Spring arrives for high school sports.
The storms earlier this week should serve as the official notice that high school sports has returned in southwest Michigan. The storms should also serve as a reminder that the weather messes with the spring high school season more than any other time of year.
When you look closely at it, the spring sports season is the most condensed season in the MHSAA. Boys and Girls soccer for example have the same number of games (18), but the girls season in the spring has about two weeks less to get those games in. In addition as I mentioned before, the weather in the spring is less than ideal for a season where every sport takes place outside.
All sports in the spring will compete in the rain, but each sport also will do so in varying degrees of rainfall. Soccer will play in a downpour. Track will run in the rain, but not heavy rain, baseball, softball, and golf will play in sprinkles, a light rain and a mist. Tennis won’t play in anything other than sprinkles clouds or sunshine. While the rain amounts vary, the one thing we do know when it comes to spring high school sports, especially along Lake Michigan, it will be cold, and will probably be that way until the first week of May.
While the weather is one thing that we cannot control when it comes to the spring high school sports season, the one thing we do have a choice on is when area districts put spring break on their calendars. Early season contests are difficult to schedule for non-conference games because one school will be in class and the opponent is on spring break that week, or the week before. Making schools reluctant to schedule games because kids aren’t back in town, haven’t practiced, or aren’t really mentally back from spring break themselves.
It’s not until the beginning of conference play then players truly are ready for the season and not the handful of non-conference games played with sometimes less than a week of practice.
Figuring out football
If you start looking ahead to the high school football schedule for the fall, especially for teams in the Wolverine and SMAC Conferences, you’ll see that both leagues have finally been able to stabilize their schedules after teams dropping out of the league, or league play unexpectedly. For the SMAC, it’s happened after Gull Lake, Loy Norrix, dropped out of league play for football, but remained in other sports. The Wolverine experienced the same when longtime members Allegan and South Haven left.
The leagues were left with schools looking to fill the holes in their schedules. For a brief period, the SMAC paired up with the CAAC-Blue division, giving St. Joe a pair games against Okemos and Lakeshore with games against perennial state finalist DeWitt.
But now the SMAC and the Wolverine have aligned their own league schedules to have games 3-9 as conference games and weeks 1 and 2 as non-conference weeks, leaving schools the opportunity to find their own opponent. And in the case of St. Joe and Lakeshore, resuming an old rivalry with a former league opponent. St. Joe will be opening the 2023 season at Niles, the following week Niles will be heading to face Lakeshore. In fact there a few Wolverine SMAC crossovers for the first two weeks including Portage Northern and Vicksburg in week 1, Kalamazoo Central and Sturgis in week 2.
A rivalry is also renewed between Coldwater and Sturgis, and you’ve got one of the top non-conference games in the state in Week 1 as defending Division 4 state champion Grand Rapids West Catholic travels to Edwardsburg. Edwardsburg also taking on another perennial power Chelsea in week 2. Sadly one rivalry is put on hold again is Dowagiac and Niles,
Game ball delivery
Benton Harbor’s football schedule this season has them traveling to Gull Lake on September 29 (Week 6). For Gull Lake, the game against the Tigers is their homecoming game. While schools normal homecoming activities pretty much are the same, a king, queen, court, some kind of float or hallway decorating contest, a spirit competition and pep rallies. Gull Lake’s normal homecoming festivities will include a beginning at Filstrup Field.
The Gull Lake cross country team has a tradition of running the actual game ball from the visiting team’s field to Richland Stadium in time for kickoff. Gull Lake’s voluntary absence from the SMAC in recent years has made some recent delivery routes a little longer than you would think. In the past few seasons, the Gull Lake cross country team has run the ball from Three Rivers, Otsego, and If you think Benton Harbor to Richland is far, back in 2018, the ball was run from Detroit Country Day to Gull Lake.
Coaching updates
We found out late last week that Edwardsburg named Dan Purlee as the Eddies new head coach. But we recently were made aware that right after Elliot Uzelac stepped down at Berrien Springs, one of his assistants was promoted to head coach. Ben Iliff, who was the defensive coordinator for the Shamrocks will take over the reigns of the program. Iliff, played high school football at Watervliet, before becoming an assistant coach, not only at Watervliet, but also during Elliot Uzelac’s tenure at St. Joseph.
Plainwell named Brian Huberty as head coach in early March. Plainwell’s rival Otsego also has new coach in Scott McDougall. In the SMAC, Jerry Diorio stepped down after last season for health related reasons, Brett Vernon takes over the Battle Creek Lakeview program.
Players playing at the next level
Earlier this week, we learned Benton Harbor senior Grand Gondrezick II has committed to play college basketball at Elon University in North Carolina.
St. Joe senior Eleah Hedstrom will play both basketball and soccer at Lake Michigan College. Also from St. Joe, Will Fiesbeck will continue his running career at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Buchanan’s Bella Monsman will play her college softball at Glen Oaks C.C.
