Brighton Names Baseball Field for Program Builder, Longtime Leader

By Tim Robinson
Special for MHSAA.com

May 4, 2023

BRIGHTON — Mark Carrow didn’t know what to expect April 22 when he arrived at Brighton High School’s baseball field, where he was the guest of honor for a ceremony officially naming it Carrow Field.

Mid-Michigan“I remember back in October, when they announced this would happen, I told my wife, Mary, that there will be probably 60-70 people here, because there are 18 players on each team and their parents,” he recalled. “We pulled up here and there were all these people, and these young men who look older now.”

Dozens of Brighton alumni, some of whom Carrow hadn’t seen since their high school days nearly a half-century ago, were in attendance for the ceremony held before a doubleheader with Ypsilanti Lincoln.

Carrow retired in 2006 after 34 seasons as Brighton’s baseball coach, recording 823 wins, now eighth on the state’s all-time list. He also was an assistant football coach and coached both boys and girls middle school basketball.

He came to Brighton a year after graduating from the University of Michigan, where he played baseball for the Wolverines, starring at third base.

“My dream was to coach baseball at Ann Arbor High,” Carrow said of his high school alma mater, now Ann Arbor Pioneer. “That was my dream.”

But he had applied to Brighton Area Schools as well, and after a year teaching in Grand Rapids, he and Mary both were offered teaching positions.

“Wouldn’t you know it? We were in school for two days and Ann Arbor calls me up,” Carrow said. “They had a phys ed job open. I’d have been the JV football coach, and I knew the baseball coach was on his way out. It was everything I wanted, and I went to (administrator) Bob Scranton and said, ‘Here’s what’s happening.’ He told me to think about it over the weekend and come back Monday.

“My wife and I talked it over, and we were so grateful to Brighton for giving us a chance to be near our hometown that we felt we owed them a year,” Carrow said. “In November, we bought a house that we lived in for 22 years.”

Brighton’s sports teams weren’t the dominant squads of today. The football team had had two winning seasons in 20 years, and the year Carrow arrived went 0-9.

“We played in six homecoming games, including our own,” he said. “Everyone wanted to play us.”

The baseball team wasn’t much better, having gone decades without a winning season.

But the Bulldogs were 12-12 that first spring under Carrow’s leadership, and never finished below .500 during the rest of his tenure.

The Carrow name stands tall atop the scoreboard at the field named for the longtime coach. The Bulldogs joined the Southeastern Conference the next year and got off to a 7-0 start before losing at Lincoln.

“The kids were crying on the bus ride home,” Carrow said, “and I knew right then that Brighton had turned a corner, that it meant something to win and losing wasn’t acceptable anymore.”

Brighton took off, winning 20 games or more in all of his last 23 years as a coach, and a total of 13 league titles, 12 District titles, three Regional crowns and while making two trips to the Semifinals.

The talent was there, too, including 16 all-state players and two Mr. Baseball Award winners in Ron Hollis and Drew Henson.

Carrow earned national and Michigan Coach of the Year honors three times apiece and was inducted into the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame in 1992.

The field was renamed in his honor after the Brighton school board changed its policy to allow the renaming of facilities to honor living persons less than two years ago.

But Carrow is quick to cite the reasons for his success.

“The players are the ones who made this possible,” he said. “I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I never threw a pitch or hit the baseball. I got 800 wins, but it was because of them.

Carrow has a photographic memory, which came in handy while chatting with former players.

“It was funny, because with each kid I remembered an incident about them,” he said. “Jeff Bogos, who I hadn’t seen since he graduated in 1979, came out and I said, ‘Do you remember when we were at Milan and your knee went out (of place) in the middle of the field?’ It happened twice. He said, ‘How do you remember that?’ And I said, ‘How could I not?’”

Carrow moved to Florida after his retirement, where he and his longtime assistant, George Reck, meet up a couple of times a week. He makes frequent trips north to watch U-M football and to visit his son, Chris, who lives in Chicago.

Baseball is firmly in his past.

“I think I’ve been to one high school game since I went down there,” Carrow said. “I hated the way the coach was coaching, and Mary did, too. She said, ‘We don’t have to watch any more high school baseball,’ and I said, ‘You’re right.’”

When he retired, Carrow said he would likely be forgotten in a few years.

Seventeen years later, his legacy is assured and his memory will be invoked any time one looks at the scoreboard in left-center field that has a “Carrow Field” sign on top of it.

Not bad for a coach who was in the right place at the right time.

“My dream was fulfilled, and rightly so,” Carrow said. “And, believe me, I made the right decision. I couldn't have had better kids to teach or lived in a better community. It couldn't have worked out any better.”

PHOTOS (Top) The Carrow family stands together in front of the welcome sign to Carrow Field – including daughter Tiffany (front left), Mark and Mary (second from left, front and back) and son Chris (far right). (Middle) The Carrow name stands tall atop the scoreboard at the field named for the longtime coach. (Family photo by Daniel Collins.)

Plymouth Christian Academy, Beal City Match Shutouts To Advance in D4

By Tim Robinson
Special for MHSAA.com

June 16, 2023

EAST LANSING — For Beal City and Plymouth Christian Academy, a fast start proved key to victory in Friday’s Division 4 Semifinals at McLane Stadium.

Plymouth Christian (34-7) earned its first Finals berth with an 8-0 win over Rudyard, while Beal City (30-8) reached the championship game for the second year in a row with an 8-0 win over Kalamazoo Hackett Catholic Prep, 8-0.

The Eagles and Aggies will play for the Division 4 title at 5 p.m. Saturday.

In both games, the winning team scored the only run it would need in the first inning. 

For Plymouth Christian, it came on a triple by starting pitcher Jordan Scott.

“It was a weight lifted off my shoulders,” Scott said. ”You never know going into a game if you’re going to get a hit or not, and to get that first hit lifted that weight.”

Scott let his arm do the rest, scattering seven hits while striking out five with no walks. 

A Beal City hitter steps back to avoid an inside pitch.The Eagles also took advantage of four Rudyard errors and a passed ball that led to a run. 

“Errors kind of feed on each other sometimes,” Plymouth Christian coach Joe Bottorff said. “All of our batters are good base runners, even though it didn’t look like it at times. We have aggressive baserunners, and we can get around the bases. We’ve got good speed.”

The Eagles had a balanced attack, too, scattering 10 hits among seven players, led by Micah Lavigne, who had a double while going 3-for-4. 

After Scott gave PCA a 1-0 lead in the first inning, the Eagles scored twice in the second and put the game out of reach with four runs in the fourth. 

Asked for a key to the Eagles’ success, Bottorff said “eight seniors,” before stopping to gather his emotions.

Aiden Bickel, who was the starting pitcher for Rudyard, had two hits for the Bulldogs. 

Rudyard (19-20) went into the game on a five-game winning streak, all of those victories coming during the postseason, and fell short in its bid to become the first team from the Upper Peninsula to play for a state title since Escanaba reached the 2006 Division 2 Final.

Click for the box score.

Beal City 8, Kalamazoo Hackett Catholic Prep 0

For Beal City, the expectations – and results – have been very different. 

“Our goal every year is to play the last game of the season, in East Lansing, and we did that,” Aggies coach Brad Antcliff said. 

In fact, the Aggies are back in the Final for the second year in a row after falling to Riverview Gabriel Richard 4-3 in last season’s championship game. 

The Aggies’ Josh Wilson delivers a pitch during his shutout. Antcliff, who is in the first year of his second stint as Aggies coach, led the team to titles in 2009 and 2010 and got them back to the Final in 2013 and 2014.

Playing the first Division 4 Semifinal, Beal City (30-8) got off to an early start. With one out, Owen McKenny singled then scored on a double by Jack Fussman to give starting pitcher Josh Wilson the only run he would need.

The Aggies added two runs in the fourth inning on a single by Cayden Smith and a two-base error and put it out of reach when Smith doubled to drive in three runs in the sixth. Beal City added two more runs in the seventh.

Meanwhile, Hackett was handcuffed at the plate.

“All I needed to do was throw strikes,” said Wilson, who threw just 87 pitches in holding the Irish (24-15-1) to three hits while walking one and striking out five. “My teammates made great plays behind me. I just trusted my stuff, and my coaches trusted me.”

Click for the box score.

PHOTOS (Top) Plymouth Christian Academy’s Micah Lavigne lays out in pursuit of a drive to center field Thursday. (Middle) A Beal City hitter steps back to avoid an inside pitch. (Below) The Aggies’ Josh Wilson delivers a pitch during his shutout. (Photos by John Castine/Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)