverse City Central boys track and field team since 1977 and also the boys cross country team since 1989. His 1992 track team won the Class A championship, and he has coached 17 individual MHSAA Finals champions. He was inducted into the Michigan Interscholastic Track Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2006.
- Ann Arbor Pioneer assistant girls swimming and diving coach Liz Hill was named the Assistant Coach of the Year for all girls sports by the NHSACA. Hill, a former All-American at the University of Michigan and standout sprinter at Pioneer, began assisting her husband Denny Hill in 1983 before becoming his fulltime assistant a few seasons later. Together they’ve led the Pioneers girls to 15 MHSAA team titles, the last two as co-head coaches.
Michigan Mourns
Fremont and the high school athletic community statewide mourned the death July 21 of longtime coach Rich Tompkins, who led Fremont’s boys cross country teams to six MHSAA cross country championships including three and a runner-up finish during his last decade of coaching before retiring in 1997.
The Muskegon Chronicle reported that his boys and girls cross country teams and boys track and field team combined for 45 league championships, with his boys cross country team winning 116 straight duals from 1977-88. Tompkins was executive director of the Michigan High School Coaches Association for more than a decade and served on its board for more than two decades.
Click to read more from the Chronicle on Tompkins’ legacy.
Officials in the News
The Monroe County Officials Association took to the county fair to encourage passers-by to “Be the Referee” – and received 47 sign-ups from people interested in the avocation. Visitors to an MCOA booth at the fair were told in some detail what is involved with being an MHSAA official, and those who then signed up to find out more about officiating football, basketball, baseball or softball (sports the MCOA trains for and schedules) will be invited to an orientation session where they will become eligible for one of 20 complimentary registration fees for this school year.
The West Michigan Officials Association marked a decade of support at the start of this summer for the Visually Impaired Sports and Activity Day, sponsored by the Helen DeVos Children’s Foundation. The WMOA has contributed nearly $18,000 to the event over the last 10 years as well as taking part in the event, which includes a number of sports and other activities.
The Saginaw Athletic Officials Association sent along this photo of five members who worked 2013-14 MHSAA Finals, from left: Mark Jarlock (baseball), Tom Behmlander (softball), Scott Helmka (football), Dale Brown (softball and football) and Mark Schoenow (football). The Baseball Final was Jarlock’s first; the other officials had worked Finals in the past.
PHOTO: (Top) Monroe St. Mary quarterback Bryce Windham unloads a pass during last season's Division 6 Final win over Ithaca at Ford Field.
Wolves Lacrosse Growing, Gaining While Providing Opportunities to Play
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
May 5, 2025
Eric Anderson has been sure to make the branding of his lacrosse program more representative of the make-up of his team.
The team is under the supervision of the Bay City Central athletic department, as BCC is the primary school in the cooperative that draws players from four schools total. But while the team also carries BCC’s mascot, the Wolves, their uniforms are black, purple and grey, and their helmets white – with those color choices making “Wolves lacrosse” more a representation of the breakdown of its players: 12 from Bay City Central, 12 from Frankenmuth, two from Freeland and two from Saginaw Swan Valley.
While the players outside of Bay City Central appreciate the gesture, they’re much more appreciative of the opportunity.
“Lacrosse being my favorite sport, I didn’t really have a choice. If there wasn’t a team, I couldn’t play,” Frankenmuth senior Aidan Hubbard said. “With this opportunity, it brings a lot of joy to me, playing the sport I love, and I didn’t have to just quit it because there wasn’t a team.
“I’m going to be honest, (the branding is) not really (important). As long as I’m playing, I don’t care what our team name is. We’re wearing the purple and playing on this field.”
The identity is important to Anderson, who built the team by going the co-op route following the pandemic. His first season as coach was set to be the spring of 2020, but a promising roster of more than 30 players never got to see the field.
By the time he was able to coach a game in 2021, that number was down to 14.
“I reached out to my AD and said that we have to do something different; we need a co-op,” Anderson said. “My son was coming in as a freshman, and I knew we had a couple lacrosse players who are hockey players at Frankenmuth High School. We reached out to Frankenmuth, and Frankenmuth grabbed a hold right away. … Between the parents and myself, we have not had a single issue. Everything has been absolutely seamless. We treat it as one. This is a Bay City Central lacrosse team. Bay City Central pays for it. But our colors are black, purple and grey, even though Central is purple and gold. We refer to it as Wolves lacrosse.”
Anderson’s son, Maveric, attends Bay City Central, and was part of that first co-op team, as were Hubbard and John Britton, who both attend Frankenmuth.
All three are now seniors, along with Frankenmuth’s Caleb Morgan, who joined as a sophomore and is in his third year with the program.
“It’s very unique,” Morgan said. “Because it’s not people you see every day in school. You only get to see these guys this time during the year, so it’s like a very unique experience catching up after the year is over and everybody comes back after a whole year of not seeing each other.”
With that backbone, the team has grown to its current number of 28, nearly to the point where Anderson can create a junior varsity squad.
“The program really wasn’t too much in the past years,” Hubbard said. “Now, it’s kind of like getting a little jumpstart. Even kids over in Frankenmuth, everyone in Frankenmuth is talking about it. It’s kind of hot in Frankenmuth right now. Lots of younger kids are wanting to play.”
It helps that the Wolves are translating those numbers into success.
Heading into tonight, the Wolves are 8-4 on the season and have won eight of their past 10 games.
Not only have they already set a school record for wins, they’re on their way to doubling the number of wins they had (five) over the previous three years combined.
“We have a bunch of younger kid stepping into roles that they’ve never really played before,” Britton said. “I kind of figured that sooner or later we’d get enough kids to put on a lacrosse field and win some games.”
It’s something Anderson could see coming, as the team had been getting more and more competitive. And, despite the fact they were consistently scheduled as a team’s ceremonial Senior Night, they weren’t making it easy for the opposition.
“This group of guys would compete in every single game,” Anderson said. “We would just lose because, in the fourth quarter, we’d run out of gas. We didn’t have enough players. We’ve been everybody’s Senior Night for the last number of years. Last year, we watched all these teams graduating 18 kids, 16 kids, all these kids, and we graduated one. You believe that these kids, they’ve kept receipts.”
Now, Anderson is seeing his senior-led team – there are 13 on the Wolves roster – not only winning more games, but controlling them.
“You know where I see (the improvement), I see it offensively, where we’re finally able to handle the ball, make passes, and control the ball in the offensive zone,” Anderson said. “We’re not always having to be on the run and backtracking. We’re able to get the ball in the zone, maintain an offensive possession and get a quality shot.”
The Wolves already have attained the goals Anderson had set for his team, as they’re competing night in and night out and have shown massive improvement year over year.
For the players, they simply want to keep doing that – and building up the program for which they’ve laid the foundation.
“We’ve kind of just been building,” Hubbard said. “We’ve had our little group, and it’s just been building up and everyone here has stuck it through, so I think we all deserve it. Coaches, too. They stuck it through while we were one of the worst, if not the worst, lacrosse teams in Michigan.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Wolves lacrosse players celebrate a win this season. (Middle) Maveric Anderson (8) pursues a loose ball Saturday against East Kentwood. (Photos by Shae Lauwers/Moments by Shea.)