Fantastic 4 Lead Lumen Christi to No. 1
May 30, 2015
By Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half
COMSTOCK PARK – Jackson Lumen Christi came to the Lower Peninsula Division 3 Boys Track and Field Final with just four qualifiers.
The Titans left with a surprising MHSAA championship – the first in school history in track and field.
Lumen Christi’s quartet of athletes totaled 44 points to outdistance runner-up Hillsdale’s 37. Clinton was third with 30 points.
“We weren’t a good dual-meet team, and we didn’t have a lot of depth, but we had some really good individuals,” Lumen Christi coach Mike Woolsey said. “I kind of thought if we put the time in, this sort of thing could happen.
“I’ve seen it with other teams, but never with us. This is great.”
The Titans won only one event. Senior Patrick Ludlow won the 800 in thrilling fashion as he came from behind to nip Ryan Silvestri of Napoleon by less than one second.
“On the first lap, I wanted to be in a good spot in the top two or three,” Ludlow said. “I came around right where I wanted to be. With about 300 to go, I kind of came out first, and then some guys were right with me. Around the 200, I just gutted it out and got the win.”
Ludlow conceded that he did not come to Comstock Park expecting to leave with a team championship.
“Honestly, no. This is so much more than I could have expected,” he said. “It definitely feels better with the team, and it feels good to do both; but to be able to share it with the team is awesome.”
Woolsey said Ludlow followed the script in winning the race.
“He ran the type of race we’ve been practicing all year,” he said. “Watching that race was kind of how I pictured it in my mind.”
Jonathan Scouten, another Lumen Christi senior, had a roller-coaster ride all day. Seeded in the top two in both the shot put and discus, Scouten failed to pick up an individual championship and lost the shot put by a half-inch.
“My day was pretty eventful,” he said. “I was hoping to win both the discus and the shot put, and in the discus I was first going into the finals but ended up getting second. So I was a little disappointed there,” he said. “In the shot put, it was the same thing, except in the finals I ended up losing by a half-inch.
“The whole season has been like this. We’ve been real mellow as a team, and then, what is this? State champions? It’s a blessing. I was about to go home real disappointed, but having this made my day.”
Woolsey said Scouten has gotten to where he is because of hard work and technique and not simply brute strength.
“Over the four years he has improved so much,” Woolsey said. “He’s a hard worker. He’s not the biggest thrower out there, but as far as technique, he’s great. He’s mastered that.”
Lumen Christi junior Wyatt Plate was second in the 200 and third in the 100.
“Plate is just naturally fast, and he has the potential to get even faster,” Woolsey said.
The fourth Lumen Christi athlete to qualify for the meet was junior Jacob Wildenhaus, who took fifth in the 300 hurdles.
Amazingly, there were no multiple individual champions in the meet, and only third-place Clinton managed to bag two titles – one individual and one on a relay.
It was that sort of meet that helped Lumen Christi win a team championship with 44 points.
“You need to have good individuals and have them be on, and it happened,” Woolsey said. “I kind of did the math before and thought we could score a lot of points, but I didn’t know if they would be enough.”
Woolsey has been coaching for 36 years, and he has been involved with winning MHSAA titles for Lumen Christi with boys and girls cross country. But he said winning one in track and field had its own nice touch.
“It’s different,” he said. “Usually with cross country I’m the only coach, so I’m happy for all the other coaches. I’m happy for these kids. It’s fun to be able to take this back to school.”
The other individual champions in the running events were Macomb Lutheran North junior Zach Stadnika in the 110 hurdles, Niles Brandywine senior Andrew Duckett in the 300 hurdles, Sanford-Meridian junior Christian Petre in the 100, Clinton senior Tyler Underwood in the 200, Madison Heights Madison senior Jaylin Golson in the 400, Lansing Catholic senior Keenan Rebera in the 1,600 and Calvin Christian junior Abe Visser in the 3,200.
In the field events, champs were Hesperia junior Nate McKeown (high jump), Reed City junior Nate Fasbender (pole vault), Hillsdale senior Austin Hawkins (long jump), Carson City-Crystal senior Joshua Coston (discus) and Grand Rapids West Catholic junior Carl Myers (shot put).
Hawkins was the defending champion in the long jump.
In the relay events, Clinton won the 40, Marlette the 800, Adrian Madison the 1,600 and Hanover-Horton the 3,200.
PHOTO: Jackson Lumen Christi's Patrick Ludlow finishes his winning 800 run Saturday in helping the Titans to the LP Division 3 team championship. (Click to see more from RunMichigan.com. Photo by Jamie Geysbeek.)
Robichaud 3-Sport Legend Wheatley Selected to National High School Hall of Fame
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
March 11, 2024
The playing career of 1991 Dearborn Heights Robichaud graduate Tyrone Wheatley remains one of the most storied in Michigan high school sports history. His prestige gained during that early stage of his athletic stardom has been recognized nationally as well, as Wheatley was one of 12 honorees announced today as this year’s inductees into the National High School Hall of Fame by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).
Wheatley – who grew up in Inkster and is currently the head football coach at Wayne State University – will be inducted as one of 11 honorees selected for the 41st Hall of Fame class at a ceremony during the NFHS summer meeting July 1 in Boston. The rest of the class is made up of three more athletes, four coaches, two former state association administrators and a game official. Wheatley was nominated by the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
Wheatley will become the Hall of Fame’s 10th inductee from Michigan, joining the MHSAA’s first full-time Executive Director Charles E. Forsythe (inducted 1983), River Rouge boys basketball coach Lofton Greene (1986), Warren Regina athletic director, softball and basketball coach Diane Laffey (2000), Fennville basketball and baseball standout Richie Jordan (2001), Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett boys and girls tennis coach Bob Wood (2005), Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook hockey standout Jim Johnson (2007), Owosso football, basketball and baseball all-stater Brad Van Pelt (2011); Vermontville Maple Valley baseball national record holder Ken Beardslee (2016) and retired MHSAA Executive Director John E. “Jack” Roberts (2022).
To the greater public, Wheatley surely is best known as a star running back for University of Michigan who went on to play 10 seasons in the NFL for the New York Giants and Oakland Raiders. However, he is arguably most glorified in Michigan high school athletics for his accomplishments on the track, where as a junior in 1990 he became the first (of still only two) athletes to win four individual events at an MHSAA Lower Peninsula Finals – placing first in the 100 and 200-meter dashes, 110-meter hurdles and long jump. He led Robichaud to the Class B team title that day, scoring 40 of its 49 points. Wheatley completed his high school career in 1991 with three more Class B individual track & field championships and nine total over his final three seasons; he was injured in the 100 during that senior-year meet and could not run his final race to attempt another four-title day.
Wheatley’s meet records of 13.7 seconds in the 100 at the 1991 LP Class B Final and 23-10¾ in long jump in 1989 still stood when the four-Class track & field format was retired after the 1999 season. He also remains the only athlete to win the 100 three times at the prestigious Mehock Relays in Mansfield, Ohio, also finishing first in the 110 hurdles and 200 and runner-up in the long jump at that meet in 1991.
Wheatley was similarly accomplished on the high school football field, leading his team to a state championship in 1990 and earning a Parade All-America honor. Over three varsity seasons total he ran for a combined 4,257 yards and 67 touchdowns, including 2,010 yards and 33 scores on 208 carries as a senior in 1990 – the latter despite playing quarterback half of that season (and throwing five touchdown passes). He played quarterback, running back, defensive back, punter, kicker and returned kicks, and he scored 252 points over 13 games as a senior and 484 over 38 career games.
Wheatley also was a standout on the basketball court for Robichaud, averaging 14 points and 16 rebounds per game as a senior in earning all-state recognition in that sport as well.
“My city where I come from, Inkster, means the world to me. I grew up in an incredible era of sports in Michigan (with successful University of Michigan and Detroit pro teams) … but if you ask me who my idols were, they were the guys I grew up with playing on the playground,” Wheatley said. “After you come from a basketball game where you see Jarvis Walker drop 30, or Earl Jones running the last 200 of a race backwards … you hear people talk about them, you hear their reverence about them, and I just wanted to be put in the conversation of the best to come out of Inkster, forget the state. I can tell you this for sure: I’m not the best athlete to come out of Inkster, just the person who got the recognition. And my foundation was built watching, taking notes, preparing, working out and just trying to be one of the guys.
“(Robichaud was) the step. Because without Robichaud … Michigan, the NFL, me coming back to coach, it doesn’t happen,” Wheatley said. “Without the Robert Yaucks (his football coach at Robichaud), the Coach (Leit) Jones (his Robichaud track coach), the Coach (Mercer) Brysons, the (coach) Wade Cooks, the (coach Jeff) Flounorys, the Millie Hursins (his academic advisor) of the world, this doesn’t happen. Without my high school teammates, none of this happens. So it’s not just a step. What’s the saying – the first impression is the lasting and best impression? Robichaud was it.”
Wheatley returned to Robichaud as its varsity football coach in 2007 and led that team to a 9-2 record and the MHSAA Playoffs for the first time since 1994 – after Robichaud had finished 0-9 the previous season. He has served as an assistant football coach at four college programs including U-M and Syracuse, and with the Buffalo Bills, Jacksonville Jaguars and Denver Broncos.
He also served as Morgan State University's head coach from 2019-21 and just completed his first season as head coach at Wayne State, which finished 3-8 – an improvement of two wins from 2022 and the program’s best record since 2019.
Wheatley graduated from University of Michigan in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology. He and wife Kimberly have five children: Tyrone Jr., Terius, Tyrique, Tiana and Tamari. Tyrone Jr., an offensive tackle, played this past season for the New England Patriots.
“Many of us who grew up in Michigan grew up as fans of Tyrone Wheatley because of what he accomplished at the college level – but his legendary story begins at Dearborn Heights Robichaud, where his outsized athletic ability was on full display in every sport he played,” MHSAA Executive Director Mark Uyl said. “Michigan has produced several professional athletes in a variety of sports and nearly 50 Olympians in track & field alone, and what Tyrone Wheatley achieved as a high school athlete remains a standard few have approached. We are ecstatic that he will deservedly take his place among the all-time elite high school athletes nationally as well.”
The National High School Hall of Fame was started in 1982 by the NFHS. The 11 individuals were chosen after a two-level selection process involving a screening committee composed of active high school state association administrators, coaches and officials, and a final selection committee composed of coaches, former athletes, state association officials, media representatives and educational leaders. Nominations were made through NFHS member associations. Also chosen for this class were athletes Joe Mauer (Minnesota), Takeo Spikes (Georgia) and Dot Ford Burrow (Mississippi); sport coaches Paula Kirkland (South Carolina), Gary Rankin (Tennessee), Roy Snyder (Pennsylvania) and Ronald Vincent (North Carolina); former state association administrators Mike Colbrese (Washington) and Marie Ishida (California), and baseball/football game official David Core (Oklahoma).
For more on this year’s Hall of Fame class, visit the NFHS Website.
PHOTO Tyrone Wheatley crosses the finish line first during one of his nine MHSAA Finals track & field championship victories. (MHSAA file photo.)