Meyers Serves, Strides for Norrix Fall Teams

By Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com

August 21, 2017

KALAMAZOO — Finding a face in a crowd of 357 runners erupting down a hillside all at once could be a daunting task.

But spotting sophomore Joe Meyers is easy, said Greg Savicke.

“He’ll be one of the ones out front,” the Kalamazoo Loy Norrix coach predicted.

That was true at Friday’s Portage Central Early Bird Invitational, where Meyers finished 14th with a time of 17 minutes, 12 seconds.

That sounds like a great time for a first race of the season, but Meyers was not celebrating.

“I had a pretty bad race,” he said. “I was training in Colorado for like a month with my new coach, and I put in a lot of training.

“I should have been well in the 16s. It was just not a good race.”

He didn’t have much time to fret.

The two-sport athlete had his first tennis match of the season Monday.

He’s playing No. 2 singles for the Knights after putting together a 21-5 record at the same flight last year.

Juggling two fall sports is not a problem for the amiable Meyers, with tennis taking priority.

“We work around the tennis schedule,” said Savicke, in his 29th year as Norrix’s head cross country coach. “We get Joe when he’s available. Early in the season it’s not so much, but down the stretch, yes.

“That’s the championship part of our season for us, in October, so we get him for the most important meets coming up.”

Both sports are in Meyers’ DNA.

His mother, Jody, got him on the tennis court when he was 5 and just playing for fun. 

“Then I quit and mainly played hockey for years until seventh grade, then picked up tennis again,” he said.

He started running with his father, John, at age 9.

As a freshman, “I didn’t really want to pick one because I knew I could do pretty good in both,” Joe Meyers said. “It worked out last year.”

Both are individual sports, but in running, “you have to definitely have a lot more drive to go out and run by yourself because you can have a lot of excuses not to,” he said.

“In tennis, you go to group and you have to try as hard as you can. I don’t really get as tired in matches (since I’ve been) running.”

Meyers works out with sophomore Reed Crocker, Norrix’s No. 1 singles player.

Crocker qualified for the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Finals last season, losing his top-flight title match, 7-6(6), 3-6, 7-6(8), to top-seeded Varun Shanker of Midland Dow.

The only way Meyers will make it to the Finals is if Loy Norrix as a team qualifies, since the No. 1 player is the only individual eligible if the team falls short at Regionals. The No. 1 singles champion and runner-up at Regionals advance to Finals play even if their teams do not qualify.

“We have a better chance (as a team) this year,” Crocker said. “The team’s looking better.

“We’ve been doing a lot of sprints, a lot. (Sunday) was an easy day. We only ran a mile” before practice.

Crocker said Meyers pushes him to be better.

“Joe is like the marathon runner, so it helps me with conditioning and it helps me on the court because I know he can help build the wins,” Crocker said.

“We hit together, and he pushes me get better. I’ve had the joy to hit with him the last year or so because he joined my coach (Bill Jenkins, who is also Norrix’s head coach).”

Jenkins, in his third season with the Knights, has coached tennis for 38 years.

Meyers possesses a “good work ethic, and genetics are very much in his favor as far as a force in track,” Jenkins said. “He’s built for it in tennis as well.

“He’s also extremely coachable so he has a very good perspective, very good mindset and disposition for tennis. He’s extremely intense, extremely passionate and competitive, but he’s also very level-headed, so he’s able to channel a lot of that energy into proper use.”

Jenkins said, in his experience, it is unusual to have an athlete be so successful in two sports in the same season.

“He’s got very set dreams but he works at them on a daily basis, knowing that the only way to achieve them is through his commitment,” the coach said.

“Regardless of whatever natural distractions may come up, he seems to stay on track very diligently and is years ahead of his time.”

While Meyers needs the team to qualify for the MHSAA Finals in tennis, he has a much better shot of earning a berth in cross country.

Last year, then-senior Gabe Runyon was the only Norrix runner to qualify for the Lower Peninsula Division 1 competition at Michigan International Speedway. 

Meyers just missed qualifying, finishing 21st at his Regional with a time of 17:04. The top 15 runners moved on.

Savicke lost Runyon and four of his other top seven runners to graduation this spring, noting that Meyers has moved up from second in the order to become the team’s top runner.

Meyers has improved on his 2016 Regional time and has an unofficial personal best of 16:30. He has hit 17:00 in a race, and his short-term goal is to get into the 16s during competition.

Said Savicke: “Joe’s father was a runner in high school for (Kalamazoo) Hackett in the 1980s, and he’s really active in bicycling and running events. He’s brought Joe along with him.

“I think that just paid dividends with his running abilities. I saw Joe in middle school, so I knew he would be a good fit for us.”

Norrix’s next cross country meet is Thursday with Meyers leading a varsity contingent of junior Will Carrier, senior Zach Skinner, sophomore Myles Baker, junior Rowan Mathieson, senior Garrett Bloom and sophomore Erick Ponce.

Once the fall season is over, Meyers does not plan to leave sports behind.

He bicycles and was the Michigan Bicycle Racing Association road race junior state and point series champ a year ago and “might pick up hockey or swimming this year,” he said.

In the spring, he is part of the varsity track & field team, competing in the 1,600, 3,200 and 3,200 relay.

Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.

PHOTOS: (Top) Kalamazoo Loy Norrix sophomore Joe Meyers returns a volley during a tennis practice Sunday. (Middle) Clockwise from top left: Meyers, tennis teammate Reed Crocker, Knights’ boys tennis coach Bill Jenkins, Knights’ boys cross country coach Greg Savicke. (Below) Meyers pushes ahead of a pack during Friday’s Early Bird race at Portage Central. (Photos by Pam Shebest.)

Freeland's Hansen Smashes Longstanding Record, FHE Claims 1st Finals Victory

November 4, 2023

BROOKLYN — On the same day Rockford’s Dathan Ritzenhein set a course record at Michigan International Speedway that has never been approached, Kurtis Marlowe of Richland Gull Lake had a performance that was overshadowed.

But Marlowe’s winning time of 15:02.5 in the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Finals in 2000 also stood the test of time.

Until Saturday.

Freeland junior TJ Hansen eclipsed the Division 2 record with his winning time of 14:52.8. Runner-up Solomon Kwartowitz of Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood also nearly broke the previous record, finishing in 15:03.3.

Even though it was apparent from earlier races Saturday that perfect conditions made fast times possible, Hansen didn’t set out to break Marlowe’s record.

“No, my goal was to go out and win,” he said. “Play strategy from the front, let others do the work, then just push it. Whatever time I got, I was gonna get. I knew it was going to take a time like that to win it today.

Henry Dixon sets the pace for Forest Hills Eastern's first team championship.“I usually run close to a (personal record) every year at this meet. It’s one of my favorite courses. It’s definitely unique here at the speedway, so I really like the course, I really like to run it.”

Hansen went through the mile mark tied for 11th in 4:54.3, but you could’ve thrown a blanket over the top 12 runners at that point.

It was a three-man race between Hansen, Kwartowitz and 2022 champion Connell Alford of Chelsea when they reached the two-mile mark in 9:46.

Hansen made sure there would be no drama coming down the stretch.

“I was just trying to stay calm, let them do the work, just sit back,” he said. “When I needed to go, I was gonna go. My goal was to stay relaxed.”

Kwartowitz had no complaints with his race.

“It felt really smooth,” he said. “It was great. I didn’t get a chance to race these guys a bunch this year. I did at Spartan (Invitational, in September). I was really hoping to end it with a victory.”

The boys Division 2 team championship was a toss-up between four teams for the second year in a row, with Ada Forest Hills Eastern coming out on top with 134 points. Pinckney was second with 156, East Grand Rapids third with 175 and Allendale fourth with 176.

Last year, 32 points separated the top four teams.

Junior Henry Dixon led Forest Hills Eastern, placing sixth in 15:16.0. Senior Liam Hinman was 29th, senior Brendan Hoving was 30th, senior Cooper Jacobsen was 38th and junior Tyler Endres was 82nd.

It was the first MHSAA championship for Forest Hills Eastern, which had a program-best finish of fourth in 2007.

Click for full results.

PHOTOS (Top) Freeland's TJ Hansen approaches the finish of his record run Saturday at MIS. (Middle) Henry Dixon sets the pace for Forest Hills Eastern's first team championship. (Photos by Dave McCauley/RunMichigan.com.)