Championship Memories Still Resonate with St. Thomas Star Lillard
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
July 21, 2022
It took about four decades, but a couple of years ago, Len Lillard finally got to watch the 1974 Class D Boys Basketball Final.
The outcome, of course, was the same as when Lillard, a star 6-foot-7 center from Ann Arbor St. Thomas, dominated the game and led the Irish to the championship that March. But it was just as fun to watch it once more.
“It was great fun to watch,” Lillard said. “It was interesting, to say the least.”
Lillard had a sensational athletic career at St. Thomas, now known as Father Gabriel Richard. Not only was he an outstanding basketball player, but he also won Lower Peninsula Class D Finals high jump and shot put championships.
He earned a scholarship to the University of Michigan and played four years for the Wolverines, including the season they made it to the Final Four and faced undefeated and eventual national champion Indiana.
“Their top seven guys played professionally,” Lillard recalled. “That team was outstanding.”
Today, 50 years later, Lillard is a successful investment banker living just outside of Chicago. He hasn’t lived in Michigan since 1987, but still has close ties to teammates from the University of Michigan – and St. Thomas. He plans this month, in fact, to attend a Michigan basketball alumni function in Ann Arbor.
“We stay in touch,” he said.
Lillard said playing for the Michigan Wolverines opened a lot of doors for him professionally.
“It was a very good ice-breaker,” he said. “In the financial world I was in, you had to talk to people about tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. You have to prove yourself and be competent very quickly. But, the basketball, the Final Four … it was a good conversation starter.”
Lillard was part of an outstanding group of athletes that happened to attend St. Thomas during the same time frame.
“I think it was a case of the stars lining up,” Lillard said. “It was just a couple of really good classes that happened to be at the same school at the same time.”
St. Thomas moved from the Catholic High School League to the Tri-County Conference when Lillard was a senior. The TCC was a new conference and, ultimately, offered little competition for the Irish in almost any sport.
St. Thomas was heads and shoulders better than the rest of the league and easily went 10-0 to claim the first boys basketball league title under coach Mike Ramker. Lillard averaged 23.6 points a game in league play. In one of the most dominating performances in league history, Lillard scored 42 points and pulled down 31 rebounds in a win over Whitmore Lake.
In the Class D Semifinals he scored 31 points and had 13 rebounds. In the 68-53 win over Harbor Springs to clinch the title, Lillard scored 18 points and added 18 rebounds and six blocked shots.
Word around the MHSAA Tournament was Lillard was headed to Notre Dame. Instead, he accepted a scholarship from Michigan, which was located just a couple miles from the gym where St. Thomas played.
“He was a tremendous athlete for his time,” Ramker said.
Lillard was a member of the 1975-76 University of Michigan men’s basketball team that played in the Final Four and was defeated in the national championship game by the undefeated Indiana Hoosiers.
“It was a great experience,” said Lillard. “Our basketball fans, and some football fans as well, were very excited and a lot of them made the trip to Philadelphia, so we had a loud cheering section.”
The Final Four was a bit different during that era, but it still was a big deal.
“This was pre-ESPN, so there was not hourly coverage, but even though players and coaches try to be low key, it was a big deal to make it to the finals,” Lillard said.
Lillard could have gone to a smaller school and received more playing time, or perhaps another Big Ten school. Getting an education from the University of Michigan, however, was worth it. Lillard said making the transition from Class D to Division I college basketball wasn’t easy.
“It was difficult. I knew the competition would be much harder which it was, but there were other issues that I was not as prepared for,” he said. “At the end of the day, I was not going to play professional basketball, and playing for a highly-ranked University of Michigan team and earning a degree from Michigan was a great accomplishment.”
Lillard appeared in five games in 1975-76. He came back to the Wolverines in 1976-77 and appeared in 11 games, making 8 of his 12 field goal attempts, both of his free throws and pulling down 14 rebounds. Coached by Johnny Orr, the Wolverines were ranked No. 1 in the country, won the Big Ten championship and advanced to the Elite 8.
Lillard graduated from Michigan in 1978 and joined his family’s contracting business. At the same time, he started night school in pursuit of a Master of Business Administration degree. He got married and moved away from the Ann Arbor area.
He has more than 30 years of experience working in finance and capital markets as part of such well-respected firms as Merit Capital Partners, Banc One Capital Partners and The Prudential Capital Group. Today, at 66, he is managing partner with Glaucon Capital Partners.
He and his wife Karen raised three sons, now aged 29, 26 and 24. The middle child, Grant, was Big Ten Freshman of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year while playing soccer at the University of Indiana. He now plays professionally in Major League Soccer.
“He was a much better athlete than me,” Lillard said.
Basketball and sports in Michigan are never too far from Lillard’s mind. He checks in with old teammates on occasion and once had coffee with an opponent who he battled in the Final from Harbor Springs who was a sheriff in a town where he vacationed.
“He was a great guy,” Lillard said. “We had a lot of fun with it.”
It was a former St. Thomas teammate who rediscovered the film of the championship game. He had the film converted to a DVD and gave copies to team members. Those Finals were played at Jenison Field House at Michigan State University – one of several interesting places St. Thomas played at during Lillard’s career.
“Some of my fondest memories are playing in some of the old Catholic League gymnasiums,” Lillard said. “Some of the second-floor gyms with a running track around them were so amazing, such tiny little gyms. Some of them had clocks that still wound. You never really knew how much time was left in the quarter. We had some great times, that’s for sure.”
2021-22 Made in Michigan
July 14: Portage Central Champ Rolls to Vanderbilt, Writing Next Chapter in Alabama - Read
July 12: Coaching Couple Passing On Knowledge, Providing Opportunities for Frankfort Wrestlers - Read
June 30: Hrynewich's Star Continuing to Rise with Olympic, Pro Sports Arrivals - Read
PHOTOS (Top) At left, Len Lillard as the standout on the Ann Arbor St. Thomas boys basketball team in 1974; at right, Lillard today as a father of three and successful investment banker. (Action photo courtesy of Doug Donnelly, current photo courtesy of Glaucon Capital Partners).
Energy, Competition, Moments & More Continue to Spark Unity Coach Soodsma
By
Steve Vedder
Special for MHSAA.com
February 15, 2023
HUDSONVILLE – The pep band is blaring the school fight song, the boisterous crowd of a couple of thousand fans has long grown weary waiting for the opening tip-off, and the antsy players are crowded behind the locker room doors ready to spring like a pack of lions.
It's like the scene from the epic basketball movie "Hoosiers" where coach Norman Dale pauses before entering a rollicking and packed Friday night gymnasium to mutter to himself, "Welcome to Indiana basketball."
Scott Soodsma not only grasps the significance of that scene firsthand, it's why after four decades he still loves coaching.
"The fierce competition, the band, your heart pounding like a dog – it's still like it was 30 years ago," said Soodsma, the Hudsonville Unity Christian coach and dean of West Michigan basketball coaches in his 41st season of a run that’s included two states and three schools.
"How does it get any better than that? I'm always telling the kids to live for the moment. You can't replace all that; I still get the shivers. I've had so many moments like that."
Among those highlight moments are being one of just two Michigan coaches to win both girls and boys MHSAA Finals championships (Paul Cook of Lansing Eastern was the other), and the moment he claims is easily No. 1 on his all-time personal list: coaching his daughter Amber as part of the 2006 Class B champ. Unity Christian also won a 2019 boys state title. He also won a third Finals championship with the boys at McBain Northern Michigan Christian.
Soodsma, 63, admits there have been myriad changes in coaching basketball since his first season at North Dakota's James Valley Christian High School in 1983 and coming to Unity Christian in 1993. For starters, players are bigger and stronger and are more schooled in the game through AAU and offseason programs. In addition, the influence of parents – for better or worse – has increased dramatically. As for the on-court game, Soodsma unabashedly admits he at first fought the institution of the 3-point shot. And the emphasis on winning has definitely only increased pressure on many coaches.
Soodsma, a member of the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan Hall of Fame who ranks ninth on the state's all-time boys wins list with 635, said he's adapted to the times. He wants to win as much as he ever has, still broods for days after losses and still considers himself receptive to the changing Xs and Os aspect of coaching.
But where his booming voice routinely used to resonate loudly into the middle sections of the Unity Christian bleachers, most of those comments now are only audible to fans perched in the first couple rows of the stands. Which is probably a good thing, Soodsma adds sheepishly.
Coaching, he readily contends, is still coaching – and winning still heads the list of priorities. He does add one disclaimer, however, in terms of winning. Whereas it used to be about a young coach building a resume through wins, it's now about what winning can do for today's teenager athlete. An old-school coach? Yeah, probably. But one who has learned much about himself, players and parents after 41 years.
"I've learned to enjoy the kids more; I'm definitely a different kind of person in the ’90s as opposed to now in the 2000s," he said. "I am a stubborn man, and it took a long time (to change). But winning? Oh, yeah. I've never backed down. The winning and losing hasn't changed, and I make no excuses that I still want to win."
Which is then strange, perhaps, that he doesn't list being just one of two coaches to win Finals titles in both girls and boys basketball as the zenith of coaching for 41 seasons. That honor goes to having his daughter, who went on to a stellar career at Dort College, on the state championship club.
"It's not that big of a deal," he said of being on the bench for what likely will never happen again as boys and girls basketball are now in the same season. "To me it's not an accomplishment I would rank (at the top). I'm just being honest. Winning a state title with Amber, and the picture I have of her and me in my office, that's the best."
How well has Soodsma adapted his coaching style over the years? Two people in a position to know offer their own opinions on the topic, including 22-year assistant Bruce Capel and Randy Oosterheert, who with son Rylan are the only father/son combination that Soodsma has coached.
"Scott has always been vocal on the sidelines as a coach. As I sit in the stands and watch as a spectator, same Scott," said Randy Oosterheert who played for Soodsma in 1992-93 and 1993-94 and whose son is a current Unity Christian player. "I will say that my son and I agree, if you do something wrong on the floor, he is the first person to greet you on the sidelines and point out your failure. However, if you do good, he is the first person to greet you on the sidelines and tell you good job.
"The latter is done at a little lower decibel level than the offense, and those with a watchful eye from up in the stands unfortunately (don’t) get to hear the praise, only the punishment. Scott is obviously very competitive, then and now. He expects a lot but gives a lot."
As far as the competitive side, Capel hasn’t seen much of a difference over their two decades together.
"Certainly, coaching is a lot different in how you approach kids from more than 20 years ago," he said. "There's a difference in society and you have to change with it, and he's done that. I don't think it's as much life and death with Scott anymore. But in terms of winning, I haven't seen that go away."
It's a coin flip as for how much longer Soodsma will be directing traffic from the sidelines. He broke into the top 10 among the all-time winningest boys coaches in Michigan history by passing Warren De La Salle's Bernie Holowicki and Ray Lauwers of Morley Stanwood last season. Next on the list is Big Rapids' Kent Ingles (644). When you factor in Soodsma's win total as both boys and girls coach, the 742-and-counting combined wins rank eighth in state history.
He does admit the desire to spend more time with wife Mary, the longtime away scorekeeper for the program, and 11 grandkids scattered from Denver to Seattle to San Diego. Retirement could strike when this season ends in March, or it could still be several Marches away. But when the end comes he anticipates making a contented transition from arguing with officials, coming to an "understanding" with parents and devising new Xs and Os. Soon, he mused, will come time for much-anticipated passions such as hunting, fishing and pickleball.
"For the first time I've contemplated it," he said. "There are a lot of things I'd like to do. I'm not a basketball junkie."
That may be true. But it'll still be tough to surrender those noisy pep bands, bright gymnasium lights and the din of Friday night crowds.
PHOTOS (Top) Hudsonville Unity Christian boys basketball coach Scott Soodsma stands in front of a portion of the school’s trophy case, which he’s helped fill over decades coaching basketball. (Middle) Soodsma and daughter Amber embrace during their team’s 2006 Class B Final victory. (Top photo by Steve Vedder. Middle photo courtesy of the Soodsma family.)