DCC Closes Perfect Spring with Repeat

June 11, 2016

By Paul Morgan
Special for Second Half

ALLENDALE – Even though Detroit Catholic Central led after Friday’s first round of the Lower Peninsula Division 1 golf tournament, coach Mike Anderson knew things weren’t just right.

‘’On the drive up and during breakfast on Friday morning the guys were very quiet,’’ Anderson said. ‘’Today, it was back to normal, having fun.’’

Ben Smith was the Shamrocks’ poster child for quiet-Friday, fun-Saturday.  The junior shot a 6-over par 78 for the first round, but came back for a 2-under 70 on Saturday to help DCC repeat as MHSAA champion.

The Shamrocks shot 299-298 – 597 for the two-day tournament, held at The Meadows at Grand Valley State University. Grosse Pointe South was second with rounds of 302-303 – 605.

Battle Creek Lakeview’s Andrew Walker won a one-hole playoff over Plymouth’s Jack Boczar to take medalist honors. Each shot a 143. The championship was Walker's second straight.

Smith and junior James Piot (71-77 – 148) have been the leaders on Catholic Central’s team, according to Anderson.

‘’As it turned out James had a good first day and Ben had a good second day, so it worked out pretty well,’’ the coach said.

The turnaround for Smith was pretty simple.

‘’Today, I think I missed like two fairways and Friday I think I hit only two fairways,’’ Smith said. ‘’On the first day, it wasn’t really nerves, but I just wasn’t hitting it well and I couldn’t find the fairway, which leads to problems on this course.

‘’Overall, I played really well, but I left a few shots out there. I three-putted twice for par and missed a couple of short ones, but that’s going to happen.’’

Three holes on the back nine were crucial for Smith and his teammates. The junior double-bogeyed the par-3 13th hole, but came back with a birdie on the par-5 14th and then drained a long putt on the par-4 15th for a par.

‘’After making the double bogey, I used that to motivate me to play better,’’ he said. ‘’Luckily, I had that short par five and it’s a birdie hole.

‘’I was thinking to hit a drive out there, put it on in two and either get an eagle or birdie, which is what I did.’’

Added Anderson: ‘’Ben’s played well all year and Friday was his worst round of the season.’’

Also in the top five for Catholic Central was senior Max Palmer (75-75 – 150), junior Sean Niles (75-76 – 151) and junior Sean Sooch (79-83 – 162). Anderson is all smiles when thinking about next year and having to replace just one player.

‘’They didn’t lose an event all year,’’ Anderson said. ‘’All the boys on our team are going to play college golf and they have bright futures.’’

That goes all the way to Catholic Central’s ninth golfer.

‘’My sixth-through-nine golfers could make anyone’s top five,’’ he said. ‘’They will probably play college golf and they can’t make their high school top-five.’’

The all-smiles thing can be said about Grosse Pointe South coach Doug Roby, who isn’t losing a player off his top five. The Blue Devils’ scores were junior Oliver Livingston (71-74 – 145), sophomore Evan Theros (73-75 – 148), junior John Schoof (80-75 – 155), freshman Coalter Smith (78-79 – 157) and sophomore Patrick Sullivan (82-82 – 164).

‘’The kids played well both days,’’ Roby said. ‘’Friday night, we reviewed where we potentially gave away some strokes and it was in the last four holes.

‘’One of the things with this team is our play in that stretch. We just came up short today.’’

Actually, it was most of Catholic Central’s players getting off to hot starts, which put Grosse Pointe South in a position of playing catch-up all day. As a team, the Shamrocks had a seven-stroke lead over the Blue Devils after six holes.

‘’We talked about continuing to do the same things we’ve done all year,’’ Anderson said about the Saturday pep talk. ‘’We have to play our game, which is hitting greens and fairways, making good decisions and taking the double bogey out of play.’’

In doing so, the Shamrocks won the school’s fourth MHSAA golf championship in the past 13 years.

After DCC and Grosse Pointe South, the rest of the team scoring was Grand Blanc 617, Warren DeLaSalle 618, Midland 620, Battle Creek Lakeview 622, Detroit U-D Jesuit 624, Plymouth 630, Bloomfield Hills 632, Ann Arbor Skyline 637, Grand Ledge 641, Northville 650, Rochester Adams 655, Birmingham Brother Rice 657 and Rockford 669.

Click for full results.

PHOTOS: (Top) Detroit Catholic Central clinched its second straight Lower Peninsula Division 1 title. (Middle) Battle Creek Lakeview's Andrew Walker (right) shakes hands with Plymouth's Jack Boczar after winning a one-hole playoff for the individual medalist honor. (Click to see more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)

Kingsley Standouts Big Hits on Diamond, as Friends to 4th-Hour Classmates

By Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com

April 19, 2024

When Eli Graves or Gavyn Merchant takes a swing this spring for Kingsley, a special group of friends are not worried how they’ll connect with the ball.

Northern Lower PeninsulaThat group of friends and classmates — students in Joel Guy’s fourth-hour special education class — feel like the two senior standout athletes already hit a home run at school that day. It might even feel like a grand slam from Graves or perhaps a hole-in-one for Merchant.

And the Kingsley baseball and golf coaches feel similarly – and sentiment that may extend through the entire Kingsley community.

Merchant and Graves are playing their final baseball seasons with Stags. Merchant is dual-sporting, adding golf to his incredible athletic career.

Together, they led the Stags to Division 6 football championship in the fall despite battling through extensive injuries. Graves, the star running back, and Merchant, the outstanding quarterback, then fought through long, hard rehabilitations to get back and lead the Stags on the hardcourt and wrestling mats this winter.  

But before stepping up to the plate or the tee to compete for Kingsley on any given day this spring, the pair spend time in Guy’s class and share lunch with the Kingsley cognitively impaired (CI) students.

“You can’t say enough good things about these young men,” said Guy, who also is in his fourth year as the Kingsley golf coach. “I get teary-eyed talking about it – they just kind of took a hold of some of my students making contact at lunch and in the hallway.”

That contact began midway the football season. Graves and Merchant were joined by fellow golfer Ty Morgan and football teammate Skyler Workman.

Merchant (6) hands the ball off to Graves during the Division 6 championship win at Ford Field. A few more senior athletes have been a part of the adoption of Guy’s students intermittently as well. But Guy’s students can count on seeing Graves, Merchant, Morgan and Workman in the classroom each and every day and then at lunch. The time was made possible, Guy notes, because the athletes are ahead in their own academic pursuits or participants in the school’s Teacher Academy program.

How those seniors are contributing is rare for accomplished athletes in a high school setting, Guy is happy to point out.

“Gavin and Eli are state champions in football,” said Guy. “They are the stars of their winter sports basketball and wrestling, and you you think that being seniors with those kinds of credentials at lunch they would sit in a table with all their buddies and talk about their accomplishments.

“They sit with my special education students,” Guy continued. “They make my students feel like they’re the ‘in’ crowd, and I am so proud of them.”

Bruce Graves, father of Eli and coach of the Stags’ baseball team, recalls learning from Guy what that group of seniors was doing with their fourth hour. He wasn’t really surprised to hear from someone else what his senior leaders were doing.

“They wouldn’t tell anybody they were doing it,” the 22-year veteran coach said. “They don’t do it for a pat on the back – they just do it because they like being good guys.”

There are various reports of exactly how the athletes started getting involved with the special education students. But everyone in the school located 15 miles south of Traverse City seems happy they did.

Eli Graves, one of the Stags’ five pitchers, roams center field when he’s not on the mound. He is 1-0 as the Stags are off to a 9-0 start following a conference sweep of Kalkaska, 3-0, 15-0, on Thursday. The right-hander is slated to pitch this weekend and has hopes of the Stags finishing the year with a conference baseball title and a deep postseason run.

Graves and Merchant have raised money all year to get birthday and Christmas gifts for their classmates in Guy’s room. They’ve become particularly close to a couple of his students.

“They don’t really see us as helpers or anything like that — they see us more as friends,” said Graves, now playing his third year on the varsity baseball squad.  “We go into the special ed room, and basically just help the students with whatever work they are doing.”

Merchant putts during Thursday’s golf opener.After recovering from football injuries, Graves averaged more than 15 points per game this basketball season and earned all-conference. Merchant also recovered from postseason surgeries and got back on the mat to place fourth at 132 pounds in Division 3 and became an all-state wrestler for the fourth time.  

The pair’s in-season football injuries were not known to many. They wanted to compete for the state title and tend to the injuries later. Graves rushed for almost 2,000 yards, tying and breaking some of his brother Owen’s school records along the way. He also had 20 tackles, two interceptions and four touchdowns on defense during the 2023 campaign.

Graves sprained a shoulder joint during the Semifinal win over Reed City but a week later carried the ball 33 times and ran for 210 yards in the title game. He had four touchdowns that day in the Stags' 38-24 victory over Almont.

Merchant has had various injuries over the course of his career, undergoing wrist surgery as a sophomore for a carpal tunnel injury and having floating cartilage taken out of a knee following his junior wrestling season.

But what he endured on the way to Ford Field was the topper as he endured two torn ligaments in his knee, a fractured leg, a torn meniscus — and, later on — a pair of broken ribs sustained late in the championship game.

“When you’re in the game, it’s all about adrenaline,” said Merchant, who is facing another surgery in May but shot a 95 to lead Kingsley in its first tournament of the season Thursday at the Frostbite Open in Manton. “You don’t even think about the injury until you get off the field, and that’s when you get ice bags and fight it off.”

They have been close friends since elementary school and credit the Kingsley coaching, teaching and counseling staffs with preparing them for life after graduation.

Graves and Merchant call football their favorite sport. Graves hopes to also play football at the college level, and Merchant expects to continue on the wrestling mat.

Tom SpencerTom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.

PHOTOS (Top) Eli Graves, left, and Gavyn Merchant are among standouts for Kingsley’s baseball team again this spring. (Middle) Merchant (6) hands the ball off to Graves during the Division 6 championship win at Ford Field. (Below) Merchant putts during Thursday’s golf opener. (Baseball photos by Karen Middleton.)