Inspired by Dad, Southland Sons Give Shores Hoops 2nd-Generation Boost
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
March 3, 2021
Drew and Jake Southland now have to help their struggling father onto the basketball court at Mona Shores.
But they know it wasn’t too long ago that Scot Southland was carrying the load for the Sailors’ basketball program.
“People tell me all the time about how good he was,” Drew Southland said of his father, the all-time leading scorer in Mona Shores basketball history with 1,113 career points, who is now battling an even tougher opponent in multiple sclerosis.
“I try to live up to it. He is such an inspiration, with his positive attitude. I try not to complain about anything in my life, that’s for sure.”
Drew, a 6-foot-1 senior, and his team are having a difficult season so far, losing eight in a row before bolting out to a 38-6 halftime lead Tuesday and then cruising to a 64-41 win over visiting Grand Rapids Union. Drew scored a game-high 20 points for the Sailors (2-8).
Jake, a sophomore who is the same height as his brother at 6-1, is the leading scorer and rebounder for the Shores junior varsity, which evened its record at 5-5 on Tuesday, also with a win over GR Union. He scored a season-high 35 points in a loss against Whitehall on Feb. 20.
Win or lose, the Southland boys are always there for their dad, who turned 50 in January. Scot made first-team all-conference in the Ottawa-Kent Conference Red as both a junior and senior, graduating in 1989. He was also a two-time Muskegon Chronicle All-Area selection and averaged better than 20 points per game his senior year.
The first signs of his MS showed up during college, but the symptoms of the progressive nerve disease have become more pronounced in recent years, preventing him from working and even walking on his own. Drew and Jake are always there to help him in and out of his wheelchair and into the family’s van.
“I don’t mind it one bit,” said Jake. “I know he would be taking care of me if it was the other way around. My dad is so good to me and so supportive in everything, so helping him around is really the least I can do.”
Family affair
The Southland family is a fixture at all of Mona Shores’ home games.
Scot is always there at the end of the bleachers on the baseline, with his high school sweetheart and wife, Steffanie, close by his side. Other regulars, when tickets are available with COVID-19 restrictions, are his daughter Mason, his mother Joanne Southland and his mother-in-law Mary Golin.
Joanne has been going to games at Mona Shores for years as her three boys – Ted, Kip and Scot – worked their way through the system. Kip was a standout basketball player, but his best sport was baseball, as he went on to start at shortstop for Central Michigan University during the mid-1980s and later played in the San Francisco Giants farm system.
Scot started some varsity football games at quarterback, but of the three Southland boys, he was the one who left the biggest mark on the hardcourt.
He was a three-year varsity starter at a time when sophomores rarely started on the varsity, especially at a Class A school. As a junior, he led the Sailors to 13 wins and a rare District championship. As a senior, he became the first Mona Shores basketball player to score 1,000 points – a milestone that the humble, quiet standout wasn’t even cognizant of until after the fact.
“He is out there to set the best example he can,” then-Mona Shores coach John Adams told The Muskegon Chronicle in 1989 about Scot, his senior captain. “He is the All-American, apple pie kid. He’s the perfect role model for the program.”
The strong athletic genes run deep in the family, tracing back to Scot’s maternal grandfather Pete Petroskey, a welterweight boxer who won more than 180 professional fights. Petroskey went on to train some of the best boxers to ever come out of Muskegon, including Kenny Lane and Phil Baldwin, and was inducted into the Muskegon Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2002.
Scot’s athletic achievements continued after high school, as he led the Muskegon Community College basketball team to a runner-up finish at the junior college national tournament in 1990. He later walked on to the University of Arizona football team and made the roster as a backup quarterback.
Scot did some coaching when his kids were younger, but his disease has prevented him from coaching in recent years. He is now the No. 1 fan and encourager for Drew and Jake, as well as Mason, who is having a good year for the Mona Shores eighth-grade girls basketball team.
“The Southland family is very special to Mona Shores basketball,” explained Mona Shores varsity coach Brad Kurth, who missed two games after the death of his mother but returned to guide the Sailors to victory Tuesday night. “Drew and Jake are everything that you can ask for as a coach. They just compete. They go out and give you everything that they have.”
Different perspective
The Mona Shores athletic program has changed drastically since the late 1980s when Scot Southland was leading the Sailors in football and basketball.
Back then, the Sailors struggled to win any games on the football field, but were highly competitive with the likes of Muskegon and Grand Haven in basketball. Now, the Sailors rarely lose a football game and basketball has been looking up at those aforementioned programs over the past 10 years.
Perhaps no single player has been more affected by the unsettled basketball program as Drew, who has had a different varsity head coach in each of his four years at the high school – as the program has had six head coaches over the past eight years.
“It’s been hard with the different coaches, but I hate making excuses,” said Drew, one of just four seniors on the Shores roster. “We can play much better than we have.”
Through it all, Drew has worked tirelessly to improve his game, waking up early to come in and shoot almost every morning, and still hopes to play college basketball.
Jake, who plays wide receiver and defensive back for the Shores football team and was moved up to the varsity for the team’s recent Division 2 championship run, hopes to be part of a basketball resurgence at Shores over the next two years.
The Sailors have plenty of height and youth on their front line in juniors Donovan Russell (6-8) and Ethan Krueger (6-6) and sophomore Parker Swartz (6-4). With Jake and many other talented players set to move up to the varsity full-time next year, he is hoping to engineer a basketball breakthrough – much like his father did during his junior year of high school.
Jake turned some heads when he got moved up to the varsity for Saturday’s game against Wyoming. In less than two minutes of action, he scored five points and grabbed two rebounds.
“Drew and Jake just love to be out on the basketball court,” said Mona Shores junior varsity coach Tyler VanBergen. “The love that their dad has for the game flows through the whole family.”
Love for the game of basketball, along with humility and a strong work ethic, are not the only gifts Scot has given to his children.
Watching their father handle his illness with grace and a positive attitude – while never wallowing in self-pity or taking his frustrations out on them – has given all three of them a perspective on life which most kids their age simply don’t have.
“I’ve learned from watching him that life isn’t fair,” Jake said. “I mean, I would love to be able to play 1-on-1 against him, but instead we have to do other things. We watch a lot of movies together and talk about them. Doing that with him has really given me a passion for movies, and I’d love to work in film or directing someday.”
Tom Kendra worked 23 years at The Muskegon Chronicle, including five as assistant sports editor and the final six as sports editor through 2011. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Muskegon, Oceana, Mason, Lake, Oceola, Mecosta and Newaygo counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Muskegon Mona Shores’ Drew Southland works to get up a shot during a game against Muskegon last season. (Middle) Scot Southland was a standout for Mona Shores before graduating in 1989. (Below) Scot, as a member of the Sailors, and younger son Jake who is playing this season on junior varsity. (Top photo courtesy of Local Sports Journal; additional photos courtesy of Southland family.)
Bedford Boys Hoops Off to Best Start in Decade Under Alum Bollin
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
January 24, 2023
TEMPERANCE – The Bedford Mules are kicking up a special boys basketball season in southeast Michigan.
Temperance Bedford is off to a 10-1 start, the best for the school in a decade. Third-year coach Jordan Bollin is happy to bring a winner to his alma mater.
“Bedford has had good teams here and there and good players and coaches, but it never seemed to be anything that was sustained,” Bollin said. “I knew it was going to be a challenge.”
Bollin played varsity basketball at Bedford, graduating in 2006. He went into coaching almost immediately after high school and was named head coach at Dundee in 2015. After 68 wins in five seasons, Bollin was named head coach at Bedford.
“I talked it over with my wife, with the athletic director, with (assistant coach) Mark Hubbard,” Bollin said. “I always, in the back of my mind, thought that I would want to come back to Bedford and coach one day. I wanted to do it while I was still relatively a young coach who still had the passion for all of this. It’s the right time.
“I felt like, leaving Dundee, I had an opportunity to build something myself.”
Wrestling has been the winter sports king at Bedford for decades as the Mules spent years at the top of Class A/Division 1 wrestling circles. The boys basketball team has enjoyed its moments, such as a three-year span when it went 18-6, 18-5 and 14-8 across 2012-2014, but there have been down years, too. Various coaches have tried their hand at the helm, including former NBA player Dennis Hopson.
Bollin himself played for coach Bill Ryan, who led the boys team for seven years but has found ultra-success with Bedford’s girls basketball program.
Bollin knew that when he took over the varsity, he wanted to incorporate the entire program.
“No program is one coach,” he said.
He brought multiple assistants with him from Dundee, including longtime Monroe County coach Hubbard, a Bedford graduate, and former head coach in the county himself. The two have formed a bond.
“We talk every day on the phone before practice,” Bollin said. “We go to lunch once or twice a week. He’s a mentor and someone I talk to all the time.”
Bedford has posted wins over a variety of teams this season, from Southeastern Conference teams like Dexter and Monroe to Ottawa Lake Whiteford, Adrian Lenawee Christian and Stockbridge. Ten of the Mules’ final 11 games are against SEC schools, including two against 8-3 Saline.
Bollin knows the toughest is yet to come.
“We get Ann Arbor Huron at home,” he said. “We lost to them by three on the road. We had the ball, down two in the final seconds and had the ball and were called for a travel. It was close.”
Six-foot-7 Andrew Hollinger is the team’s top scorer and rebounder. Four years ago, he played five games on the varsity, then was a starter in Bollin’s first season. He’s now closing in on 1,000 career points and is one of the best rebounders in southeast Michigan.
“He’s phenomenal,” Bollin said. “He plays so hard, and he’s a great kid. He’s a 4.0 student and very humble. You’ll never hear him talk about himself; it’s always about the team.”
While he’s proven to be a great scorer and free throw shooter this season, Hollinger is also a relentless rebounder.
“I’ve always been one of the tallest out on the court, so I know that I can really use that to my advantage in order to rebound,” he said. “Once the shot goes up, I try to chase down the ball or box someone out in order to give my team the chance to get the ball back.”
Bollin said Hollinger’s intensity shows.
“I use him as an example to the other kids all of the time,” Bollin said.
Twice this season Hollinger has set the school record for most consecutive free throws made in a game. He went 15-for-15 once and 16-for-16 another time. Hollinger averaged a double-double last year at 18.2 points and 10.8 rebounds and has topped those numbers through 11 games this season.
Hollinger is one of eight seniors on the roster. Like Bollin, he’s a homegrown talent, having made his way up from the Bedford Community Education program in the fourth grade to middle school, JV and varsity.
“I fell in love with basketball when I played in the local community ed program,” he said.
Hollinger said all of the seniors had a feeling this was going to be a great season.
“I think the success from our team comes from how hard we play every game and how much experience we have,” he said. “We knew coming into the season that we were in pretty much every game the season before and just had to find a way to start winning games.”
Bedford won six games during the COVID-19 shortened 2020-21 season and four a year ago – losing several games that came down to the final minute. Bollin has matched the win total in those first two years at Bedford in two months.
Ironically, Bollin said, it was the 2020-21 season during which most of this year’s seniors learned to play varsity basketball.
“We had so many games where we had players out for COVID that we had to bring a lot of them up to the varsity to play,” he said. “A lot of the seniors this year got a ton of playing time that year.”
The other current seniors include Griffin Wolf, Tommy Huss, Jimmy Fackelman, Simon Eighmey, Caleb Kochendoerfer, Evan Campbell, and Leo Wagenhauser. They are complimented by a couple sophomores and juniors plus freshman Carsen Behnke.
Hollinger is hopeful the first-half success will continue.
“We all believed in each other in the offseason, and that belief still continues through the start of the season,” he said, deflecting any attention from himself. “I love how basketball is a team game and how you need the whole team to be playing hard in order to win. It’s not just about one person, but it’s about everyone.”
Bollin said he could sense this summer that this season had the makings of being something special.
“I thought we’d have a nice season, but, no, I wasn’t expecting 10-1,” he said. “But, in the summer, I knew when everyone was there and together, we were tough to beat.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a sports and news reporter and city editor over 25 years, writing for the Daily Chief-Union in Upper Sandusky, Ohio from 1992-1995, the Monroe Evening News from 1995-2012 and the Adrian Daily Telegram since 2013. He's also written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Bedford’s Andrew Hollinger works for an opening while surrounded by Monroe defenders last season. (Middle) Bedford boys basketball coach Jordan Bollin. (Below) Hollinger brings the Mules up court during a 63-43 win Friday. (Action photos by Tom Hawley and Mike Doughty, respectively, and courtesy of the Monroe News.)