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.)
Brother Rice Finals Hero Aiming to Ace Family Life, Financial World
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
July 6, 2023
Matt Conway said the 2008 Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice baseball team he played on wasn’t necessarily the most talented group to ever come through the state.
But that squad was still plenty good, and there was one thing that became evident during the playoff run the Warriors went on 15 years ago.
“Nobody really stood a chance,” Conway said.
It was certainly hard to argue.
During the MHSAA Division 1 Tournament, Brother Rice outscored its opponents by a combined score of 74-8 and never trailed during its seven playoff games.
The run culminated with an 8-0 win over Saline in the Division 1 championship game at Battle Creek’s C.O. Brown Stadium, led by a four-hit shutout from Conway on the mound. The title was Brother Rice’s third in school history and remains its most recent.
“The team camaraderie we had and the willingness we had to play for each other really showed in the way we dominated the playoffs,” said Conway, who now works for Center Rock Capital Partners, a private equity industrial firm based in Bloomfield Hills.
While the Warriors that year had camaraderie and chemistry, one thing they also had that other teams didn’t was Conway, who at the time was arguably the best prep player in the state.
Not only was the 6-foot-7 Conway an ace pitcher, he was also a fearsome power hitter at or near the top of the lineup.
The shutout in the championship game as a junior was only one of his achievements in high school, given he was also named first-team all-state in 2008 and 2009.
During his junior year, Conway batted .429 at the plate and was 11-1 on the mound.
Conway was an all-around force again for Brother Rice in 2009, but the Warriors fell short in their bid to repeat, losing in a Quarterfinal to Saline.
After graduating from Brother Rice in 2009, Conway went on to play baseball at Wake Forest, and his college career got off to a terrific start. He was named a freshman All-American at Wake Forest after leading the Demon Deacons with a .382 batting average during his first college season.
He went off during the summer after his sophomore year to play in the prestigious Cape Cod Baseball League in Massachusetts, arguably the nation’s premier summer league for college prospects and followed intensely by pro scouts.
Unfortunately, a knee injury made his time there short-lived.
“Unfortunately in the first game, I got hurt pretty bad,” Conway said. “I had to leave the Cape, and things weren’t really the same ever since.”
Conway eventually finished a nice college career at Wake Forest, but had to battle through more knee injuries.
He ultimately decided a professional baseball career wasn’t meant to be.
“At that point, I realized this is maybe not the path I was supposed to take,” Conway said. “I played through my senior year, and then took the uniform off and put on a suit. It was a little different, but I do believe things happen for a reason.”
Indeed, Conway has no complaints. He’s happily married to his wife Stephanie and has two children, an 18-month-old daughter and an infant son about a month old.
As an alum of Wake Forest, Conway was obviously thrilled to see the Demon Deacons advance to the College World Series semifinals and earn the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament this season.
“I had a ticket booked to Omaha to go to the championship series if they made it,” he said.
Conway has worked for Center Rock Capital Partners since 2018 and has always had plenty of knowledge in the financial and business sectors, given his father, Van, is a renowned financial consultant who owns a firm in Birmingham.
While his baseball playing days have been over for a while, Matt Conway said the lessons he learned playing in high school for Brother Rice head coach Bob Riker, and at Wake Forest for head coach Tom Walter, prepared him well for his current career and will always be with him.
“Time management, prioritizing and making sure you are on top of what you need to get done,” Conway said. “It taught me more than I could ever think of.”
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PHOTOS (Top) Brother Rice’s Matt Conway walks to the plate to accept his medal after the Warriors' Division 1 title-clinching win in 2008, and these days is building a family with wife Stephanie. (Middle) Conway makes his move toward the plate during that 2008 championship game. (Baseball photos from MHSAA archives; family photo courtesy of the Conway family.)