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South Lyon Soccer Standout Dives Back In for Big Pool Finish
By
Tom Markowski
Special for Second Half
March 10, 2022
Never mind that swimming isn't Josh Mason's best sport. Forget the fact that he left the sport after his freshman year to concentrate on his first love – soccer.
Well, Mason is back in the pool and he's making waves.
This weekend Mason and his South Lyon teammates will head to the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 1 Swimming & Diving Finals at the Holland Aquatic Center.
The prelims begin at noon Friday with the championship races starting at noon Saturday.
Mason, a 6-foot-5, 190-pound senior all-state center-back on the soccer team, qualified in the 50- and 100-yard freestyles, but he and coach John Burch have decided to forego his entry into the 100 in an attempt to enhance South Lyon's chances in the team competition. In addition to the 50, Mason will compete in all three relays – the 200 medley and two freestyle relays (200 and 400).
Opting out of the 100 suits Mason just fine. His best event is the 50, and he said “the last 25 (yards) of the 100 is a struggle for me. It takes everything I have to get through it.”
Whether it's in the pool, on the pitch or in the classroom, Mason never gives anything less than 100 percent. His drive to excel, he quickly admits, comes from his parents, Caroline and Chuck Mason.
Both competed in athletics; Caroline was a collegiate track athlete, and Chuck played soccer in high school.
“I started swimming when I was 3 or 4,” Mason said. “It was just one of those things where my parents wanted me to learn how to swim. I just really enjoyed it, and I kept coming back.”
His start in soccer also came before the age of 5 and Mason found a balance by competing in both, though soccer gradually became priority one.
“With my dad having played soccer, he's enjoyed being around and being a part of it,” Mason said.
“I always loved soccer. I have a love-hate relationship with swimming. It gets you into shape. (Swim) practices are hard. I use it for conditioning. It translates well to soccer.”
Mason competed in swimming because it was fun at an early age. When he entered high school, he realized he was pretty good at it – and so, that being the case, why not try out for the swim team?
Burch was there to welcome him with open arms.
“Josh? He's just an elite athlete,” Burch said. “He wants to succeed. He wants to excel. He's worked hard to get where he's at.”
Like Burch, South Lyon soccer coach Brian Elliott, who just completed his 10th season as the boys head coach, knew he had an outstanding player when Mason entered high school.
“He was a man among boys, even when he was a freshman,” Elliott said. “We knew he was something special. He was a three-year captain. That doesn't happen. He's our first for the boys program. He was one of our tallest players even when he was a freshman. He was thin then, but he's filled out since. As a center-back, the best ones are tall. And he has the agility of someone who's 5-8 or 5-9. Josh is somehow this physical phenom. The last two years he was able to physically dominate.
“He's a once-in-a-lifetime student-athlete for a coach.”
But as a swimmer his freshman year, was Mason in over his head competing for one of the top, if not best, swim programs in the Lakes Valley Conference? He was eager to find out.
Was he inexperienced? Absolutely. Did he show promise? No question.
There was one snag. His commitment to soccer.
“His mother and I had a conversation before the season,” Burch said. “She told me that he wouldn't be able to compete at the Finals because there was a big soccer tournament., When it came time for the Finals), I thought, I could really use Josh. I'm sure he wished he could have competed at the states. But soccer was his sport. I understand that.”
As Mason's involvement with soccer increased, his time for other outside activities shrunk. This led to his decision not to compete in swimming his sophomore and junior years. But a promise was made, behind closed doors.
Burch said Mason's teammates continued to recruit him to return. Mason had one stipulation – once his soccer season was over, and his verbal commitment was made to a university, he would be free to rejoin the swim team. In October, Mason committed to Michigan State – opening the door for his return.
“I always thought he'd come back,” Burch said.
It took Mason a few weeks to get back into shape in the pool, and when he did, he took off. At the conference meet he won both of his individual events and was part of two winning relay teams (200 and 400 freestyles) as South Lyon took home the title.
“I knew what kind of kid he is,” Burch said. “I had him in class in the eighth grade. When he came back this year, I didn't know what I'd get. I didn't know what to expect. Heck, he'd been away for two years. Maybe he'd go through the motions. But he's not that type. If he's going to do something, you know he's going to do it well. I knew I was getting a good kid, someone who will add to the team.
“Sure, he's accomplished a lot. At the same time, when he was a freshman, if you would have said he would accomplish all of this, I would say, yes.”
Regardless of how races finish this weekend, there's a happy ending. Mason, a remarkable student as well sporting a 4.1 GPA, has his scholarship. The South Lyon swim team welcomed a teammate back. And Burch is sending another competitive team to the MHSAA Finals.
Tom Markowski primarily covered high school sports for the The Detroit News from 1984-2014, focusing on the Detroit area and contributing to statewide coverage of football and basketball. He also is a former correspondent and web content director for State Champs! Sports Network. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS (Top) South Lyon’s Josh Mason shows his medal after winning the 50 freestyle at the Lakes Valley Conference championship meet. (Middle) Mason sends a shot toward the net during a game last fall. (Below) Mason launches at the start of the 100 freestyle league final. (Photos courtesy of the Mason family.)
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Dexter Extends Finals Win Streak to 4
By
Jason Schmitt
Special for MHSAA.com
March 9, 2019
YPSILANTI – It was only fitting that Casey Dolen was the last swimmer in the pool for Dexter on Saturday at the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Boys Swimming & Diving Finals at Eastern Michigan University.
He was a member of the Dreadnaughts’ 2016 championship team. And he was there in 2017 and 2018 as well.
Dolen was the first to touch the wall in the 400-yard freestyle relay, helping his team win the event and lock down the program’s fourth straight Division 2 championship. He, along with senior Niklas Eberly and sophomores Michael Baumann and Clayton Kinnard, finished in a time of 3:06.84, comfortably beating out runner-up Birmingham Groves – which finished second overall in the team standings.
“This is a great group of kids, and to send these seniors out with four in a row is really special,” said Dexter head coach Michael McHugh, whose program has won five Finals titles since the 2012 season. “That’s our goal all year, but we never take anything for granted.
“The guys really stepped up. We knew Groves was going to come out strong. Our job was to not panic, not overreact and keep doing what we were doing. We knew we had a little bit of a lead (entering Saturday), so as long as we were mistake-free, we’d be OK.”
Groves did indeed come out strong. The Falcons quartet of senior David Helton, juniors Nolan Kamoo and Jackson Gugni and senior Hunter Reilly upended Dexter’s top-seeded 200 medley relay team to start the meet. Their time of 1:34.70 was the best of the weekend and gave their team an early six-point lead over the Dreadnaughts.
But it didn’t take long for Dexter to make its move. A runner-up finish by Dolen in the 200 freestyle helped cut Groves’ lead to three points – and it seemed to get the ball rolling for the Dreadnaughts.
Kinnard’s eighth-place finish in the next race, the 200 individual medley, gave his team an eight-point lead, one which it would not relinquish the rest of the day.
Dexter finished with 239 team points, besting Groves (203) and third-place Birmingham Seaholm (181.5). Midland Dow (162.5) and Grosse Pointe South (149) rounded out the top five.
Eberly was the star of the meet for Dexter. He won both the 50 freestyle and 100 butterfly events. His 20.40 seconds in the 50 matched his preliminary time and beat runner-up Luke Lezotte of Midland Dow by a tenth of a second.
His time of 47.79 in the 100 butterfly helped him repeat in the event. Walled Lake Northern’s Zane Rosely was a distant second, with a time of 49.94.
“It was definitely a goal of mine, since I started high school, to break 47,” Eberly said. “You don’t see a lot of high schoolers do it. It really sets you up well going into college like that. I knew I could do 47.5 if I really tried. I fell a little bit short, but I’m unbelievably happy with 47.7. I think it’s a phenomenal time.”
Eberly was one of the top swimmers entering the finals and knew he needed to swim up to those high expectations if his team was to have a chance to four-peat.
“I was super happy to be able to hold my places and help the team,” he said. “My situation is definitely different than other kids’. A lot of them have to step up, climb up, maybe they’re seeded eighth or 16th and they have no place to go but up. Going into states, I have nowhere to go but down. So it really adds a lot of pressure.”
Joining Eberly as a two-event winner was Fraser junior Alex Capizzo, who was victorious in both the 200 IM and 500 freestyle, a pair of events he also won a year ago. He beat out Rosely in the IM and Walled Lake Western junior Eric Hieber in the 500.
Hieber easily won the 200 freestyle, beating out Dolen by more than 1½ seconds.
Dolen did pick up an individual title, narrowly edging Lezotte by two hundredths of a second in the 100 freestyle.
Other individual winners included Jack Hamilton of Berkley, whose time of 50.51 in the backstroke helped him beat out runner-up Ben Conroy of Gibraltar Carlson by nearly a second. And Byron Center senior Jacob Glover bested the field in the 100 breaststroke, finishing in a winning time of 56.38
Midland Dow’s Che Collin, Zach Fewkes, Hans Dehn and Lezotte swam a time of 1:25.13 to take first place in the 200 freestyle relay.
In the diving competition, Okemos junior Hunter Hollenbeck repeated as champion, scoring 462.95 points. Rochester Adams sophomore SooDong Kim and Wyandotte Roosevelt freshman Hudson Hill finished second and third, respectively, both eclipsing 400 points.
Groves, which finished third behind Dexter and Rochester Adams a year ago, is losing a few key seniors to graduation, but returns a good nucleus of athletes, which has head coach Ricky Forrest excited for what lies ahead for his team.
“(Dexter is) an experienced team, and I’ve got a lot of respect for what Mike does with his guys. Every single year, no matter where they’re at on the psych sheet, every team here knows that they’re going to bring it,” Forrest said. “We had an outstanding day during the prelims on Friday and a really good day (on Saturday). We’re going to be missing a lot of (senior) leadership and we’re going to need some boys to step up next year, but we’ve still got a really good core and I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
Rochester Adams finished sixth overall with 138 points, with Gibraltar Carlson (120), Detroit U-D Jesuit (102.5), Walled Lake Western (91) and Temperance-Bedford (86.5) rounding out the top 10.
PHOTOS: (Top) Dexter senior Niklas Eberly swims the winning butterfly during Saturday’s Division 2 Finals at Eastern Michigan University. (Middle) Finishers in the 100 freestyle, including Dexter champion Casey Dolen, look to the scoreboard after their race. (Click for more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)