Southwest Schools Begin League Shuffle

By Wes Morgan
Special for MHSAA.com

December 6, 2016

Just when it seemed that the waters had calmed concerning conference realignment in Southwest Michigan, two area leagues are expected to lose a chunk of their respective memberships with the berth of a new alliance.

It was announced in June that Bronson would be leaving the Berrien-Cass-St. Joseph League at the end of the 2016-17 school year to join the Big 8 Conference. The BCS began in 2014.

Now, all three St. Joseph County schools — Centreville, Mendon and White Pigeon — along with Cass County seat Cassopolis, are expected to exit the BCS this year as well. Those schools are joining Southwestern Athletic Conference defectors Bangor, Bloomingdale, Eau Claire, Hartford, Decatur and Marcellus to form the Southwest 10 Conference.

Seven of the 10 school districts have already voted in favor of the new league, with the last three unnamed schools expected to vote the same way later this month.

Once again, football was a driving force, though several other factors sparked the initial discussions back in August. It was important for Centreville, Mendon and White Pigeon to stick together after a long run dating back to the St. Joseph Valley League.

Competitive fairness and logistics were two other key concerns.

“(The SAC schools) came into this meeting stating the No. 1 goal is to not have a mega conference,” Mendon co-athletic director Glen Samson said. “They tried to get us to strike while the iron is hot. At the same time they are discussing this with us, the superintendents of the SAC and the BCS wanted us to all get together and form an even larger league, like 35 schools.

“We’ve just not had a whole lot of luck with this large conglomerate. It’s not really a league. You can see people voting on party lines, so to speak.”

A big obstacle in the BCS was football scheduling. The BCS did not make it mandatory that teams play cross-divisional games, which left some schools in the lurch when it came to filling out a nine-game schedule.

For instance, Mendon had to drive to the Upper Peninsula in Week 9 to play Manistique after finding no takers from similar-sized schools and with no desire of its own to compete against the likes of Class B programs up to three times a year.

Current BCS schools like Berrien Springs, Buchanan, Comstock and Parchment — all with about 450 students or more — are twice the size of schools like Mendon (203) and Cassopolis (278).

“This idea came across our table, so we took a look at it,” Samson said. “The schools involved want to keep it to 10 teams. The more we got into it, the more it made sense.

“When Bronson left, it left us with four teams in our division in football. All that guaranteed Mendon, Centreville and Cass were three games. We’re sitting here with three games, and we have to find six and we have to now play two or three Class B schools to fill out a schedule in a league of 18 teams. This is not right.”

A 10-team league solves that issue and makes for easier organization of all other sports. More often than not, Samson and Cassopolis athletic director Matt Brawley agreed, coaches didn’t even know what division their school was in as the groupings changed by sport.  

“Scheduling and getting the bylaws in order,” are at the top of the priority list for Brawley. “Right now, things seem to be running pretty smoothly. We have a great group of athletic directors and superintendents working diligently.”

If all goes according to plan, schedules will take care of themselves in the Southwest 10 since most schools offer the same sports. There are five schools that offer soccer with a sixth considering adding it for next season. A positive byproduct would be less travel time.

“For Cass, logistically, our furthest drive (would be) 37 miles,” Brawley said. “Marcellus and Decatur are our next-door neighbors. It doesn’t make much sense not to play them (as is the case now).

“I’m very excited,” Brawley said of a new league without divisions. “What I’m most excited about is being in a league where you’ve got to (likely) win nine games to win the conference championship or go 17-1 or 16-2 in basketball. It holds a lot more weight. The BCS is a great bunch of people, but this opportunity makes the most sense for us.”

Wes Morgan has reported for the Kalamazoo Gazette, ESPN and ESPNChicago.com, 247Sports and Blue & Gold Illustrated over the last 12 years and is the publisher of JoeInsider.com. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Berrien, Cass, St. Joseph and Branch counties.

PHOTOS: (Top) Centreville and Marcellus face off in a girls basketball nonleague matchup. (Middle) Mendon and Casspolis will bring their football rivalry to the new Southwest 10 Conference. (Photos courtesy of Wes Morgan.) 

After Leading Glen Lake Girls to Title, Bradford Brings Boys Into Final Week

By Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com

March 15, 2024

Eight is Enough.

Northern Lower PeninsulaOr is it?

For Jason Bradford growing up on the farm of Arden and Lynn Bradford as one of their eight children, it probably was enough. Bradford’s upbringing may have been slightly similar to “Eight Is Enough,” a comedy-drama television series about a family with eight children that aired on ABC from March of 1977 to May of 1981.

But the show didn’t depict pick-up basketball being played in the barn like it was for Bradford and his siblings. And surely eight would not be enough Regional basketball championships for Jason Bradford, nor enough District titles either. 

After leading Maple City Glen Lake to the Division 4 girls basketball championship last year, Bradford stepped down from coaching.  At the time his teams had won five Regional and six District titles.

Now his teams have won six Regional and seven District championships. He took over Glen Lake’s boys program during the holiday break this winter as the Lakers were off to a 4-2 start. They finished the season 22-5.  

It was the Lakers boys’ first 20-win campaign since the 2018-19 season, and they clinched their first Regional title since 2018.

Glen Lake went 19-5 last year losing to Traverse City St. Francis in the District Final. The season before that ended with a first-round loss to Elk Rapids and 15-6 record.

Bradford led his girls teams four times to the MHSAA Semifinals and almost got their a fifth time this year with the boys. Their run ended Tuesday with a tough loss in the Division 4 Quarterfinals to Mount Pleasant Sacred Heart, 63-51. 

“We’re licking the wounds of that one,” he said. “We’ve got to remember to look at the big picture – they are young men becoming men.”

Glen Lake’s Cooper Bufalini (11) pushes the ball upcourt during a 65-49 District Final win over Bellaire.But Bradford already has turned his thoughts to next season and is making plans for summer basketball.

“Having the summer with them if it goes the way we want is going to be huge,” Bradford said. “There are a few things going through my head I can change or adjust.  

“We want to continue to build on what our philosophy of what Glen Lake is and my philosophy of what Glen Lake is.”

The Lakers will graduate Cooper Bufalini, Gage Baker, Dylan Cundiff, Tyler Bixby and Jamie Blondia. But they’ll have their top two scorers back, sophomore Jacob Plamondon and junior Benji Allen. Plamondon kicked in almost 20 points per game and led the team in rebounding with more than 10 per contest. Allen averaged more than 11 points per game and led the team in assists.

Glen Lake finished second in the Northwest Conference behind Benzie Central, which was undefeated in league play. The Lakers knocked off league opponents Frankfort in the Division 4 District title match and Buckley in the Regional Semifinal.

The battles with Benzie for the conference title may have been the highlights of the season, Bradford noted. Those were Glen Lake’s only losses in league play, and a share of the title was within their grasp late in the second game with the Huskies.

The Lakers lost 60-51 on their home court in the first meeting but took Benzie to the limit in the rematch before falling, 41-39, on the road.

“We had a lot of great games and a lot of great memories,” Bradford said. “Going for conference it pretty much came down to the last few seconds with lead changes. 

“We were up by one point with less than 30 second lefts, and that was the high point,” he continued. “We came up short, but we learned from that game.”

Also among highlights for Bradford this year was the chance to coach against his brother Nathan for the first time in their careers.

The Lakers’ Jacob Plamondon (35) makes a strong move to the basket.The Bradfords started coaching girls varsity basketball 16 years ago, but their teams were in different conferences at the time. Nathan coached the Onekama girls but moved to the boys program before Onekama and Glen Lake had a chance to compete against each other in the Northwest Conference.

The Bradford coaches often talk after their games and learn from one another. They have also seen their parents frequently in the bleachers as they rotate home game sites to see their grandchildren play and their sons coach.

When Onekama and Glen Lake played this year, eight Bradfords were on the rosters as players or coaches. Jason’s son Toby, a freshman, played on the Glen Lake junior varsity team, as Nathan’s son Carson played for the Portagers’ JV squad. The Onekama JV team is coached by another Bradford, Jason and Nathan’s brother Nick. And there were three more Bradfords on the varsity – Nathan’s son Caden and his cousins Luke and Arden.

Glen Lake won both varsity games, 38-36 at Onekama and 61-33 at home.

Jason and his wife Jackie have five children. Their youngest son, Drew, is now a sixth grader at Glen Lake. His oldest son, J.J., is at Michigan Tech and has begun officiating basketball after his senior season at Glen Lake cut short by the pandemic while the Lakers were preparing to play in a 2020 District Final. Daughters Maddie and Grace are playing basketball for Lake Superior State University.

Maddie and Grace were big parts of Glen Lake’s deep postseason runs with Jason as girls coach. With many games played on Saturdays and not conflicting with coaching, Jason, Jackie and the younger boys were able to travel to see the Upper Peninsula’s Lakers play regularly.

This season, the Glen Lake girls – under first-year head coach Brad Fosmore – went 16-8 and won Northwest Conference and District titles before losing a nail-biter, 45-42, to league rival Frankfort in the Regional Semifinal.

“Jason did a good job, and it felt good to carry on the tradition,” said Fosmore, who previously served as a Lakers JV coach. “We took it one game at a time.

“Jason worked hard to build a great girls program,” he continued. “It made it pretty simple because they had that winning tradition and kind of kept it rolling.”

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) Jason Bradford, kneeling, coaches the Maple City Glen Lake boys varsity after taking over the program earlier this season. (Middle) Glen Lake’s Cooper Bufalini (11) pushes the ball upcourt during a 65-49 District Final win over Bellaire. (Below) The Lakers’ Jacob Plamondon (35) makes a strong move to the basket. (Top photo by RD Sports Photo/Rob DeForge, additional photos by Nicole Bixby.)