Gull Lake Ready for Challenge of Adding to 2022 Finals Runner-up Finish
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
April 20, 2023
RICHLAND — Hank Livingston is a prime example of how fickle a golf course can be and why it is important not to give up.
The Gull Lake sophomore started last year’s MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Golf Championship carding an 11 on the first hole of the second round.
“He’s my No. 2 and makes an 11,” coach T.R. Walters said, shaking his head.
But Livingston shook it off and ended with a 79 for the round.
“He literally birdied the next two holes,” Walters said. “Flint Powers coach said to me, did you see what happened to your No. 2?
“I said, yeah, I was in the tall stuff with him.”
The Powers coach specified on the green.
“I was like, what?” Walters said. “He literally whiffed a putt that was two or three inches.”
Walters said he could not believe it. “(Livingston) said, ‘Coach, I just whiffed a putt for 10,” Walters said. “He goes, ‘I reached over to tap it in and I just bounced my club over it.’”
Neither Walters nor Livingston panicked.
“The way he said it to me, I was like, ‘This kid is absolutely fine.’ Then he birdied his last two holes,” Walters recalled. “You throw an 11 in as a freshman, and you don’t just quit. That’s a pretty good sign.”
It was a great sign.
The Blue Devils finished runner-up to Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice at the Final with Livingston tied for 18th individually with a 157 at The Meadows at Grand Valley State.
Things may be a bit tougher this year with the graduation of Bryce Wheeler, who won the medalist honor that weekend and was named Michigan’s Mr. Golf last spring.
However, the team is off to another successful start this season, winning the Greater Kalamazoo Tournament and the Coldwater Invitational.
Will Beardsley, who was part of a Division 2 championship in the fall with Gull Lake’s boys soccer team, said with Wheeler gone, everyone needs raise their games this year.
“Consistency is a big thing for us this year,” he said. “As long as everyone can play consistently and we all play as a team and have each other’s backs. If someone isn’t playing well one day, another guy can step up.
“Last year was a lot of a one-man show. This year, we’re definitely more balanced. Everyone’s contributing more this year rather than just one guy going 4-under.”
As the lone senior on the team, Beardsley, nicknamed “Will the Thrill” by his coach, said he feels like the “old man.”
“I see my role as having the experience,” he said. “If there are questions about rulings, I’ve had a couple more years experience, so I can usually answer those.
“I can tell them what a match day will look like and what we’re going to do on the range, what we’re going to do on the putting green, the ins and outs of what we do off the course.”
Beardsley got hooked on golf at age 5 from his grandfather, Bud Baldwin, who coached golf at Portage Northern High School.
Another Blue Devil with a bit of golf history is sophomore Chase Kosin, who is the great grandson of Letha and Darl Scott who started Gull Lakeview Golf Course in Richland in 1962.
Gull Lake does most of its practicing at the course, but Bedford Valley’s North Course is the team’s home course.
“Chase cracks me up,” Walters said. “I see so much of his grandpa in him. If there’s a piece of trash on the golf course, it goes in his golf bag.
“He’s an outstanding kid. He just gets better and better. His uncle (Casey Scott) played one PGA Tour, the Buick Open.”
Livingston also has a bit of golfing history. His uncle, Tom Harding, who played golf at Michigan State University, is in the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame.
Another returning golfer is junior Ben Szabo.
“Our No. 3 last year, he had an outstanding fall and played a bunch of junior tournaments,” Walters said. “He started playing significantly better golf. He’s also one of those kids who absolutely loves being on the golf course all the time.”
Walters is getting some help from an unexpected source. Junior Beau Carr, who was Plainwell’s No. 1 golfer last season, moved into the district.
“He’s amazing,” Beardsley said of Carr. “He’s fun to be around, a great player, hopefully will fill that missing spot that we lost this year.”
Carr also has some state tournament experience. As a freshman in 2021, he was on the Plainwell team that advanced to the LPD2 Final and finished 18th.
“Me and four seniors,” he said. “Once they graduated, the next year was a lot tougher.”
He added it was the first time that “Plainwell made it to state in 17 years. It was a big accomplishment for us.”
Walters, who teaches social studies in the middle school, is a Gull Lake grad whose main sport was baseball.
He did not take up golf until he suffered a knee injury playing basketball at Kellogg Community College.
“One of the first times playing golf was actually at Ballybunion Golf Course (in County Kerry,) Ireland,” he said. “I was over there playing basketball in a tournament and played Ballybunion and thought it was kind of fun.”
Once Walters found out he had the eye-hand coordination for golf, he was hooked.
He has worked the last 24 years at Bedford Valley Golf Course in Battle Creek and plays every day he can.
“I got to the point where I could qualify to play the Michigan Open and a few events like that … before kids,” he added.
Carr summed up the feelings of many golfers when he said, “It’s a challenge. You’re never going to figure it out.
“There’s one day you’re going to play great and the next day you feel like you haven’t hit a golf ball in two weeks. That sucks, but it’s all a part of the ride.”
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Gull Lake’s Ben Szabo tees off during last season’s LPD2 Final at The Meadows at Grand Valley State. (Middle) From left: Gull Lake boys golf coach T.R. Walters, Will Beardsley and Beau Carr. (Below) Beardsley works on his short game during a practice this spring. (Top photo by High School Sports Scene. All other photos by Pam Shebest.)
Brogan Finishes School Sports Career by Teaching Lesson in Perspective
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
June 22, 2023
Baylor Brogan admittedly broke down for a moment or two. Who could blame him? Six months of unpredictable lows and highs to finish his senior year of high school sports had just taken another unexpected dive.
In December, the Lansing Christian senior tore his right ACL playing basketball, ending his hoops season after it had just started. Nine months of anticipated recovery were expected to wipe out his entire golf season too – and after he’d finished eighth in Lower Peninsula Division 4 as a junior in helping the Pilgrims to their first team Finals championship.
But wait. Brogan made it back to the golf course in mid-May after just five months. He played one practice round, and the next day finished fifth individually at his team’s Regional at Ella Sharp Park in Jackson, advancing to the MHSAA Final as the third of three individual qualifiers.
His recovery was remarkable. The story just kept getting better. And if he would have gone on to win the Finals championship two weeks ago, or even place top-10 again, the ending would have been extraordinary.
Instead, he faced another completely unscriptable scenario – but the difficult decision he made launched the latest dip into the highest of notes as he ended his Pilgrims career.
Brogan headed to Battle Creek’s Bedford Valley for the weekend of June 9-10 to finish off his comeback. He thought he’d shot a 79 during Friday’s first round that tied him for 13th – well within range of a potential top-five finish. In golf, playing partners keep track of each other’s scores – and after Brogan’s group finished its 18 holes, he and his partners that round attested to what had been counted on their scorecards, and Brogan figured that was it until Saturday.
But there was a problem.
As he and his two coaches talked through the round after, they realized what had been reported for hole No. 15 was incorrect. It should have included another stroke. His total score should have been 80.
And yet, no one would have known except for those three. But that wouldn’t have sat well with Brogan or his coaches. As soon as they realized the mistake, they contacted the tournament director and rules official.
“For him to say, ‘Hey Coach, I just want to do the right thing,’ and knowing the right thing would potentially DQ you,” Pilgrims head coach Jason Block explained, “I just said, ‘Hey, we’re a Christian school. We have Jesus to answer to.’ I just think putting our heads on the pillow at night knowing we made the right decision for us felt good, and he agreed with that.”
Brogan figured they would just put in the lower score – after all, it was a stroke worse, and the other competitors couldn’t be mad about that. But because Brogan had already attested to the 79 – and by his own admission should have been monitoring his card after every hole while his round was being played – by rule he was disqualified and would have no score for the first round of play.
“When my head coach called me and told me, that’s when the sadness … I definitely cried a little bit,” Brogan said.
But here’s why his weekend will be recalled down the road as the games go on and others every once in a long while find themselves in a similar spot.
Brogan could have gotten angry. He could have blamed his coaches, or his partners, or anyone else supporting him on the course that day for not catching the mistake. He could have questioned the rule, called the disqualification unfair. He could have thrown a fit, made a scene. This was the last event of his high school career, and after he’d already battled back just to get here.
Instead, he chose grace. He just went back out and played. He would no longer have a chance to place with a two-round score, but also by rule he could still finish the weekend with Saturday’s 18 holes.
“To get DQ’d senior year was kind of a bummer. But in the end it didn’t really matter that much, because they let me play, and my name was still on the leaderboard,” Brogan said. “That’s really all I cared about, is that I could go out and even though it wouldn’t count if I did well, I still wanted to go out and compete. Because that’s what I missed so much from being injured, and that’s all I wanted to do – is still play.
“I just went back out to the range that night. They said I could still play. That was the one thing I could be grateful for. I just went back out and practiced again, and woke up at 6 a.m. the next morning to go play.”
It’s guaranteed Brogan will be sure to monitor every hole on his scorecard as his golf career continues at Wheaton College (Ill.) these next few years. But like his coach, Brogan credited his faith for guiding how he managed this situation. There was an unintentional mishap, and it happens. He needed to accept it and report it, and that’s how he approached it.
Still, Brogan now would have to fill people in on what happened – and that seemed worst of all.
So he sent a group text to his team. Then he waited for his parents to get home from a date night – and they definitely were curious because Block had texted them how sorry he was about the tough news. They had no idea what that meant until Baylor explained – and they told him how proud they were of him for making the right decision.
Brogan’s dad Eric then texted the rest of the family – Baylor is eighth oldest of 10 siblings – and others who had been supporting him. That helped a lot. And the next day, Brogan went out and shot an 80 – a pretty big personal win after missing all but a few weeks of a season, and after the disappointment of the evening before.
“As a coach, he missed the whole season, he comes back like he comes back, and then to have this happen, it would have been very easy to go, ‘Man, can we just forget about it? Can we just not say anything?’” Block said.
But that was never a conversation.
Now, about the hat.
During a spring break trip to Florida six years ago, Brogan and his grandfather Dr. George Bettman were on the golf course. Brogan hadn’t really started playing golf at that point, but he accompanied his grandpa as Bettman shot below his age – 90.
A week later, Dr. Bettman died. Sometime after that, as the family was looking through some of his things, Brogan found the hat. It was way too big for Brogan at that point, but by junior year he was able to wear it with a washcloth lining the inside to make it fit more snugly.
There aren’t a lot of straw hats to be found at Michigan high school golf events, so it’s definitely been something of a Brogan signature as well as a reminder of his grandpa.
“It’s his hat, and I feel like he would love seeing me have some success in golf,” Brogan said, “and probably love even more that I would turn myself in for a mistake.”
Geoff Kimmerly joined the MHSAA in Sept. 2011 after 12 years as Prep Sports Editor of the Lansing State Journal. He is a senior editor of MHSAA.com's editorial content and has served as MHSAA Communications Director since January 2021. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for the Barry, Eaton, Ingham, Livingston, Ionia, Clinton, Shiawassee, Gratiot, Isabella, Clare and Montcalm counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Lansing Christian's Baylor Brogan follows an approach shot during the LPD4 Final at Bedford Valley. (Middle) Brogan, in the straw hat, celebrates his team's 2022 championship. (Click for more from High School Sports Scene.)