Detroit Embarks on Historical Weekend
By
Tom Markowski
Special for Second Half
November 27, 2015
DETROIT – Basketball used to be king in Detroit. Detroit Public School League teams like Detroit Cooley, Detroit Pershing, Detroit Southwestern and others won MHSAA championships and sent numerous players on to college to play at major universities like Michigan, Michigan State and others.
Recently the quality of basketball has taken a step back, and football has taken center stage.
This past March, Detroit Western International was the first PSL team to win the Class A boys basketball title since Pershing in 2009 and just the second since Detroit Central won the Class A title in 1998. This is a far cry from what is considered one of the glory eras in PSL history. From 1987-94, teams from the PSL won eight consecutive Class A titles.
(It should be noted that Detroit Renaissance did win Class B titles in 2004 and 2006, and Detroit Crockett also won the Class B title in 2001.)
In 2007 Detroit King was the first PSL team to win a football state title. For those outside of the city, it might not have meant that much other than a simple statistic. But for the PSL coaches who longed for respect statewide, King’s victory over Midland in the Division 2 Final was vindication.
When Detroit Cass Tech won back-to-back Division 1 titles (2011, 2012) a few years later, football fans across the state began to realize that what King accomplished in 2007 was not a fluke. Teams from Detroit were relevant statewide.
This weekend another first will take place. King will play for the Division 2 title (against Lowell) on Friday and Cass Tech will play for the Division 1 title (against Romeo) on Saturday. It’s the first time two PSL teams will play for MHSAA championships in the same season. Both games kick off at 1 p.m. at Ford Field.
The milestone is not lost on the coaches, Dale Harvel of King and Thomas Wilcher of Cass Tech.
Wilcher pointed to King and then-coach James Reynolds for taking the lead. King was the first PSL team to reach an MHSAA Final (1989 and 1990), and by doing so created instant credibility.
“King established what we could accomplish,” Wilcher said. “By winning the first state title, by winning both the PSL and then the state the same year.
“I don’t prepare my kids the same way. From day one I’m preparing for a state championship, Thanksgiving Day weekend, not for nine weeks. You have to condition a different way. You have to have a long-haul focus. The kids you started with might not be the ones you finish with. King High set that bar.”
Step aside for moment and realize what Wilcher said. Cass Tech and King is the most intense rivalry in the city. Emotions run high, and sometimes they boil over. But here is the coach from one team praising the other. In addition to the rivalry, there is mutual respect.
“It’s great,” Wilcher said of the two city powers playing for a title. “It’s great for the city.”
Regardless of what takes place Friday, Harvel said he, his staff and players will be at Ford Field in support of Cass Tech.
And Harvel said it’s not just about King and Cass Tech. What will take place this weekend will affect all PSL schools: their players, coaches, student body and alumni.
“It’s a factor with our school system,” he said. “It’s a pride factor even if you don’t play for Cass or King. The alumni for all public schools are represented.”
Harvel said even though most point to the 2007 championship season as a turning point, it was the teams that lost in the Class A Final in 1989 and 1990 that started it all. Some forget that back in 1989 there were just four MHSAA Finals champions, not eight, making King’s run all the more noteworthy. The next season the playoffs were expanded from four classifications to eight.
Coincidentally, each team has had two difficult playoff games and two one-sided affairs on their way to Ford Field. King (13-0) trailed Detroit U-D Jesuit, 24-21, in a Pre-District before winning, 35-24, and King led Detroit East English 7-0 after three quarters before pulling away for a 26-12 victory in a Regional Final.
Cass Tech (11-2) blew past its first two opponents by the combined score of 84-20. In the Regional Final it trailed Macomb Dakota 10-0 before coming back for a 16-10 victory. Last week, the Technicians held on to defeat Canton 48-41 on a snow-covered field at Troy Athens. Canton had possession on Cass Tech’s 40 for the last play of the game.
Tom Markowski is a columnist and directs website coverage for the State Champs! Sports Network. He previously covered primarily high school sports for the The Detroit News from 1984-2014, focusing on the Detroit area and contributing to statewide coverage of football and basketball. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTO: Detroit Cass Tech (green helmets) and Detroit Martin Luther King, here in the Detroit PSL Final, give the league two MHSAA finalists for the first time. (Photo courtesy of the Detroit Public School League.)
Sparked by Offense Switch, Summerfield Sets Record-Breaking Scoring Pace
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
October 29, 2024
Dylan Szegedi might only be in his second season as a head varsity football coach, but he knows when to pull the plug on an offensive scheme.
A change from the veer to a version of the gun-T has been the catalyst behind Petersburg-Summerfield’s 8-1 season, the best at the Monroe County school in more than a decade.
“I really love the veer. I’ve seen it work very well,” Szegedi said. “It just didn’t work for us. We always say we were trying to put a round peg through a square hole. It just didn’t jell with our guys, and we were smart enough to realize it.”
The Bulldogs went 5-4 last season but missed the playoffs for the second straight. With several second- and third-year starting seniors back, Szegedi decided to change offenses despite having spent nearly all his years coaching the veer. He and his coaching staff started researching offenses and landed on one that is the mastermind of a coach in Alabama that puts a lot of YouTube videos together and travels around the country talking about his offensive concepts.
“This offense is perfect for our guys,” Szegedi said. “It’s a good mix of running and passing. It’s a good mix of spread but still some downhill-style run concepts. It fits our athletes to a T. It is a spread-T concept, wing-T running concepts with a spread flair to it. It was exactly what we needed.”
Heading into Friday’s home Division 8 playoff game against Manchester – the first hosted by Summerfield since 2015 – the Bulldogs are one point shy of the school record for points scored in a season. Since a 20-14 win over Ottawa Lake Whiteford in Week 5, Summerfield has scored 48, 62, 70 and 58 points in victories. The 70 points against Vanlue, Ohio, was a single-game school record.
“It’s come together seamlessly. The proof is in the pudding. We have done great, and hopefully we will continue to do so,” Szegedi said.
The new offense suits quarterback Trace Secor much better.
“I like this one,” Secor said. “It fits our style of play and the players we have. It complements us.”
Secor has passed for 1,248 yards and 21 touchdowns.
Senior receiver Tyler Dafoe has 743 yards and 12 touchdowns receiving. Bruising tight end Brenden Myshock has six touchdown receptions, and big-play Eli VanHuysen has caught 18 passes for 391 yards and another six touchdowns.
Senior running back Mitchell Gomulinski has had a tremendous season as well. Through nine games, he has rushed for 1,398 yards, averaging more than nine per carry. He has scored 17 touchdowns.
“Mitchell is he is our emotional leader,” Szegedi said. “He keeps everybody going and is the guy the other people look for to set the example. He’s worked very hard. I’m just proud of what he was able to do.”
The Summerfield defense has been rock-solid too. Since halftime of the Whiteford game, the Bulldogs have allowed just two touchdowns over 18 quarters. Gomulinski has 80 tackles. Dafoe and Gabe Ostrosky have five interceptions apiece.
The biggest win came against Whiteford, which played in MHSAA Finals in 2022 and 2023. It propelled the Bulldogs to the Tri-County Conference championship.
“When we beat Whiteford, that really changed the attitude of a lot of our guys,” Szegedi said. “Not that they didn’t believe before, but after that victory, I think we just started believing even more. It gave them affirmation that if we could beat them, we could hang with anybody. It gave them the belief that, ‘Hey, maybe we are pretty good.’”
The community has rallied behind the team. At a watch party Sunday when the MHSAA released the playoff pairings, about 150 parents, students and other community members met in the high school cafeteria.
“There is talk about how they are going to decorate the town and decorate the stadium,” Szegedi said. “Last Friday the stadium was packed. That’s the way it should be.”
The Oregon, Ohio, native graduated from Toledo St. Francis in 2011 where he played football and was on the Knights swim team. He then continued at Wayne State University and was a two-time Division II national champion diver, earning All-America honors eight times. He was the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Diver of the Year multiple times and was inducted into the Wayne State Athletic Hall of Fame.
After college he came home and decided he wanted to get into coaching football. He called his former freshman coach at St. Francis, Geoff Skibinski, and joined the coaching staff.
Since then, he and Skibinski have coached at multiple stops together. When Szegedi was hired at Summerfield in 2023, his first call was to Skibinski, who runs the Summerfield offense.
“He and I work well together,” Szegedi said. “We have a good trust in one another.”
Summerfield’s 8-1 record is the best for the school since 2010, which was also the last time the Bulldogs won a conference championship.
Szegedi is glad to see the success the 11 seniors are enjoying.
“These are guys who have played a ton of varsity football,” he said. “It’s fun to see all of the time they spent in the summer running and all of the extra lifting pay off. They are guys who deserve it. They’ve worked very hard and deserve the success they are now experiencing.”
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.
PHOTOS (Top) Petersburg Summerfield’s Mitchell Gomulinski (23) prepares to take on a defender from Erie Mason this season. (Middle) Bulldogs quarterback Trace Secor considers his options from the pocket. (Below) Summerfield coach Dylan Szegedi. (Action photos by Kendra Dafoe; Szegedi photo by Doug Donnelly.)