Culture Change Creates More Organized, Motivated & Successful Manchester
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
September 27, 2022
Manchester’s football team is going through a re-birth.
One of the team’s top players – senior Jaxon McGuigan – calls it a change in culture.
“This summer, when we were having workouts or lifting, we had 30 guys show up every time,” said McGuigan, the team’s leading receiver. “When I was younger, there were times we would have only 10 guys. If we had 10 guys there now, we knew something would be wrong.”
Manchester is one of the oldest prep football programs in the state. It also has been one of the most successful. From 2003-16, the Flying Dutchmen made the playoffs 13 of 14 seasons, including a streak of nine straight. Then, for a variety of reasons, the bottom fell out.
Manchester went from 9-2 and a Cascades Conference championship in 2015 to back-to-back 4-5 seasons in 2017 and 2018, a 2-5 record in 2020 and 3-6 last season.
Head coach Ben Pack was brought in to make changes to the program. He’s delivered. Now in his third season, the Dutchmen have a signature win over three-time reigning league champion Addison and stand 4-1 midway through the season. They are firmly in the playoff hunt and are just a game behind league leader Napoleon, the only team to beat them this season. Even that was a close game until the end.
“Our numbers were so low when I got here,” Pack said. “We struggled. That first year, the COVID year, we could barely put together a scout team.
“When I got here, we had four guys returning from the previous year and six juniors who were on JV as sophomores,” Pack said. “Ten guys in the program. I had to do a lot of recruiting in the hallways. We had to get kids out for football.”
Pack is a veteran coach. He is a Jackson native who started his coaching career at Jackson High School while in college. He became the head coach at Parma Western in 1983 and headed home to Jackson after that. The Vikings put together a string of good teams, including the 1999 group that was Jackson’s first playoff qualifier.
Pack left Jackson in 2002 to become an administrator, but remained in football when he joined the Albion College staff. He returned to the high school ranks a couple of seasons ago at Parma Western as a volunteer assistant. Two seasons later he was named head coach at Manchester.
Pack has not only been recruiting in the Manchester hallways, but he’s also been busy implementing a strength program.
“We had no organized lifting program,” he said. “We had guys who would come in to lift, but nothing organized. Now the kids come in and they are working, they are getting stronger and more mature. Those kids who were freshmen and sophomores when I got here are stronger and more mature. With strength and maturity comes confidence.”
One of his players that first year was a freshman quarterback, Kannon Duffing, who made one start.
“He competed,” Pack said. “He was definitely a half-pint, but he played, and he did a nice job. He completed passes. He wasn’t ready to win, yet, but he grew from it and learned from the experience.”
Duffing completed 60 percent of his passes last year for 1,273 yards and nine touchdowns. This season, he’s been even better. Through five games, Duffing has completed 57 of 82 passes, a healthy 69.5 percent, for 821 yards and nine touchdowns. His interceptions have dropped from eight last year to just two this fall.
“We don’t throw deep a lot,” Pack said. “But what we do throw, he’s very accurate. He gets the job done. He’s the unsung hero for us. He’s the catalyst. He is the key to the whole thing.”
Wide receiver Andrew Campbell, running back Wyatt Carson and McGuigan are benefactors of Duffing’s accuracy.
“He is so good,” McGuigan said. “I know he’s going to put the ball right there. We have other good receivers, too, and he does a great job at getting us the ball. Our game plan is not to just get the ball to me.”
McGuigan is a former quarterback himself. He shifted to receiver early on in his career at Manchester and likes the move. He’s now a 6-foot-2, 170-pound college prospect. He’s a three-sport athlete with a 4.0 GPA.
Pack said McGuigan has great technique in the way he runs routes.
“Every successful team has a player or two that the other kids count on,” Pack said. “Jaxon has accepted that responsibility and is a role model for handling the pressure.”
Through five games, McGuigan has caught 37 passes for 554 yards and seven touchdowns. The biggest came with time running out against Addison and helped the Flying Dutchmen overcome a two-score deficit to defeat the Panthers. The Flying Dutchmen defense came up big in that game, too, when they put together a goal-line stand during the final moments to keep Addison out of the end zone.
“To be honest, that’s the type of game the last couple of years that we wouldn’t win,” McGuigan said. “To beat them just shows that everyone has buy-in now. It just shows how we’ve changed the culture here.”
Two weeks ago, Manchester bounced back from the Napoleon loss to win against East Jackson. McGuigan had one of his biggest games with eight catches for 106 yards and two touchdowns.
East Jackson coach Joe Niehaus said McGuigan is one of the most complete receivers he’s coached against.
“He runs great routes and catches virtually everything thrown to him,” Niehaus said. “On top of that, he is a threat to go the distance after the catch every single time.”
Manchester has conference games remaining against Michigan Center, Hanover-Horton, and Grass Lake. The Dutchmen are a top-10 team in Division 7 playoff points and are sitting nicely as they attempt to get back into the postseason.
“Ever since Coach Pack came here, it’s been drilled into us to trust the process,” McGuigan said. “We’re still far from where we could be as a team.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a sports and news reporter and city editor over 25 years, writing for the Daily Chief-Union in Upper Sandusky, Ohio from 1992-1995, the Monroe Evening News from 1995-2012 and the Adrian Daily Telegram since 2013. He's also written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTO Manchester receiver Jaxon McGuigan holds on to the ball while Addison defenders take him out of bounds. (Photo by Mark Ball, courtesy of the Manchester football program.)
Another 1st-Time Opportunity Awaits as Hart Continues Memorable Playoff Run
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
November 1, 2023
HART – When Hart High School constructed a new trophy case last year, football coach Joe Tanis was given the job of organizing it.
Talk about adding insult to injury.
Tanis found a home for all 67 of the trophies in the new display case – including District, Regional and state championship trophies from every sport under the sun, from cross country to wrestling to bowling. Every sport, that is, except for football.
“We have a chance to do something very special this Friday night,” Tanis, in his third year as Hart’s head coach, told his huddled team at the end of Monday’s practice. “We have a chance to add the first football trophy to that trophy case.”
Hart (9-1), which qualified for the football playoffs for the first time in school history and became the final Muskegon-area school to earn a playoff berth, then picked up its first playoff win Friday, 44-22, over Kent City in a Division 6 District Semifinal in front of 2,000 fans at Hart.
“Winning a playoff game felt amazing,” said senior quarterback and safety Connor Edwards. “It was so cool to look out at the crowd and see it packed all the way to the concession stand. I’ve never seen that before.”
The Pirates will now play for a coveted District championship trophy this Friday night at Reed City.
“I grew up watching Hart football and never have we ever had a good football team,” said senior cornerback and running back Austin Martinez. “The coolest part is that our grade, since we were little kids playing Bucs football, said we were going to turn it around and now we’re doing it.
“Our team is just a bunch of aggressive guys that don’t back down from anyone.”
Hart’s football woes go back decades, and many in the town of 2,126 located about 30 miles north of Muskegon were starting to wonder if their Pirates would ever win on the gridiron. In fact, one must understand the depths of despair the Hart football program has endured to appreciate the current level of euphoria.
Before Tanis’s arrived in 2021, the Pirates had won a total of 12 football games over the previous 10 years, with their last winning season coming with a 5-4 mark in 1997.
Tanis’ tenure started off in typical Hart fashion at 2-5, but his team won its final two games in 2021, leading into a 6-3 season last fall and 9-1 this year.
“We have celebrated on 17 of our last 21 Friday nights,” Tanis said.
Hart’s football turnaround is the final piece of the puzzle to complete the school’s amazing sports renaissance.
Hart won five consecutive Finals titles in girls cross country from 2017 to 2021, the boys cross country team won the school’s first boys team championship last fall, girls track has captured back-to-back Finals titles, competitive cheer took fourth in Division 4 last spring, girls basketball made it to the 2023 Division 3 Semifinals and boys basketball finished 20-0 last regular season – winning the school’s first boys basketball conference title in 60 years.
Football started its turnaround with the arrival of Tanis and defensive coordinator Jacob Tumele in 2021 – a coaching duo which has worked tirelessly recruiting, getting kids in the weight room and, as Tanis readily admits, getting a big boost with the realignment of the West Michigan Conference.
The WMC broke into two divisions in 2021, with a larger-school Lakes division featuring powers Oakridge, Whitehall and Montague, and Hart settling into a much more favorable schedule in the smaller-school Rivers division. The Pirates took second in the Rivers this fall, with their only loss coming at the hands of unbeaten North Muskegon.
Tanis also preached an “all-in” mentality, starting with himself.
Tanis, a Grandville native whose last head coaching job before Hart stretched seven years at Muskegon Orchard View, bought a house on Pirate’s Way leading into the town’s academic campus.
“One of the conditions of this job was that I had to move into town,” explained the 41-year-old Tanis. “Well, to get to my driveway, you first have to pull into the school driveway, so I can’t get any closer. And we absolutely love it.”
All five members of the Tanis family could easily walk to school each day. Joe is the dean of students at the high school, wife Jilanna works in the district’s central business office located in the early elementary building, his two youngest kids are in the elementary school and his oldest child is at the middle school.
“There is a Tanis in all four of the buildings,” Tanis said with a smile.
On the field, Tanis dug back into football’s past to find Hart’s new offense – the single wing, which features a direct center snap to one of the three backs, a quarterback who blocks more than he throws and an unbalanced line to create mismatches at the point of attack.
Hart, which starts seven seniors on both sides of the ball, is averaging 49 points per game during its current five-game winning streak.
Senior Joseluis Andaverde (known to all his teammates as “Beast Mode”) is the most dangerous offensive weapon with 185 carries for 1,537 yards and 19 TDs. His primary blocker is Edwards, the quarterback, who has rushed for 756 yards and 12 touchdowns while completing 11-of-35 passes for 267 yards, five TDs and one interception.
Five of the Pirates’ six starters on the offensive line are seniors, with the exception of standout sophomore Hollis Rockwell at center – which is a critically important position in the single-wing offense.
Tanis feels the unique offense really benefits his team in the playoffs, when teams have only one week to prepare for it.
That being said, Tanis knows his undersized and inexperienced playoff team will be the underdog this week at Reed City, a perennial playoff team which came within one point of advancing to Ford Field last season, losing 13-12 to Negaunee in a Division 6 Semifinal.
“The major appeal of taking this job was having the opportunity to do things that have never been done here before,” said Tanis. “We have done some of those things, and hopefully there are more to come.
“You have to change the way the kids think, and we’ve done that. Now these kids think of themselves as winners.”
Tom Kendra worked 23 years at The Muskegon Chronicle, including five as assistant sports editor and the final six as sports editor through 2011. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Muskegon, Oceana, Mason, Lake, Oceola, Mecosta and Newaygo counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Senior tailback Joseluis Andaverde runs the ball in a game against White Cloud on Aug. 31. (Middle) Hart coach Joe Tanis, in his third year, has led the Pirates to a 9-1 record thus far and the school's first-ever playoff victory on Oct. 27 against Kent City. (Below) Hart's senior football players and their coaches take a final walk off the field after defeating Ravenna, 44-0, on Oct. 20 in the final regular-season home game. (Photos by Harriet Kidder.)