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Moment: Homer Walks Off into Final

April 30, 2020

By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor

Baseball “Walk-off Week” finishes today with Homer crossing home last spring to set up its first Finals championship on the diamond since 2004.

Jacob Wilson’s smash into left field drove in the game-winning run as the Trojans downed Pewamo-Westphalia 2-1 in nine innings to advance to the Division 3 championship game – which Homer then won 4-0 over Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett.

The hit was Wilson’s only one in four at bats during the June 14 Semifinal. He also threw the first six and two-thirds innings on the mound, giving up just one run and striking out five. Zach Butters came on in the seventh inning to handle the final seven outs for the Trojans – and Butters also scored the winning run in the ninth after walking to open the bottom of the frame.

“I was up to bat and I was looking at my teammates while they were on base, and they were just looking at me smiling, giving me a thumbs up,” Wilson said after the win. “I just had faith in myself that I could get it down.”

Butters threw six and one-third shutout innings the following day to get the championship game win as Homer finished the season 33-3.

Click for coverage of the Semifinal from Second Half and see below for the game winner from the NFHS Network.

Erik O. Furseth

In Memoriam: Erik O. Furseth (1930-2022)

By Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor

March 1, 2022

For 50 years, Erik O. Furseth’s voice chimed throughout MHSAA and Michigan State University athletic events. That voice surely will continue to live in the memories of the many who cherished listening to him, as he died Monday evening at the age of 91.

Furseth began as the public-address voice of MHSAA Boys Basketball Finals in 1968 and continued well into his 80s as those games moved from Jenison Field House to other locations across the Lower Peninsula and eventually settled into Breslin Center. He also was the longtime MHSAA football championship game voice going back to their days at the Pontiac Silverdome and provided the narration for MHSAA Baseball Finals for a decade. He announced his last MHSAA event in 2018.

An MSU basketball player during the early 1950s, the Cleveland Heights, Ohio, native played in the Spartans’ first Big Ten game in 1951. A forestry student initially, Furseth switched to communications. He later became a legendary rock-n-roll radio DJ in Lansing, and for a decade hosted Saturday night dances at the Lansing Civic Center that drew 1,000 teenagers a night – and a surprise performance by a young Stevie Wonder.

Furseth’s voice continued to be known particularly by Spartan fans as the homecourt voice for MSU basketball from 1968-2002 and MSU football from 1971-98. For more, see this feature from the MHSAA Basketball Finals programs written in 2013.

Furseth moved from East Lansing to Traverse City about 25 years ago. Click for his obituary and funeral arrangements.