Saugatuck Speedster Aiming for Historic Performance

By Dean Holzwarth
Special for MHSAA.com

May 12, 2021

SAUGATUCK -- Saugatuck boys track & field coach Rick Bauer frequently tosses out a nickname for one of his elite runners.

Benny “The Jet” Diaz, a junior sprinter, has definitely lived up to the moniker.

“I don’t remember who gave me that nickname, but coach Bauer uses it a lot,” Diaz said. “I don’t mind it, and it refers to Benny and the Jets or from the movie Sandlot.”

Wherever it came from, it fits, as Diaz has turned up the jets this spring on the track and blossomed into one of the fastest runners and hurdlers in the state.

Whether it’s in the sprints (100, 200 or 400 meters) or the hurdles (110 and 300), Diaz possesses blazing speed and athleticism. 

“He’s fast, and he was born with some talent for sprinting, but his real talent is just how hard he works at it,” Bauer said. “I don’t think people understand that this is a 365-day thing for Benny and his dad working on speed.”

As a freshman, Diaz placed third in the 300 hurdles at the MHSAA Division 4 Finals and helped his team place second overall. 

He worked hard for another opportunity to shine in his sophomore season, but it was wiped out due to COVID-19.

“It was pretty tough, and just not being able to compete was not fun,” Diaz said. 

Diaz would have to wait another year, and now his training and intense drive to succeed is coming to fruition.

Entering this week, Diaz has posted the fifth-fastest time in the state in the 100 after running a personal-best 10.85 seconds at last week’s Shepherd Invitational.

He’s ranked No. 2 in the 110 hurdles (14.86) and in the top 20 in the 200 dash and 300 hurdles. 

For Diaz, who also excels in football and baseball, track was somewhat of an afterthought before learning of his potential.

“In sixth grade it was something to fill my time and get faster for football and baseball,” he said. “But once I was in middle school, I started seeing results and it just became more fun and I was getting better every meet.

“I started doing indoor track and competed in the winter and spring and started getting a lot better. It’s become a job a little bit to try and get myself faster, stronger and better throughout the season.”

Diaz’s dad, Mario, has been instrumental in his son’s success. He also serves as the team’s sprint coach.

Saugatuck boys track & field“He’s definitely helped by pushing me, and we study some things together,” Diaz said. “How to get a better block start, and how to strengthen my legs to get quicker and explosive. He spends a lot of his time with me working on those kinds of things, so I’m pretty appreciative of him.”

Diaz also travels outside of the area and state to compete in various events.

He thrives off the challenges he faces from racing against runners with similar abilities.  

“It’s been fun going up against better competition,” Diaz said. “I run faster with competition because sometimes always winning isn’t too fun. Competition is always fun, even if you lose sometimes, and it’s just still fun going up against people who are the same or better.”

While Diaz simply enjoys competing, some events stand out from the others.

“The 200 is fun because I can come off the curve and just run people down,” he said. “I go past them and then separate on the straightaway. The 100 has been good to me, running under 11 (seconds), and the 400 is fun, but it hurts.”

Diaz has lofty goals for this year’s Finals, which will take place June 5 in Hudsonville.

The only decision now is deciding which events he’s going to run.

“It’s no secret what we’re going after,” Bauer said. “He wants to win four individual events, and that’s what we’re going to try and do.

“It’s just a matter of which events he’s going to do. Everyone has their own opinions, but we’re getting there. It’s a major goal to try and win four, so let’s do something that very few have done.”

Only eight athletes – and only two from the Lower Peninsula – have won four individual events at an MHSAA Boys Track & Field Finals.

Said Diaz: “I want to win all four of my events, and we will try to figure out what’s best to get all 40 points and get the best times I can before summer track.”

Dean Holzwarth has covered primarily high school sports for Grand Rapids-based WOOD-TV for four years after serving at the Grand Rapids Press and MLive for 16 years along with shorter stints at the Ionia Sentinel and WZZM. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Allegan, Kent and Ottawa counties. 

PHOTOS: (Top) Saugatuck's Benny Diaz outpaces the competition in a sprint during a recent meet. (Middle) Diaz also excels at both hurdles races. (Photos by Dean Holzwarth.)

60 Years Later, Co-Champ Rediscovered

March 25, 2020

By Ron Pesch
Special for Second Half

Nicholas “Mickey” Turcheck tells a wild story. It involves a coin flip.

Involved in track & field for much of his life, Turcheck was a pole vaulter at Taylor Center during his high school days, then at Western Michigan University. He later served Taylor Center for more than three decades as track coach, where he mentored five state champions.

He also coached two future Olympians. Earl Jones, who won MHSAA Finals track titles in both 1980 and 1981, and grabbed bronze in the 800 meters at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Another of his athletes, Deby LaPlante, qualified for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal as a high hurdler.

In Turcheck’s possession is a medal. Etched on the back, pounded out in the style of the time, are five lines.

1960
FINAL MEET
CLASS A
POLE VAULT
1ST

Those 31 characters honor his MHSAA championship performance on what became a windy day in Ann Arbor at University of Michigan’s old Ferry Field.

But there is one problem. Turcheck’s name doesn’t appear on the MHSAA list of Finals champions. According to the list, the championship belongs to Joe Baldy of Monroe. 

(The list has since been corrected and amended, per the story to be told below.)

Trackheads

For ‘trackheads’ – diehard fans of the sport and the events that comprise a track meet – as well as sports historians, a newspaper’s agate page is nirvana. Contained within the tiny type are the details that aren’t always relayed within the article covering a sporting event. Things like baseball batting averages, league standings, box scores, stat lines, team transactions, TV and radio schedules, and most everything else that doesn’t fix conveniently into the day’s sports section might appear on the page. For a track meet, a full agate listing will include place finishes as well as times, heights and distances that were used to determine winners of events, as well as detail on record performances that were equaled or topped. 

Jim Moyes is a passionate sports fan. An undersized high school athlete at a small school, where participants of all shapes and sizes are valued, Moyes was the son of a prep coach at North Muskegon High School. He grew up and became, among other things, a beloved and respected broadcaster and public address announcer. Few were as well-prepared as Moyes, who studied agate pages, past performances, and, it seemed, the family trees of the participants prior to sitting before a microphone. His knowledge, as well as his sense of humor, was on display for 43 years in West Michigan, where he would balance his understanding and importance of an event with the awareness that, in the end, what we were experiencing was still just a game.

Well over 30 years ago he began his research into a passion project. Moyes is a ‘trackhead.’ And, because of this, in 2019, he officially became the author of a published book.

Way back, Moyes began digging into microfilm with the goal of capturing the names and events behind each MHSAA Finals track championship. He shared his initial research with the MHSAA, and for years the Association has highlighted his work on its website with lists of individual state champions on both their boys and girls track pages.

A couple of years before wrapping up his research, Moyes began work with another certified ‘trackhead,’  Jeff Hollobaugh – associated editor of Track & Field News, the voice of countless track meets, and as Moyes states, an “expert on this great sport” – to tell the stories of the meets in book form. “The Fleet Feet of Spring” – a history of Michigan’s High School State Championships covering the span 1895-2018 – was the result.

That’s 24,446 state champions. Simply put, its 439 pages contain a marvelous collection of statistics, stories and images.

But, with good reason, Turcheck’s name doesn’t appear in the publication.

Golden Age of Newspapers

Post-event press coverage on the 1960 MHSAA State Track Meet for most readers across Michigan arrived in their newspaper courtesy of coverage by wire-service reporters from The Associated Press or United Press International. With four meets to cover that encompass hundreds of prep athletes, the arch of the stories generally focus on record-setting events and streaks of success.

In Class A, the story was focused on the Pontiac Central squad that slipped past Flint Northern, 44-41, for its fifth title in six years. It was the seventh year in a row that the Vikings finished second at the meet. Pontiac junior Bredell Pritchett’s 59-foot-5¾ toss of the shot exceeded the previous state mark by better than two feet. Northern’s Maurice Pea, clocked at 9.8 seconds, tied a 35-year-old mark in the 100-yard dash. Al Ammerman of Dearborn established a new high jump record.

In 1960, the details of the pole vault simply weren’t the story.

Available space in newspapers is dictated by advertising. That certainly is the case today, and was most certainly the case back in the glory days of newsprint. Decisions are made by sports editors and staff on the amount of space available, and what agate will be printed. The results of a track meet, let alone the four simultaneous meets that comprise the MHSAA state championships, can certainly eat up plenty of real estate.

Relatively few papers around Michigan dedicated space to the MHSAA Track Championships back in May 1960. The old Detroit Times is among those that did include agate. Study of the listing however provides little clarity, as the paper listed only Metro Detroit finishers beyond the event winners. For the pole vault, that means confusion.

Pole Vault – “1 Joe Baldy, Monroe: Mickey Turcheck. Taylor Center: Bob Davis. Redford Union. and Larry Richardson. Livonia Bentley. were among those tieing for fourth. Distance 12 feet, 9 inches.” 

The Grand Rapids Press agate adds haze to the mix. Baldy is listed in first, but Turcheck is listed as finishing second, followed by Flint Northern’s Jerry Wright in third. Davis, Richardson, Mike Pedler of Muskegon, J. Best from Battle Creek Central and Bill King of Traverse City are listed as occupying fourth place

The Battle Creek Enquirer lists only Baldy as the winner of the event and John Best “tied for fourth.” The Lansing State Journal agate shows only Baldy as the event winner. No track agate appears in the Detroit Free Press. Although the paper notes that team-wise, Birmingham finished third with 18 points, followed by Dearborn, Ann Arbor, Muskegon and Saginaw Arthur Hill in its coverage, the results from the Class A pole vault are not mentioned.

The Traverse City Record-Eagle does not include agate, but the article notes King’s fourth place finish, and that the Trojans track team spent the night sleeping on tumbling mats in the Saginaw Arthur Hill gymnasium when its bus broke down on the return trip home from Ann Arbor.

So, with little surprise, Moyes’ research concluded Baldy was the 1960 Class A pole vault champion.

Story of the Medal

In early March, Tony Mifsud, a longtime track coach at Dearborn Divine Child, contacted MHSAA Director of Broadcast Properties John Johnson about the story.

Turcheck was recently visiting a friend, Bob Parks, the head track coach at Eastern Michigan University for 34 years and an assistant track coach at Western Michigan during Turcheck’s time in Kalamazoo competing for the Broncos.  On a visit this past fall, Parks mentioned the Moyes and Hollobaugh book that he had recently received.

“Mick, your name is not listed there,” said Parks. “I know you were tied for the state championship because I was the coach at Redford Thurston at that time and I was at the state meet.  I remember you being announced as the co-state champion of the pole vault.”

“I said, ‘Really?’” recalled Turcheck from his home in Taylor.

After the visit, he made a couple of phone calls to friends.  In turn, some of those folks began reaching out to others with the story.

According to Turcheck, after the pole vault was over, a meet official said they only had one medal and they were going to flip to determine who would receive it. Turcheck won the coin flip and was awarded the souvenir. A duplicate medal was to be mailed to his co-champion.

Newsprint and the Miracle of Microfilm

Before the days of smartphones, e-mail, websites, pop-up ads, and cloud storage, the history of cities, big and small, was captured in print and sold on street corners, at newsstands, and, beginning in 1947, by coin-operated vending machines.

Monthly subscriptions meant home delivery of the day’s news, and newspapers were everywhere. 

Before Craigslist and Google Ads, there was money to be made in helping businesses advertise their wares, employers to advertise job openings, and for individuals to sell items and offer apartments for rent in the classifieds. That strong revenue stream supported large staffs and solid coverage of local events at daily and weekly newspapers.

Some of that content – that history – is slowly coming online, but most of it remains tucked away on microfilm and microfiche in local libraries across America.

And sometimes, local pride resulted in details about the exploits and accomplishments of area athletes to appear in smaller town publications that cannot be found elsewhere.

Niles Kruger, a sportswriter at the Monroe Evening News, followed up on a request by Johnson to check microfilm from newspapers in the area for any detail that might exist. Fortunately, the coverage in the Evening News appears to help clear up much of the story.

The article also illustrates an issue often injected upon microfilm by small agate-style typeface. Characters can often bleed or blur and appear to be other letters. A lower case ‘s’ can look like an ‘a’ or an ‘e’; a lower case ‘i’ can look like lower case ‘l.’ Unexpectedly, this, too, was illustrated here.

And sometimes, long lists are subject to other errors.


‘Baidy’ not ‘Baldy, ‘John’, not ‘Joe’

“ANN ARBOR - John W. Baidy added his name to a long succession of great high school pole vaulters representing Monroe’s Trojans here Saturday,” stated the Evening News, “when he cleared the bar at 12 feet 9 ½ inches to tie with Mickey Turcheck of Taylor Center for first place in the state Class A track and field finals on Ferry Field …”

“Baidy also cleared the bar at 6 feet 1 inch in the high (jump) to gain a two-way tie for third place with Pontiac Central’s Bill Lee. Baidy thus accounted for a total of 9 points to tie the Trojans with Lansing Sexton and Ypsilanti Central for 8th place in the final standings.”

While there is no mention of the flip for the metal, the article backs up Turcheck’s recall of the day.

Recognizing that despite their best efforts, Moyes and Hollobaugh know that errors can appear in the publication. In their “Notes to the reader” section, they ask readers to please make contact if any mistakes are spotted.

“Thanks to today's modern technology Jeff Hollobaugh will be able to make the appropriate corrections in our book” noted Moyes from Florida via email, noting the marvels of the times we live in. “Better yet for Jeff & I,” added Moyes, displaying his comedic style, “with the amended corrections maybe Mickey Turcheck will purchase our newly revised book.”

Search for Baidy

“They wanted to flip a coin,” said Baidy recently, surprised in the sudden interest in a day from so many years ago and chuckling at the memory. “He got the call and got the medal. I really don’t remember if they told me if I was supposed to get a medal (in the mail). Right after that I had to go to the high jump or something.”

Baidy – who also tied for the Class A Finals high jump championship in 1959 – had received a call earlier on this day from his long-ago opponent from Taylor Center.

“I would certainly like to meet him again,” said Turcheck. His former high school sweetheart and bride had used her smartphone to seek out Baidy’s contact information, and soon after, the two old athletes were reminiscing about the day. Turcheck pitched the idea of getting together for lunch or dinner sometime soon.

“That’s what he wants to do, and it’s all right with me,” Baidy said, noting plans after things settle down. “We’re lucky to still be alive.”

Ron Pesch has taken an active role in researching the history of MHSAA events since 1985 and began writing for MHSAA Finals programs in 1986, adding additional features and "flashbacks" in 1992. He inherited the title of MHSAA historian from the late Dick Kishpaugh following the 1993-94 school year, and resides in Muskegon. Contact him at [email protected]:void(0);t with ideas for historical articles.

PHOTOS: (Top) The 1960 Finals championship medal, front and back, awarded to Baidy. (2) The Fleet Feet of Spring has been revised based on the latest re-discovery of a co-championship. (3) Mickey Turchek went on to compete at Western Michigan. (4) The Monroe Evening News announced John Baidy’s championship pole vault as part of its coverage of the 1960 Class A Track & Field Finals. (Turchek photo courtesy of the Turcheck famly; newspaper clipping courtesy of the Monroe Evening News.)