Back from Brink, Concord Surges On

By Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half

September 9, 2016

By Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half
 

CONCORD – Two years ago this week, Concord head football coach Max Clark and the school district faced a difficult decision.

Clark pushed for the school to forfeit varsity games until it had enough healthy players to fill a team. Concord had started the season with 16 players, but injuries had the Yellow Jackets down to nine by Week 3, and pulling up kids from the junior varsity wasn't an option for Clark.

“We had the same argument almost every year,” Clark said. “Do we shut down a couple of varsity games? We even talked about trying to play some 8-man varsity games so we could keep a JV intact.

“In 2014, I got backing from the superintendent and my administration, and I said we just have to do this. If we bring up JV kids, we're just doing the same old stuff. They are going to get hurt, they are going to get discouraged, and we're going to lose kids.

“We took a beating and took our lumps, but we wanted to make sure to keep that JV team intact, which is this year's seniors. They needed to develop that mentality on how to win and be a team, and if we would have just stripped them, we would have been right back where we had been.”

Concord forfeited two games before it was able to field a team for Week 5, and it finished the season 1-8 for the second year in a row and third time in four years.

Since then, it has been a rags-to-riches story. That junior varsity team is now the senior class on the varsity – a varsity that went 7-2 during the regular season last year, lost in a MHSAA Division 7 Pre-District game, and has started the season 2-0 this year.

Already, Concord is gaining attention. The Jackson Citizen Patriot ranked Concord No. 1 in its area “Power Poll,” ahead of No. 2 Grass Lake, No. 3 Jackson Lumen Christi and No. 4 Jackson.

It is uncharted territory for Concord, which has had just two winning seasons since 2001.

“It's a whole new challenge,” Clark said. “Everyone is loving up this No. 1 power-ranking thing, which I don't think I've ever seen before at Concord, but it's just press.

“I tell the team, 'If you are focused on the little things, bad things happen when they're big.' One of their biggest strengths is their confidence, and as long as they continue to work hard, they can relish in that No. 1 and enjoy it. They've never had it here before, and the community is treating them in a phenomenal way. We had an amazing crowd last week at Homer.”

Turning it around

Clark is one of those “glass half-full” kind of guys, although, in reality, he might just feel the glass is always filled to the brim. He grew up in Concord and played on the 2001 team that advanced to the Division 7 Semifinals before losing to Detroit St. Martin dePorres.

To him, coaching is more than a job. It is who he is in a lot of ways.

“I'm 32 years old, and for 17 of my 32 years, I've been a part of this program, whether as a player or a coach or in some capacity,” he said. “A big part of who I am as a person is from what I learned from Coach (Clint) Alexander and the guys that taught us what we know back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“I just try to carry that on and bring a lot of that tradition back. I know how important it was to me and helping me become a teacher and a coach and be a good father and a good husband. That's the mentality we're trying to bring to these buys here so they can carry on that legacy.”

Clark is in his fourth season as the head coach, and for the first two of those years, he was not a teacher at the school. It certainly did not help him recruit the hallways for players, and even though he was a local guy, that identity might not have been strong with the younger players.

He landed a teaching job last year. He teaches history and social studies, and it has strengthened his connection with the student body. He also preached a positive attitude, not only to his players, but to the community.

“Maybe it's my personality or my mentality, but I try really hard to be positive all the time,” he said. “I remember my first year. It didn't matter if I was at the hardware store downtown or wherever, if somebody asked me about our numbers, I always told them, 'We're going to have the biggest team we've ever had.'

“Maybe that was the greatest lie I ever told, but the point was that it was about marketing and creating a positive aura around our program, rather than in the past, how there had always been that negativity surrounding the program. We wanted to change that mentality. It's changing, but it's still in the beginning.”

Clark said the first big step was the season finale in 2014 – the season during which the two games were forfeited. Concord blasted Bellevue 62-20 to avoid a winless season. Those tied the most points Concord had scored in a game dating back to 1950 and were more than the combined point total from 2005 and 2006.

“Bellevue had beat us two years before, and I think that made our players believe in our new offense,” Clark said. “That one win really carried us into the offseason.”

Last year, Concord defeated Union City in Week 2 to end a 27-game losing streak against the Chargers. It was the springboard for the turnaround season.

“That was a big deal for the community and the kids, and I think that really tripped the trigger and made them believe,” Clark said.

Senior running back Tony Brooks, Jr., said the victory was a huge confidence boost.

“It made everyone know that we could win,” he said.

History of futility

Concord football has a resume filled with futility. Since 1950, it has a record of 216-363-13.

It has never won a Big Eight Conference title, and the league has been in existence since 1973.

It has an all-time losing record against every member of the Big Eight, and most of those records aren't even close.

It went three consecutive seasons without a win twice and endured losing streaks of 35 and 30 games.

Yet, the school has enjoyed much athletic success in sports like basketball, golf, volleyball and track & field. The boys basketball team won 10 consecutive District titles under coach Bob Urschalitz during the 1980s. But at least one person thinks that might have hindered the football program.

The last time Concord won a conference championship in football was 1964 as a member of the Cascades Conference. Kilbourn Snow was a member of that team, and he has stayed in the community and followed all the teams throughout the years.

“He told his basketball players that if they wanted to play basketball, they couldn't play football,” Snow said. “I remember coming to games back then and all of the basketball players were out for golf, and he was the golf coach, too. We had a golf team that could have probably been a good football team, and they were all sitting on the sidelines. From there, it all went downhill.”
Snow has a lot of praise for Clark and said Clark reminds him of his old coach from the 1960s, Van Green.

“He has the same rapport with his players and the same kind of determination,” Snow said. “He is very focused on the legacy of Concord football. They are getting the young kids involved, and on the night the little kids are playing, they run through the varsity and JV players, and the players all stop and clap for them.

“Max has re-instilled that football culture back in the school.”

Another win to build upon

Brooks, who rushed for 129 yards, gained 71 as a receiver and scored three touchdowns last week in an exciting overtime victory against rival Homer, was on the junior varsity two years ago when the varsity had to forfeit two games.

“We would go against them in practice, and we would keep up with them,” he said. “It was frustrating because they only had 13 or 14 guys, and if one person gets hurt, it's going to hurt you.”

The Homer game, much like the Union City game last year, might be a springboard to success, and it gave the Yellow Jackets possession of the Little Brown Jug – the prize in the rivalry.

“It was phenomenal, it felt really good and I was pretty emotional afterwards, I'm not going to lie,” Clark said. “We needed to get over that hump, so I think this momentum will carry us a little bit. That's the goal, anyway.

“We don't want to get lackadaisical at practice because we won. Great teams practice harder after they win.”

This year's team faced a big challenge from the start. Last year's quarterback, Chase Hinkle, was a senior and was named the Most Valuable Player of the Big Eight Conference. Jacob Randall is the new starter, and Austin Hoxie is the backup.

“Chase was a great quarterback, and he did great things for us,” Clark said. “He worked hard in the offseason, so we had designed a lot of stuff that we did around him and his abilities, and we've done the same thing with our new guys.

“Jacob is a good runner and has a lot of ability. He has an amazing arm, and he throws a 90 mph fastball in baseball. But we have depth there. In our first game, Jacob had an asthma attack and had to go out, and Austin went in and goes 5-for-9 and throws a touchdown pass.”

Concord runs a spread-power no-huddle offense with Clark calling all the plays from the sidelines.

“I've never seen anyone use my system; I just holler out plays,” he said. “We have the ability to change the numbers and letter that we use to call the same stuff. It works for us.

“We've been pretty run-heavy the first two weeks. We have phenomenal running backs. We have great receivers, and we can pass when we need to, but I guess if we don't need to pass, we won't. There is that old-school mentality that three things can happen when you pass, and two of them are bad. So I like to keep it on the ground.”

Concord connection

The players say a brotherhood has developed on the team. That often is seen on winning teams, and Concord does not appear to be an exception to the rule.

“This has been great because the team has such a strong connection,” senior Bradley Hawkins said.

One of the players who can attest to the connection is senior strong safety Montez Brewer, who came to Concord two years ago when Albion closed its high school. All the Albion students were spilled into nearby schools such as Concord, Marshall, Homer, Springport and Parma Western.

“It wasn't a fast connection when I came over, but sports helped a lot,” Brewer said. “Sports helps everyone get closer.

“It's hard that Albion doesn't have a school, but this is a positive thing because we can still do what we love to do – play football. At Albion, there was a point in time when we couldn't even play football because everyone was moving, but now we can play, and we still stay in contact.”

That Concord connection is one of the backbones of the football program.

“I think the biggest mentality is that it's an attitude, and me bringing it every day and keeping the intensity up,” Clark said. “You can't ever have days when you just stop when it's hot. You have to go hard every single day, but at the same time it's making sure the kids love being here.

“You're taking care of them. It's not the old school anymore where the kids show up and work hard because they're afraid. They show up and work hard because they love their coaches and we love them. Love is a lot more powerful, and that's what I learned as a player. We loved each other like brothers as a team, we loved our coaches and they loved us, and then you're willing to work a lot harder.”

Clark knows the job isn't done, but he is changing the football culture. He said last year he learned a hard lesson himself in the playoffs – a game Concord lost at Dansville 28-6.

“I learned something about myself,” he said. “I didn't do a good enough job of re-evaluating our goals after we made the playoffs because all year we talked about just making the playoffs. I think overall there was a little bit of an exhale and excitement that we made it. It was almost like we lost our hunger, and as a coach I learned a lot from that situation. I had never been in that situation as a coach.

“Now, I preach that it's our expectation. Never again will Concord football be happy just to make the playoffs. Our goals this year were one, to win our rivalry games, and we got that do that in Week 1 and Week 2. Now, we have to make the playoffs and win the first Big Eight Conference championship for Concord.

“We want to be the best team to ever play here.”

While that might be a lofty goal, there is another that Clark plans to accomplish and will have more control in doing so.

“If you look at the history of the football program, we've had good coaches come and go,” he said. “Go all the way back to the 70s and Coach (Glen) Stevenson, and they won. In the 60s, they won a lot. In the 80s, they had a couple of years when they won games, and then Coach Alexander came in the 1990s and early 2000s and left.

“I am not going to sit here and say that I'm at the level that they were at – someday, hopefully, I can be compared to those guys – but there a difference between me and those other guys: I'm not going anywhere. My kids go here, I live a block from the school. I love it here. There's nowhere for me to go.”

Chip Mundy served as sports editor at the Brooklyn Exponent and Albion Recorder from 1980-86, and then as a reporter and later copy editor at the Jackson Citizen-Patriot from 1986-2011. He also co-authored Michigan Sports Trivia. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.

PHOTOS: (Top) Tony Brooks, Jr., runs for some of his 166 yards against Homer during Concord's victory last week. (Middle top) Nick Stump jumps to block off a potential pass. (Middle below) Concord players celebrate earning the Big Brown Jug awarded annually to the winner of the Concord/Homer game. (Below) Brooks works to break free; his grandfather Gary also was a standout for the school. (Photos by Kilbourn Snow.) 

Harper Woods Stops Record-Setting South Christian on Final Play to Clinch 1st Title

By Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com

November 25, 2023

DETROIT – Carson Vis had been getting away all afternoon. 

The Grand Rapids South Christian quarterback had smashed Finals records for passing yards and total offense in Saturday’s Division 4 Final against Harper Woods, mostly by evading pressure and finding his senior receiver Jake Vermaas for big plays.

So, when the Sailors needed just three yards to tie the game with three seconds to play, Harper Woods made sure they knew where Vermaas was, and that Vis didn’t get away one more time.

Defensive end Javonte Lee-Forbes put immediate pressure on Vis, draping himself on his legs and forcing the 6-foot-4 junior to attempt to fit in a pass – not to Vermaas. Keyontae Wilson broke it up, preserving a 33-27 victory for the Pioneers and giving them the first Finals title in program history.

“We were keying on two things, No. 2 (Vermaas) and No. 5 (Vis),” Harper Woods coach Rod Oden said. “First we needed to identify where (Vermaas) was, and two, we needed to cup the pocket and keep (Vis) inside, and he almost still got outside. Once we were able to contain the quarterback, we knew he had to try to just make a play, and we made a play. We made one more play than they did.”

In a game that featured 1,030 yards of total offense (533 from South Christian, 497 from Harper Woods), the second-most in Finals history, it’s not exactly fitting that the defense won the deciding play.

But it was something Oden knew his team would need, eventually.

“I’m glad it came down to the end,” he said. “Our defense, we knew it would come down to them for us to win the championship. The offense has kind of been consistent all year, and (the defense) had an opportunity to go out there and make a play, and they made it.”

South Christian's Carson Vis (5) unloads a pass as the Pioneers' Johnny Nelson (21) and Javonta Lee-Forbes (28) apply pressure.Both offenses spent most of the game making plays, led by Vis’ record-breaking performance.

He threw for 441 yards on 30 of 44 passing with two touchdowns and one interception. His passing yards broke the record previously set by Armani Posey of Detroit Martin Luther King in 2015 (383). His 30 completions were also a record, breaking the previous mark of 26 set by Cooper Rush of Lansing Catholic (2011) and AJ Westendorp of Holland Christian (2008).

Adding in his 72 rushing yards, Vis finished with 513 yards of total offense, well ahead of Westendorp’s 426, which was the previous record. And all of that – plus a little more – came in the final three quarters, as he had negative-6 total yards through the first 12 minutes.

“I would say it was first-quarter nerves,” Vis said. “I wasn’t being myself out there. Not relaxed and not getting into it. We started getting some easy completions, we were trying to take shots early on. I started getting into a rhythm and started getting it to my guys who were getting open. Definitely (I can appreciate how well I played), but I feel for my guys, my seniors. Some of them, this is our last time playing. So I’m just going to try my best to love on them and be with them.”

Harper Woods didn’t set any records, but had multiple big-time offensive performances, as well, despite losing 1,000-yard rusher Colby Bailey on the second play of the game.

Donald Adams took on the rushing load for the Pioneers (11-3) and starred, rushing for 174 yards on 17 carries. Quarterback Nate Rocheleau had 210 yards and two TDs on 10-of-17 passing. Dakota Guerrant had four catches for 84 yards and a score, while Ramonty Houze had a single catch that went 90 yards for a TD.

“On the one to Ramonty, I had been trying to get it all game,” Rocheleau said. “It was man-to-man press with no high safety, and Ramonty is the fastest guy on the field, so we wanted to take that shot and it worked. The one to Dakota, we worked on that all week in practice where we’re in trips and we stack it, he popped wide open.”

The TD to Houze had the feeling of a back-breaker, as it put Harper Woods up 27-7 early in the third quarter. More so than the lead, it came after South Christian had made its way deep into Harper Woods territory with a chance to make it a one-score game. But Corey Bailey forced and recovered a fumble to end the threat.

Dwight Houston (3) gets ready to make his move as South Christian's Austin Tiesma (7) gets into position to make the stop.It was the second time in as many South Christian possessions that a chance to pull within a single score had ended in a turnover. On the final play of the first half, Wilson intercepted a Vis pass in the end zone after the Sailors had made their way to the Harper Woods 9.

But none of it fazed the Sailors (10-4), who were seeking their second-straight Finals title.

Following Houze’s TD, South Christian finally did pull to within one score at 27-20, getting TD runs from Charlie Schreur (1 yard) and Vis (22 yards).

Harper Woods stretched it back to a 13-point lead with a 10-play, 85-yard drive, capped off by a 1-yard TD run by Stephone Buford.

But when Noah Funk scored on a 12-yard pass from Vis less than two minutes later, South Christian had again pulled to within a score, and a defensive stop set up the final drive, and the late-game drama.

“The message at halftime was, ‘We’ve been resilient, and nothing you ever do in life, when you’re chasing success, is going to be easy. There’s going to be adversity,’” South Christian coach Danny Brown said. “And that was the message. These are a bunch of great guys that do things the right way. If there was ever a time to come and climb that mountain of a little adversity, the second half was that time. They fought like crazy, and I’m proud of them to keep swinging, and we almost had it.”

Harper Woods jumped out a 14-0 lead with first-quarter TD runs by Buford and Dwight Houston. A 39-yard TD pass from Vis to Vermaas put the Sailors on the board in the second quarter, but Guerrant’s 27-yard TD catch had the Pioneers up 20-7 at the half.

Houston finished with 62 yards rushing for the Pioneers, while Buford had 46 to go along with two TDs.

Austin Tiesma had eight catches for 120 yards for South Christian, while Funk had five for 61.

Click for the full box score

PHOTOS (Top) Harper Woods raises its first football championship trophy after winning the Division 4 Final on Saturday. (Middle) South Christian's Carson Vis (5) unloads a pass as the Pioneers' Johnny Nelson (21) and Javonta Lee-Forbes (28) apply pressure. (Below) Dwight Houston (3) gets ready to make his move as South Christian's Austin Tiesma (7) gets into position to make the stop. (Photos by Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)