Edwards, Lakers Run Away With 1st Title
January 23, 2021
By Jason Schmitt
Special for Second Half
DETROIT – It was never really a matter of if, but rather when Donovan Edwards was going to bust a big run.
On Saturday, the West Bloomfield senior answered the call, scoring on runs of 71 and 78 yards en route to a three-touchdown afternoon while leading his Lakers to a 41-0 victory over 2019 champion Davison in the Division 1 Football Final at Ford Field.
Edwards, who has signed to play collegiately at the University of Michigan, finished the afternoon with 257 yards on just 14 carries. Despite not playing in the fourth quarter, he totaled the eighth-highest rushing total in MHSAA Finals history. And it was enough for West Bloomfield head coach Ron Bellamy to make a major declaration.
“This here is the best football player in the state of Michigan,” Bellamy said of Edwards. “Five star. Big college. Whatever it may be. Teams come to stop one football player, and he had 200-some yards (today).
“I’m from Louisiana, and I had a chance to play against Ed Reed in high school. I had a chance to play against Reggie Wayne, Eli Manning, I played against NFL Hall of Famers in high school, on the same field, and he looks like them. It ain’t the cliche, ‘Best player on the field.’ He looks like a dude that’s gonna play for a long time in the NFL and be an all-American at the University of Michigan. Obviously some things have to happen in his favor, but you saw it. He just looks different from everybody else on the field.”
Edwards’ talents were on display right away. After the two teams traded early fumbles, Edwards broke free on the first play from scrimmage for a 78-yard touchdown to give his team a 7-0 lead.
West Bloomfield would expand its lead to 17-0 by halftime thanks to a 39-yard field goal by senior Jake Ward and a 13-yard touchdown run by senior Mekhi Elam.
The Lakers defense was on display all afternoon, limiting the Cardinals offense to just 136 total yards. It forced a pair of fumbles and converted them into 14 points. Senior defensive end Niles King stripped the ball from the hands of Jay’len Flowers and returned it 40 yards to give his team a 24-0 lead less than a minute into the second half.
“We know that when you come to Ford Field you’ve got to play defense,” Bellamy said. “Davison has a heck of a defense, but our defense was better today. Those guys were lights out.
“We had an early fumble in the game and they were playing Davison smash-mouth football. They hit us in the mouth. I told the kids, defensively, ‘They’re going to hit us in the mouth early; it’s how you respond to adversity.’ Once they fumbled the ball and we got it back, our defense was balling out.”
Senior linebacker Travis Reece led the Lakers with seven tackles, two for a loss, and added a sack. Senior linebacker Jordan Hoskins had six tackles.
West Bloomfield kicker Jake Ward connected on a pair of field goals, from 39 and 45 yards out, while converting all five of his point-after attempts. All seven of his kickoffs went for touchbacks.
Davison, which defeated Brighton 35-25 to win the 2019 championship, was playing without its regular-season starting quarterback Brendan Sullivan, who enrolled early at Northwestern University. The Cardinals also suffered a loss in-game, when senior defensive end Harrison Unger went down with a leg injury. He left the game with eight minutes remaining in the first quarter.
“Harry is our best player,” Davison head coach Jake Weingartz said. “Defensive end, he plays tight end, slot receiver. He does a lot for us on both sides of the ball. It was unfortunate because he’s a huge part of our gameplan. It was rough.”
Without him, Davison had trouble stopping Edwards and Co. Senior Clarke Hamilton led the Cardinals (11-1) with six tackles.
“If anyone has watched us play, it was very uncharacteristic of us,” Weingartz said. “I just think we struggled with their speed. Their front six is real good. We missed a lot of opportunities. You just can’t miss them here, and you definitely can’t miss them against a team like West Bloomfield.
“I’m very proud of our kids for battling all the adversity this year, with the stop and start and losing our quarterback to early graduation. Obviously this is not how we wanted it to end.”
For West Bloomfield (10-1), Saturday’s championship was the first in school history. The Lakers lost to Clarkston, 3-2, in the 2017 Division 1 title game.
“It’s surreal. It’s so, so surreal,” Bellamy said. “We’ve waited so long for this moment. These last few years, since we lost (to Clarkston), everything in my power, in my coaching staff’s power, we wanted to develop a champion. We’ve been so close, but yet so far.
“It’s a special feeling. We’ve made many sacrifices this year. The kids’ mental health was challenged with the shutdowns. But we’re here, we made it here. We felt we had a good football team, and we had a chance to win a state championship.”
PHOTOS: (Top) West Bloomfield’s Donovan Edwards (6) strides toward the end zone Saturday, as Davison’s TeAvion Warren pursues. (Middle) The Lakers’ Travis Reece (2) and BJ Rankin (21) work to bring down the Cardinals’ Payton Pizzala. (Click for more from Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)
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.”
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.
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.
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.)