![Eli Graves, left, and Gavyn Merchant are among standouts for Kingsley’s baseball team again this spring.](/sites/default/files/2024-04/240419_Kingsley_2H.png)
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.
That 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.
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.”
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 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.)
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Hancock's 1st Win a Title Clincher
By
John Vrancic
Special for MHSAA.com
May 29, 2013
NORWAY — About a month ago, there was some doubt whether Hancock High School would have a golf season this year.
The Copper Country was getting hit with heavy snowfall in April and early May, and area athletic directors were forced to consider cancelling the season.
Mother Nature, however, finally gave the Keweenaw Peninsula a break and the Portage Lake Golf Course in Houghton opened on May 14.
“We literally got one practice in on our home course (Portage Lake) and it was out the door,” Hancock coach Joe Gervais said. “We started our season on May 15.”
The Bulldogs then made up for lost time and were rewarded Wednesday with their first victory this season, which just happened to be the MHSAA Upper Peninsula Division 2 championship.
Hancock edged Norway 324-325 for its first U.P. title in four years. Third-place Iron Mountain had 330 strokes at Oak Crest Golf Course.
For Hancock, this marked a 22-stroke improvement from its opener, also at Oak Crest.
“With the season being compressed, we wanted to get a little better with each meet,” Gervais said. “Norway has a nice golf team. But we knew if we played the way we’re capable, we could give them a run for their money.
“One of the keys is our third through fifth golfers brought their scores down 4-5 strokes. This group is very dedicated. We’d get back from a meet and the kids would go to our home course and shoot another round. We’re very pleasantly surprised by today’s events, especially considering how well Norway had been playing.”
L’Anse junior Tristen Leaf was medalist with a 74, including a 36 on the back nine.
“I’m very happy with my putting today, and my drives were solid,” said Leaf, who recorded three eagles and five bogeys. “I’ve been catching up with my game. Last week, I shot an 84 in the West-Pac Conference meet at Portage where I didn’t hit the ball well at all. I worked on my drives a lot this year, and it paid off.”
Hancock junior Kyle Hauswirth, Norway sophomore Austin Hansen and West Iron County senior Austin Waara shared runner-up honors at 77.
“I just tried to get on the course as much as possible and work on my short game,” Hauswirth said. “The weather was better, too. We had a lot of meets called off this year, which was kind of disappointing because we could see the other teams were having a season. We usually have five conference meets for awards. This year we had three in our conference and only one for awards. It was a relief to finally get some meets in. This is definitely a nice finish, especially considering this is our first win this season.”
Hansen hit an eagle on the ninth hole, sinking a 150-foot putt to take a one-stroke lead at the midway point. He finished at 37 on the front nine, then faded to 40 on the back.
“I was really fired up when I got that eagle,” Hansen said. “Then, I didn’t do things too well on the back nine. I popped up my head too soon rather than keeping it down during my shots, which is one of the classic mental errors. I finally started keeping my head down on the last three holes and parred each one.
“We had a real good team this year. We just wanted to win this for our seniors (Mike Zygiel and Bo Brew) so bad. Our fourth and fifth guys did everything they could. It hurts a little right to come up a stroke short.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Ishpeming's Matt Kilberg, Manistique's Alex Anderson and Ishpeming Westwood's Jake Kivinsky got their swings in during Wednesday's Upper Peninsula Division 2 Final. (Middle) L'Anse's Tristen Leaf shot a 74 to finish first individually. (Photos by Theresa Proudfit.)