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D4 Champions Make Saturday Count
June 7, 2014
By Chip Mundy
Special to Second Half
BATTLE CREEK – It was better to be the hunter than the hunted Saturday in the MHSAA Division 4 Final at the Bedford Valley Golf Club.
White Pigeon was third after the first round Friday and trailed first-place Charlevoix by seven strokes, but made it up in a big way Saturday to win the second MHSAA title in school history – the first came in 2002 – by nine strokes over the Rayders and Lincoln Alcona.
Meanwhile, the same happened in the battle for individual champion. Junior Joel Sneed of Leland was third after the first day and trailed by four strokes, but shot a 1-over-par 73 to capture the title by four over Sam Wagner of Pentwater and Noah Schneider of Jackson Christian.
Schneider had a three-stroke lead after an opening 70 but ballooned to 81 on Saturday to open the door for Sneed, who grabbed the lead when he chipped in from a bunker on the 11th hole.
“Kudos to Noah,” said Sneed, who was fourth as a freshman and 11th last year as a sophomore. “He started out really, really solid, and I kind of expected him to be nervous at the beginning.
“It’s hard to play with the lead – I’ve been in that position before, but not in the state tournament but other tournaments – and it’s really, really tough to play with a four-shot lead. You feel like with every shot that you lose, ‘Geez, there’s another one gone.’ “I thought I was in a good spot.”
Sneed had solid rounds of 74 on Friday and 73 on Saturday. He had 16 pars and two bogeys on Friday and 13 pars with three bogeys and two birdies Saturday.
White Pigeon was similarly consistent with a 328 on Friday and 326 on Saturday. Its top four players each shot between 76 and 87 both days.
“We’ve been preparing for this for a long time,” White Pigeon coach Mark Olsen said. “The kids have really gone with the strategy of hitting the fairways and the greens – you can keep your score under control doing that - and it worked.
“They deserve the credit and followed the plan to the letter, and good things happened.”
The Chiefs broke it open when Riley Olsen, Andrew Mann and Jordan Olsen each birdied a hole simultaneously on Nos. 14, 15 and 16.
“When I birdied 16, I hit that putt, and I knew it was in,” said Riley Olsen, who led White Pigeon with rounds of 81 and 76 for a 157 total. “I fist-pumped, and our crowd went crazy. It was awesome. It felt great.”
Riley Olsen said he received some solid advice from his older brother Chase, who was on White Pigeon’s runner-up team in 2009.
“The par 5s out here are real tough – they have water and bunkers – so Chase said, ‘Why hit drivers and risk getting yourself in a bunker and then hit a long club and risk it again?’ So I hit hybrids and irons and made a couple of birdies on par 5s too, so it worked out perfect.
“I could not be happier with my game plan.”
Mann, who said he struggled a week earlier in the Regional, was second for the Chiefs with a 158 total after rounds of 76 on Friday and 82 on Saturday.
“I didn’t play very good at the Regional, and I learned a lot from it,” he said. “I wasn’t hitting good shots, so this week I worked really hard during practice, and it turned out great.
“It feels really, really good. I’m so proud of my team. We wanted to win, and we won.”
Freshman Jordan Olsen, younger brother of Riley and son of coach Mark Olsen, added rounds of 84 on Friday and 81 on Saturday for a 165. Like his older brother, he heeded some pre-tournament advice.
“Riley gave me some strategy for different holes and told me just to keep calm and have fun,” Jordan Olsen said. “Riley and I compete against each other in every practice every day, and we strive to beat each other, and that’s how we got better and how we got to where we are today.”
Coach Olsen said the addition of Jordan Olsen to the team this year was instrumental in it becoming a complete team.
“We did not even make it to the Regionals last year,” he said. “When my younger boy Jordan came into high school, that really strengthened the team, but I still didn’t think we would be this caliber of a team because it takes four.
“We had three all-state kids in 2009, but we didn’t have a fourth. This year, we had four that have been playing solid intermittently, and now we have them playing together. You have to have four playing together.”
The fourth this weekend was junior Christian Ryall-Shoup, who had back-to-back rounds of 87 for a 174 total.
“It’s crazy,” Jordan Olsen said. “We weren’t even expected to get to state this year, and the fact that we won is mind-blowing, especially as a freshman.
“We were hoping to get out of Regionals, and we won state.”
After the first round, Charlevoix led with 321, while Auburn Hills Oakland Christian was second with 327 and White Pigeon was third at 328.
“A 328 here is an awesome score, and we bettered it (Saturday),” Mark Olsen said. “This course is going to bite you. If you hit it into the trees, it’s a one- or two-stroke penalty every time. Our guys hit fairway to green, punch out of trouble.
“We have three basic rules: When you’re chipping, you get on the green; if you’re in the sand trap, you get out of the sand trap; if you’re in trouble, you get out of trouble safely and if they do that, they’re back to playing golf.”
White Pigeon went from a first-day score of 328 to 326, while Charlevoix jumped from 321 to 342 and Oakland Christian went from 327 to 341.
Riley Olsen said he wasn’t concerned about his team’s position after the first round.
“It was definitely a calming thing,” he said. “We knew the teams ahead of us were definitely thinking about it – you could tell by their scores. Both teams went 20 shots worse.”
Coach Olsen also was pleased with the position his team was in after the first day.
“We set out with the idea that we’re the hunter, so we started out trying to put the pressure on them and see what happens,” he said. “The other teams didn’t respond very well, and we just kept the gas pedal down, and it just worked out really well.
“I’d rather be the hunter than the hunted; I know that.”
PHOTOS: White Pigeon’s Riley Olsen follows a shot during the second round of the MHSAA Division 4 Final. (Middle) Leland’s Joel Sneed watches an approach on his way to claiming the individual championship. (Click to see more at HighSchoolsSportsScene.com.)
![James Piot](/sites/default/files/2021-08/210823_Piot_2H.jpg)
Four-Time Finals Placer Piot Earns Ultimate Amateur Championship
By
Tom Lang
Special for MHSAA.com
August 23, 2021
James Piot was a high school all-state Super Team member all four years he played golf at Detroit Catholic Central.
Piot – who has since moved on to play at Michigan State – was never an MHSAA Finals individual champion. But recently he achieved something much bigger, winning the ultimate individual crown for amateurs – the 121st U.S. Amateur Championship.
His championship run concluded Sunday, Aug. 15 at the iconic Oakmont Country Club with a 2 and 1 match play victory over Austin Greaser of Ohio and the University of North Carolina.
Piot led the Shamrocks to a Lower Peninsula Division 1 runner-up team finish in 2014 as a freshman, followed by three consecutive championships creating arguably the best era of high school golf for any one program in Michigan history.
According to his former assistant coach – Jimmy Dewling, now the boys golf head coach at Brighton – team titles suited Piot just fine.
“I think his team winning meant just as much to him than any individual title,” Dewling said. “Truly he’s one of those types of guys.”
Piot’s senior year in 2017, Catholic Central had three players on the all-state Super Team: Piot, Ben Smith (Georgia Tech) and Sean Niles (MHSAA individual champ), while teammates Dyllan Skinner and Sean Sooch were first team all-state.
Now on the national stage, Piot defeated Greaser of Ohio, 2-and-1, by sinking a 20-foot par putt on the 17th hole of the day’s second round in the scheduled 36-hole national final.
“It's the greatest feeling in the world,” Piot said to the national media on site. “I mean, as an amateur it's the best thing you can do. It was making that putt on 17 was just like, ‘Oh, my God. I might've done it.’”
By winning the elite amateur tournament, Piot is to receive presumably automatic exemptions into three professional majors next year: The Masters, the U.S. Open and the British Open. That alone is a career-defining bucket list for anyone in golf – and he’s still a college student.
Piot was playing in the U.S. Amateur for the second straight year. In 2020 at Bandon Dunes (in Oregon), he was second in stroke play to enter the match play portion the No. 2 seed. He won his first match but then was bumped out in the round of 32.
This year he finished his unfinished business by cruising through the match play, winning three of his six rounds with identical scores of 4-and-3. In the final, Piot was 1-up after the morning round of 18 holes. But after a lunch break and change of shirts from a dark color to a white one with a green Sparty golfer logo, there was a 4-hole swing where Piot found himself down three after 27 holes.
“I told myself on that tee box (on 10), I said, ‘I'm going to play this (last) nine 4-under.’ That's what I put in my head. Just self-belief.”
The tables turned hard at that point when Piot won four consecutive holes (10-13), and five of six, to go 2-up with three holes remaining, eventually grabbing the win 2-and-1.
Standing at that 10th tee, Piot was down three holes and TV commentator ‘Bones’ MacKay said it would be very difficult for Piot to get back into the match.
“I gave him the nickname when he was 9-years-old of ‘Spunkdog,’ because he’s got so much fight,” said Brian Cairns, his long-time teacher at Fox Hills Learning Center in Plymouth. “He’s in a corner by himself, he’ll come out every time by himself. He’s got spunk. You saw how he walked; you saw how mellow he was. You saw his shoulders go up on the back nine. He made the swings when he needed to make them.”
Dewling provided a similar but different angle on Piot.
“He took pride that he’s a public course guy and put that chip on his shoulder to beat people,” Dewling said about the high school years. “He’d watch other people practice and play and he believed he was doing things different and better than they were.
“I’ve been around high school golfers who practice because they feel like they have to. They think if they’re at the course it means they’re getting better than the next guy. But I think James would go to practice because he really wants to be there, and he really wants to know he’s preparing differently and he’s going to win more.”
Piot has always shown gratitude for the support he’s received over the years from high school buddies to his family and fans of both Catholic Central and MSU – who made up a huge section of the crowd that memorable Sunday afternoon at Oakmont.
“Mom and Dad have always been there, and I’ve been blessed to have the family and the support system I had before I even got to Michigan State,” he said. “I also had my high school coaches there (at Oakmont), Mike Anderson, Rick Williams (Detroit Catholic Central) and Jimmy Dewling, who are great mentors to me in life as well. It’s an extreme blessing to have some of the people in my life and seeing them (at Oakmont). Beyond golf, it was the coolest thing in the world.”
During his Catholic Central career, Piot was not one to dwell on “what could have been” after his MHSAA Finals individual title pursuits. He tied for sixth in Division 1 as a freshman, eighth as a sophomore, fifth as a junior and placed fourth alone as a senior in 2017.
“I think he understood the process better than anyone else – that one or two days of golf wasn’t going to define him. He’s got bigger aspirations than just one tournament," Dewling said. "He truly had an outlook and a perspective that’s so much greater than anything else. He’s so composed in high-pressure situations because he realizes his goals are still in front of him.
“James just plays with a chip on his shoulder, and I don’t think winning the U.S. Amateur is going to change that either. That’s the kind of competitive person he is.”
The people who know Piot well said he won’t change his life much in the short term at least, and will compete with the Spartans this fall and spring while finishing up his degree in finance. His Spartans have unfinished business as well, going after a Big Ten title.
“I just want to enjoy my last ride with the boys,” he said. “My school credit load might shift in the spring … but I’m looking forward to the college season and getting back out there with the Spartans. … We’re going to have a really good team and our goal this year is Big Ten champions, and hopefully we can do that.”
After receiving the U.S. Amateur trophy from the USGA officials, Piot gripped the golden hardware with a graceful respect, and turned it around a few times while looking it over. He was then asked if any past winners’ names stood out to him.
“I was just trying to see if it was real or not. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I honestly was like, did I just win the U.S. Am, in the back of my mind,” Piot answered. “I didn't really sit there and stare at all the names.”
Yet from now on and forever in history, James Piot’s name will be on that special trophy for others to search out and admire.
PHOTOS: (Top) Detroit Catholic Central grad James Piot, now playing at Michigan State, keeps an eye on his shot during a 2020 Golf Association of Michigan event. (Middle) Piot, second from right, stands with his Detroit Catholic Central team after the Shamrocks had clinched their third-straight Finals championship in 2017. (Top photo courtesy of Golf Association of Michigan; middle photo by HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)