Marquette Boys Finish D1 Strive for 5
February 27, 2017
By James Cook
Special for Second Half
HARBOR SPRINGS – Bradley Seaborg doesn’t think this is the end of the road for Marquette’s boys skiing championships.
The Redmen graduate four seniors from a team that won Monday’s Division 1 title for the fifth straight year, more than doubling runner-up Traverse City Central.
“I don’t think this is the end at all,” Seaborg said. “We’ve still got Andrew Thomas, who is a very good junior. We’re losing four good guys, but we’re picking up a couple good freshmen next year.”
Seaborg is one of those seniors, but he went out by taking the individual slalom championship.
He and the rest of the team also went out a different way.
In shorts.
The entire Redmen team showed up to the awards ceremony – which was held outdoors at Nub’s Nob in Harbor Springs – in khaki shorts, much to the amusement of the crowd gathered.
Besides, the Redmen had their Upper Peninsula championships canceled because of unseasonably warm weather, so why not celebrate being able to win another crown in mild conditions?
“We were all like, ‘What should we wear for awards?’ and we were thinking khakis,” Seaborg said. “Then it was going to be pretty hot, so why not khaki shorts?”
First-year coach Dan Menze didn’t wear shorts, but wasn’t about to stop his boys from doing what they wanted after winning a school-record fifth straight title.
“You have to be professional throughout the day,” Menze said. “But at the end of the day, if you want to have a little fun and celebrate winning five championships in a row, I feel like they deserve to celebrate.”
The Redmen won four straight from 2000-03, a mark now eclipsed by this group’s streak of five.
“For us to break that and get our fifth is pretty sweet,” said Seaborg, who was involved in three of those titles.
Seaborg is a six-time first-team all-state selection, taking fifth in giant slalom in addition to his slalom championship.
He also won slalom last season and was top five in GS. He was top 10 in both as a freshman before taking off his sophomore season to focus on club skiing.
Menze said he inherited a great program, and added the pressure was on to continue its winning ways.
“I was blessed with an extremely talented team that I walked into coaching,” Menze said. “I’ve coached a lot of these guys coming up.”
Like Seaborg, Menze also isn’t willing to concede that the Redmen’s run could end next season.
“We had a lot of freshmen competing for spots on that A team,” Menze said. “We will have a slight rebuild. You can’t say you’re not going to after you had first and second on one side were seniors and three in the top 10 on the other side. It’ll be an interesting year next year. It’ll be a lot closer than it has been for years.”
Traverse City Central was second, 53 points behind Marquette (35). Rochester (110) was third, followed by Grand Rapids Forest Hills Northern/Eastern (164) and Brighton (187).
“We expected to get second, and we got second,” said Central junior Joe Aulicino, who was seventh in slalom and ninth in GS. “It was kind of exactly what we thought would happen. It’s still pretty cool.”
Seaborg and teammates Eric Gencheff and Andrew Thomas gave the Redmen three of the top four slalom spots. Dylan Robinia was 11th, Adam Skendzel 20th and Truman Durand 21st.
Forest Hills Northern/Eastern’s Ben Meyers was the only non-Marquette skier in the top four of the event, taking third.
Meyers also won the giant slalom championship, holding off runner-up Gencheff on the second run.
PHOTOS: (Top) Marquette's Dylan Robinia comes around a gate during the Division 1 Finals at Nub's Nob. (Middle) Traverse City Central's Joe Aulicino helps the Trojans to a team runner-up finish. (Photos by James Cook.)
1st Finals Win Might Only be Start for Traverse City West
By
James Cook
Special for MHSAA.com
February 22, 2021
HARBOR SPRINGS — Recent history in Michigan high school skiing is dotted with dynasties.
Maybe it's time to welcome the newest one.
Traverse City West's boys ski team made history Monday, winning the program's first MHSAA Finals championship at Nub's Nob in Harbor Springs. The Titans can return the same lineup next season for a title defense.
"We had the talent," Titans sophomore Luke Wiersema said. "We just had to put it all together, and then we could be a state champions. It's really exciting. I feel like we could do this for the next two, three years."
West won with 63.5 points, surviving a Rochester Adams comeback attempt in the afternoon to win by 5.5. Bloomfield Hills placed third at 85.5 and Traverse City Central fourth with 140.
Wiersema placed eighth in slalom and seventh in giant slalom to earn first-team all-state in both disciplines. Junior Andy Hill did the same all-state double dip, placing eighth in GS and taking runner-up honors in the afternoon's slalom.
"I think everyone thought at the beginning of the season that we could," Wiersema said. "We could destroy this season. We could win it all."
West junior Aiden Lewandowski won the giant slalom by one tenth of a second over Nathan Dehart of Rochester Adams, posting the only sub-24-second GS time of the day in his second run. He trailed Dehart by 0.03 after the first.
The Titans' history-making championship is the first since the school split off from Traverse City Central in 1997. Ed Johnson, who coached West its first season in 1997, said finally getting that championship trophy was a huge relief, especially after three runner-up finishes, the most recent in 2019 behind Marquette.
"It means a lot. It means a lot for me," Johnson said. "I've been coaching at that school since the school was opened. So it's incredible just to see it finally happen. We've had a number of runner-ups over the years, so we were close, and we had other teams that could have done it as well but just didn't quite pull it together on that day. So it's just so nice to see it happen finally."
Marquette's run of eight straight Division 1 championships ended at Regionals, when the Redmen didn't qualify among the top three to move on to Monday's Finals. Since 1997 when TC West opened, the only schools that had won a D1 Finals title were Marquette (15 times), TC Central (four), Clarkston (one), Petoskey (two) and Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice (one).
Hill was eighth after the first slalom run, then made up for that with the best time of all second runs at 34.53 seconds, 0.99 seconds better than eventual champ Hunter Halstead of Bloomfield Hills.
"The first one I felt really iffy," Hill said. "I just wasn't really mentally prepared. We were waiting at the top for a long time, so I kind of lost my focus. But the second run, I knew that I had to make up some time. So I just got in the zone and gave it all I had."
After Halstead and Hill in slalom were Adams' Zeke King in third, followed by Bloomfield Hills' Matthew Coates, Adams' Jacob Corsi, Traverse City Central’s Max Werner, West's Caleb Lewandowski, Wiersema, Adams' Charlie Buckmaster and Brighton's Andrew Myers.
Halstead placed third in GS, behind Aiden Lewandowski and Dehart. The rest of the top 10 was comprised of Clarkston's Andrew Roeser, Marquette's Logan Audette, Brighton's Luke Vaden, Wiersema, Bloomfield Hills' Bode Iuppenlatz, Hill and West’s Ben Lober.
Aiden Lewandowski finished 45th in slalom after hiking on both runs, but his GS championship helped give the Titans a nice cushion over Rochester Adams going into slalom.
"We were definitely concerned to have that happen on that first run of the afternoon, so that put the rest of our guys into a tough spot," Johnson said. "But they all work together and without Aidan's win in the morning, it wouldn't have happened either. So everybody did their thing today, did what they had to do so."
While Lewandowski didn't place in slalom, the family still did. His younger brother Caleb took seventh as a freshman.
"It's just amazing how much we can do when we put everything together," Hill said. "We're all super strong individuals, but when we put ourselves together we make something that's like unbreakable. We will be back in full force next year."
West was the only team with more than two competitors in the GS top 10, boasting four.
"First run of GS, we all score within the top 10," Hill said. "And we're like, 'If we do this, we can really do it,' and then GS ends and we had four in the top 10. We knew from there that as long as we make it down with relatively good times, we will win.
“But then slalom was a bit of a scare; some of our top athletes fell. So then we all had to ski a little bit more conservatively and just make sure not to fall."
Maybe Nub's Nob itself served as a lift for the Titans, who had been strong all season. The green and gold lifts match the Titans’ colors and suited them well as a youthful West team reached new heights.
"It's so much fun to see these guys do this," Johnson said. "We knew we could do it at the beginning of the year. We just had to pull them together as a team and not just a bunch of individuals that were really good. That was our main focus all season was to ski as a team, perform as a team, and they stepped up to it. They stepped up in the middle of the season, and just kept carrying it all the way through."
PHOTOS: (Top) Traverse City West's Aiden Lewandowski navigates the course during Monday's Division 1 Finals at Nub's Nob. (Middle) Bloomfield Hills' Hunter Halstead claimed the slalom championship. (Click for more photos from Sports in Motion.)