Chesaning Turnaround Ahead of Schedule with League Title, Playoff Return
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
October 25, 2023
Brayden Florian knew this was coming eventually.
The Chesaning junior running back and middle linebacker was sure the coaching staff and players were in place for a program turnaround.
But this fast?
“No,” Florian said matter-of-factly. “I definitely saw the progress, and we had gotten better and better since my freshman year. We just kept getting better. I didn’t expect it to happen this fast.”
Chesaning is 8-1 in its second year under head coach Matthew Walter, won the Mid-Michigan Activities Conference for the first time, and – not counting the 2020 COVID season when every team was added to the playoffs – qualified for the postseason for the first time since 2007, playing host to Central Montcalm on Friday.
It’s the best regular season for the program since 2001, the year Chesaning won its second MHSAA Finals title in four years.
You can forgive Florian for not expecting this to happen this quickly. Even his coach had a more long-term plan in place.
“When I took over, my plan was more to build the program than just wins and losses,” Walter said. “Numbers were dwindling. I felt like the community was not happy. I know that winning solves a lot of problems, but when I came in I wanted to make sure I built a program from the bottom up. We brought back (youth) tackle football. We have (youth) flag in the fall and spring. That’s kind of where you have to start. Once you do that, you have people buy in up higher and higher into middle school, then high school. I didn’t expect it to be this quick. I kind of had like a five or six-year plan, just trying to generate some excitement.”
It didn’t take long, however, to realize that maybe his timeline wasn’t accelerated enough.
In Year 1, Chesaning went 5-4, its first winning record since 2014. And while some of the losses were lopsided, Walter said people both in and out of the program noticed that things were looking up.
So, heading into this season, there was complete buy-in all around. And while Walter had been laying a foundation for future success, his 5-6 year plan was becoming a 2-year one.
“We have a great group of kids right now,” he said. “They work really hard, and they bought in right away.”
Chesaning players were so bought in, that not even a Week 1 loss to Bath could deter them. In fact, when Walter was cleaning up in the locker room following the game, he found that his team had left him – and themselves – a note on the whiteboard.
“It said, ‘The 1998 team started 0-1,’” Walter said. “I was like, ‘Wow, they know that?’”
The 1998 team won Chesaning’s first Finals title, rattling off 12 straight wins after dropping its opener against then arch-rival Millington.
Like this year’s version of Chesaning, the 1998 team had much of its production come from a stellar junior class. Walter said he’s also been told of the extreme competitiveness of that team, something he sees while watching his current players not only on the field, but when they’re in practice, or even coaching youth flag football against one another.
While Walter wants his team to create its own identity, the comparisons certainly aren’t a bad thing.
“We talk about it – about our history and how much history we’ve made and our team has made,” senior receiver and defensive end Keighan Stoddard said. “It’s a really big inspiration, honestly.”
Wherever the inspiration came from, it worked. After the loss against Bath, Chesaning rattled off eight straight wins with an average margin of victory of 24.8 points per game.
Chesaning knocked off rivals New Lothrop and Montrose – both on the road – for the first time since 2005.
Those wins came behind a dynamic run game, led by Florian. He finished the regular season with 1,689 yards and 17 touchdowns on the ground. He did so behind linemen Seth Schlicht, Braden Burtch, Ben Fowler, Braydn Wendling, and John Talbot. Only Fowler is a senior.
Junior quarterback Max Volk threw just 100 passes on the year, but he accumulated 801 yards and 14 TDs. Florian caught five of those touchdowns, as did 6-foot-6 senior wideout Mason Struck. Stoddard, an all-state selection at receiver a year ago, is also an option and has a pair of touchdown grabs. But his focus has been shifted more toward defensive end, a new position in which he’s flourished with 58 tackles, 12 for loss, and six sacks.
“Anything to help my teammates,” he said. “Anything to help the team out, I’ll do anything. As long as we get that win, it doesn’t matter.”
With 2023 giving off feelings of 1998 and 2001, the Friday night atmosphere from those days has also come back to Chesaning.
It’s been evident on game nights, and even during the playoff selection show, when a team trip to the Riverfront Bar and Grill turned into a community event.
“I told the families that we were going to (be there) at 5, and at 6 they were more than welcome to come down and join us,” Walter said. “By 5:30, that place was packed. There were no spots; it was standing room only.”
So when Chesaning hosts a playoff game Friday night for the first time since 2001, the anticipation is an atmosphere not seen since.
“It’s the first playoff game in a long time, and one we actually earned,” Florian said. “I think it’s going to be a big-time atmosphere.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Chesaning’s Mason Struck (27) goes high to get his hands on the ball in the end zone during his team’s win over Durand. (Middle) Ben Fowler (63) prepares to lead his team onto the field. (Below) Brayden Florian (11) gets to the edge against Ovid-Elsie. (Photos courtesy of the Chesaning football program.)
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.)