Iron Mountain's Pigeon Holds On to Finish 1st, Hancock Claims Team Title

By Jason Juno
Special for MHSAA.com

May 29, 2024

CRYSTAL FALLS – Iron Mountain junior Cooper Pigeon started Wednesday’s Upper Peninsula Division 2 Final with a birdie.

He made sure the rough patch that followed was short lived – and it’s a good thing he did, because Hancock’s Jackson Sintkowski made sure there wasn’t much margin for error.

Pigeon carded a 76, a single stroke ahead of Sintkowski, to win the medalist honor at Young’s Golf Course.

“He has the mindset that he doesn’t let that bother him,” Iron Mountain coach Steve Flaminio said. “He turned it around and got a couple birdies and righted the ship. He figured it out like he always does and started playing pretty strong.”

It wasn’t an easy course, nor was it a perfect day to golf. The sun was out, but it was windy, which could exaggerate any minor errors, Pigeon said.

Some of the pin placements were tough, Flaminio said, and the greens were super fast – Flaminio watched kids three and four putt many times throughout the day. 

“There were some young guys out there struggling. Cooper figured it out, and that was key,” he said.

The Finals title was Pigeon’s first. He knew he had a chance to win after shooting a 73 in his last round at this course.

Hancock’s Jackson Sintkowski follows his drive on the same hole.“But you have to play well, and you can’t get ahead of yourself,” he said. 

The bulk of the U.P. summer awaits him and he plays golf almost daily, so he could certainly be a force to be reckoned with next season as well.

“It’s sweet; hopefully we can get another one next year,” Pigeon said.

Flaminio said the rest of the team was excited for their individual champ because they can see how hard he works at his craft.

“So to see him come home as medalist in the U.P. is pretty awesome,” he said.

Sintkowski, the runner-up from Hancock, did leave with some hardware himself as he led the Bulldogs to their first U.P. Finals team title since they won Division 2 back-to-back in 2013 and 2014.

He was one of four Bulldogs to finish among the top 10 individuals – Bryce Hanner placed fifth with an 83, Kirby Storm was sixth with an 86 and Drew Sturos tied for 10th with an 88.

Hancock competes in the Western Peninsula Athletic Conference, where it finished runner-up to Division I Houghton throughout much of the season. That doesn’t mean the Bulldogs have been golfing poorly.

“The kids have been playing well all year,” Hancock coach Paul Sintkowski said. 

The Bulldogs came into this tournament with the lowest team average, so they considered themselves the favorites and lived up to that high expectation.

“We had the guys to get it done today, but you still got to get it done,” said Sintkowski, who earned his first U.P. team title in nine years of coaching. “They got it done today. I’m real proud of these guys.”

Hancock was led by the West-PAC Player of the Year, Jackson Sintkowski, a junior. And their team got a big boost this season when Hanner decided to join the golf team.

“Bryce Hanner was a nice addition to our team this year,” Coach Sintkowski said of the senior. “He decided to play golf this year, and that really bolstered our lineup down the stretch. It gave an extra solid player where we could always count on a good score for him.”

Painesdale Jeffers finished as the team runner-up, 15 strokes behind Hancock, 333-348. St. Ignace was third, Iron Mountain fourth and Munising fifth.

Owen Kuehnau of Stephenson carded an 81 to take third place individually, and St. Ignace’s Sawyer Graham was fourth with an 82.

Click for full results.

PHOTOS (Top) Iron Mountain's Cooper Pigeon drives on No. 14 at Young’s Golf Course on Wednesday. (Middle) Hancock’s Jackson Sintkowski follows his drive on the same hole. (Photos by Jason Juno.)

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.

Mid-MichiganIn 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.

Brogan, in the straw hat, celebrates his team's 2022 championship. 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 KimmerlyGeoff 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.)