Petoskey Adds to D2 Dominance with 11th Finals Title in 12 Seasons
By
James Cook
Special for MHSAA.com
February 28, 2022
BELLAIRE – “Send it” was the motto of this year’s Petoskey skiing team.
Consider it sent.
The Northmen boys won their third-straight Division 2 championship – and 11th in 12 years – edging Pontiac Notre Dame Prep by 13 points Monday at Schuss Mountain in Bellaire.
The Northmen used a dominating afternoon in the slalom to pull ahead of Notre Dame and finish with 86 points. Petoskey trailed Notre Dame by four after the morning GS. Cadillac placed third at 116, followed by Gaylord (129) and Harbor Springs (149.5).
All the while, coaches wore hats emblazoned with the motto.
"It's a great streak and it's a testament to the community that's built around this program," said Petoskey boys skiing head coach Ben Crockett. "That is really the strength, is having families involved and it being valued in Petoskey and being something that our community is really proud of. And we just continue to have success."
The Petoskey win was even more impressive given the team had two falls in the morning GS session and another in the slalom.
"We were in need of having a finish to keep us in the in the competition," said Crockett, who won his second Finals title in as many years leading the program. "We got that with Gavin Galbraith, who's a freshman coming through at the very end when we needed him. So that kept us in the hunt."
Gaylord's Connor Abraham won the slalom title, posting the fastest run of each session by a fraction of a second ahead of Petoskey junior Nolan Walkerdine, who took second.
"It's just super cool to actually pull it off," Abraham said. "I've been working at it for a long time, so I'm really excited right now."
The boys slalom saw a lot of skiers hiking, with eight falls in the first three flights of the first run.
The second run ended up better, the snow firming up in between.
"You never know what you're going to get," Abraham said. "That could happen to anyone and it happened to a lot of people today. I've been there many times before."
Houghton’s Reed Heathman won the giant slalom, just beating out Harbor Springs’ Connor Truman by 0.33 seconds.
Abraham also placed fifth in giant slalom, in what he called his best GS race of the year.
Walkerdine also placed third in giant slalom after top-flighted teammate and senior captain Will Goelz fell on his first run.
"There are situations where a hike can make the difference between winning and losing and that was going through my head," Goelz said. "I also wanted to be able to have a second run to finish off my high school skiing career on a good note."
Goelz bounced back with the fourth-fastest second slalom run.
"Nice be able to keep our streak alive," Goelz said. "It was just a really great team effort from our entire team. We counted on every single one of us. I've got a great team to back me up and find some really great results themselves."
Junior Wyatt Mattson brought home a pair of first-team all-state honors, placing fourth in giant slalom and sixth in slalom.
Goelz took 13th in giant slalom, and freshman Charlie Thomas earned 12th in slalom.
"It's such a cool thing to be able to be part of a team with that much of a legacy," Goelz said. "A lot of great skiers and great people come out of our program, and it's really great to be able to add to that going forward."
Great North Alpine — a co-op team consisting of Traverse City St. Francis, Elk Rapids, Central Lake and Grand Traverse Academy — had junior Corbin Murphy place seventh in slalom and tie for 10th in giant slalom to earn all-state in each after qualifying as an individual.
"Coming as an individual this year was a little different because ever since freshman year, I've been coming here as a team," Murphy said. "But it was fun this year. I didn't have to worry about anything for the team, so I could go full gas."
GNA doesn't lose any seniors, so Murphy expected to be back next year as a team during his senior campaign.
Whereas Great North Alpine's entire team — the one squad to interrupt Petoskey's run at 12 titles in a row — wasn't at the Final, another team made its return after a long while.
Onekama qualified at a team for the first time since 1994, the program's only other time making the Final as a team.
Kylar Thomas earned all-state honors with a sixth-place finish in giant slalom, with teammate Braydon Sorenson taking 15th. The Portagers placed seventh as a team.
"We just made it as a team finally, which was kind of a cool thing for my senior year," Thomas said. "After all these years, we're working hard all year skiing, practicing lots and trying to get better."
Mount Pleasant also made its Finals debut as a team, finishing eighth with 223 points, tied with Grand Rapids Christian.
PHOTOS (Top) Petoskey’s Nolan Walkerdine cuts past a gate during a slalom run Monday at Schuss Mountain. (Middle) Gaylord’s Connor Abraham surges into a turn on the way to winning the slalom. (Click for more from Sports in Motion.)
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.)