Gach Brings Major Spotlight to Groves Football, Major Goals Into Final Season
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
September 6, 2024
It’s not like Birmingham Groves head coach Brendan Flaherty hadn’t had players in the past who received a lot of recruiting attention, given several Division I college talents such as Jaden and Jaren Mangham and DeOn’tae Pannell have come through the program under his tenure.
But make no mistake, Flaherty hadn’t coached anyone who has received as much recruiting attention as Avery Gach.
Before committing to Michigan over the summer, Gach held scholarship offers from 40 schools, and we’re not talking about smaller or upstart programs, either.
Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia and Florida State were among the programs to offer Gach, a hulking 6-foot-5, 290-pound senior lineman.
“He’s a unicorn,” Flaherty said. “The attention it has brought the school and the limelight it has shined on us. I haven’t had anybody like this in 24 years. We’ve had Big Ten players before. But he obviously takes it to another level being a national guy. It’s well-deserved, and he’s done a great job handling it.”
Indeed, this fall will be the last chance for Groves to experience a player who might not come around again for a while once he signs and enrolls early at Michigan, as he plans to do.
Gach always has towered over everyone — he said he was 6-3 as an eighth-grader — and has done that on the football field since becoming a rarity at Groves by making the varsity as a freshman.
After getting some experience during his freshman year, Gach really started to reach another level.
“After my ninth-grade season, I knew this was the sport I wanted to do,” said Gach, who also played basketball and baseball growing up. “I just hit the weight room. That helped me a ton.”
It wasn’t just weights and getting stronger, but flexibility and agility training as well that helped him become more than just someone who was bigger than everybody.
Gach also got to work mastering technical aspects of being a lineman.
“Just having heavy hands, containing the bull rush and keeping my core tight,” Gach said.
From there, the scholarship offers and attention started pouring in.
Gach didn’t allow a sack his sophomore and junior years, so it’s a good bet opposing defensive linemen know what they’re up against this fall.
The wrinkle this year, though, is that opposing offensive linemen might be up against the same challenge. Gach is going to spend a significant amount of time at defensive tackle for the Falcons, likely commanding constant double and triple-teams.
“I’m going to play it a lot this year,” he said. “I’m going both ways. I’m excited. I’m going to make plays out there. They’re two separate positions, but you have to be aggressive at both.”
Flaherty, for one, firmly believes Gach can be just as much of a factor on the defensive side of the ball as he has been on offense.
“His mind is wired that he is an offensive lineman,” Flaherty said. “But if you rewired it a little bit and said he was a defensive lineman, he would be a force. He just plays with such a great energy, tenacity and intensity. He’s going to do a lot of great stuff on defense.”
Gach also played baseball for Groves his first two years of high school but decided to give that sport up to throw shot put for the track team this past spring while preparing for the football season.
He’s fully ready and has ambitions that are similarly sizable for a Groves program that has never reached the MHSAA Finals.
“The expectation this season is to win a state championship,” Gach said.
It might seem like an ambitious goal for a program that has never done so. But then again, there also never been a player in program history quite like Gach, as people should once again see on the field this fall.
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTO Groves’ Avery Gach stands in for a photo during Oakland Activities Association media day this preseason. (Photo by Keith Dunlap.)
Rough Stretch, Lessons Learned Pay Off with Flat Rock's 1st Playoff Win Since 1976
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
November 8, 2022
FLAT ROCK – On July 31, Flat Rock football players Corey Lannon and Graham Junge were on the football field when they noticed a soccer player kicking the ball.
Lannon grabbed his phone and texted Flat Rock head coach Buck Reaume about what he saw.
“He said, ‘We need to get this guy on the team,’” Reaume said.
On Friday night, with a Division 5 District championship on the line, Flat Rock’s Mitchell Smith booted a game-winning 23-yard field goal to give the Rams a 29-28 victory over Romulus Summit Academy North. It was not only Smith’s first field goal attempt in a game, but it was also the first field goal attempt in Reaume’s five years as Rams head coach.
“I never hesitated,” Reaume said of the decision to kick the field goal when Flat Rock trailed Summit 28-26 with 7.3 seconds left in the game. “It was the right call. Graham came over to the sidelines and said, ‘Let’s kick it.’ I had all the confidence in Mitchell.”
Confidence has been earned as Flat Rock is going through a fairy-tale season. Before this year, the Rams had never hosted a playoff game and hadn’t won a playoff game since the 1976 team won the Class C championship. At that time, the MHSAA Playoffs were just two rounds.
The 46-year postseason win drought ended in the first round of the playoffs with a 27-22 victory over Dundee. The District title gave the Rams eight wins, their most in a season since the 1976 team went 11-0.
“It’s almost like a magical season the way things have gone,” Reaume said. “In our last four games, we’ve won by a total of eight points. Three out of the four we won by one point. The last couple of games have been really high suspense, but we’ve come out on top. We’ve been on the other side of those kinds of games, too.”
Flat Rock was 3-3 after a 20-14 loss to Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central as they maneuvered through a rugged Huron League schedule. In two of those three losses, the game came down to the final play.
“We grew up and learned from those things,” Reaume said.
In Week 7, the Rams shut out Grosse Ile 28-0. Since then, the Rams have a 29-28 win over New Boston Huron, a 57-56 win over Livonia Clarenceville, and the victories over Dundee and Summit Academy.
This week, the Rams welcome Detroit Country Day for another home playoff game.
“The crowds have been amazing,” Reaume said. “We have a first-year assistant coach, and I told him that things aren’t always like this. It’s been crazy.”
Flat Rock’s success has been a long time coming.
Reaume is a former quarterback at Riverview Gabriel Richard. He coached at Southgate Anderson for 10 years before getting hired as a teacher at Flat Rock in 2013. He was an assistant coach one year before being named head coach. It came on the heels of back-to-back 0-9 seasons for Flat Rock.
“My thought process was things could only go up,” he said.
By his third year, Flat Rock reached the playoffs for the first time in nearly 30 years.
“That was a big deal,” he said.
After a 4-5 finish in 2019, COVID-19 shortened the Rams’ 2020 season to seven games. Flat Rock didn’t win any that fall, but the foundation for this year’s eight-win season was laid when Reaume and the coaching staff elevated several sophomores to the varsity.
"Our seniors are a great group of kids," Reaume said. "We had a lot of them up during that COVID-19 year, the shortened season. That group took our lumps. We got pounded that year.
“The idea was it was going to pay off down the road, and it has. There’s no quit in these guys. That benefited us.”
One of those seniors is Drew Given. Given, a wrestler in the winter, has been a running back for most of his time in the Flat Rock football system. When the season started, Reaume realized his team was going to be short on offensive linemen. He went to Given.
“I thought we would be good this year because of all of our skill guys,” Reaume said. “The line was a bit of a question though. We went to Drew before the season and asked if he was interested in moving to the line. Given never hesitated and is now a starting guard.
“His response was, ‘I’ll do anything you want. I just want to win,’” Reaume said. “He’s a good wrestler. He’s small. He is 5-(foot-)6, 170, but he’s tough. He’s a bulldog. That’s the epitome of this team. They don’t care what they need to do to help us win. It’s not always easy to find kids to do that.”
Reaume said his football players grew tired of settling for close losses and coming close. Flat Rock began last season 2-1 but finished 2-7, with late losses by two and eight points.
“For the past few years, there was a lot of moral victories,” Reaume said. “It would be like, ‘Hey, you won the second half,’ or ‘You played them tough.’ I told them this year that was no longer enough. Our seniors had heard that all of their sophomore and junior years. I think they were sick of that. There are no more moral victories. I think they bought into that.”
One of the big reasons for Flat Rock’s success has been the play of Junge, a sophomore. He was thrust into the Rams starting quarterback spot as a freshman last year when starting QB Aaron Salazar went out with a knee injury. Junge was impressive right away.
“He did everything we asked,” Reaume said. “He kept his poise and showed a lot of maturity. You could tell he had talent.”
Junge is a student of the game. He watches a lot of film and studies opponents before every game.
“It’s impressive,” Reaume said. “He has a lot of input. He’ll text me on Saturday or Sunday, saying, ‘Hey I like these plays.’ We’ll meet on Mondays and go over the plays we like, and he has a ton of input.
“He has a lot of leeway on the field. We’ll call the play, and he will make some adjustments. He’ll signal something to the guys. He makes a lot of good decisions.”
Junge has passed for a Monroe County Region record 2,528 yards and 28 touchdowns.
“I like watching film,” Junge said. “The cool thing about football is by watching film you can outsmart the defense.”
Salazar is another player who selflessly moved to a new position to help the team. The former starting quarterback is now Junge’s favorite target at wide receiver. Salazar has 72 receptions for 931 yards and nine touchdowns.
“He’s been incredible, coming off knee surgery and playing a position he hadn’t played in a couple of years,” Reaume said. “He’s been phenomenal at it.”
Lannon is second on the team in receptions (54) and yards (694).
“Nobody cares about numbers,” Reaume continued. “It’s a very selfless team. They only want to win.”
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) Flat Rock quarterback-turned-receiver Aaron Salazar hauls in a pass during a season that’s seem him gain nearly 1,000 yards through the air. (Middle) Flat Rock coach Buck Reaume and his family celebrate the District title win. (Below) Rams quarterback Graham Junge has set his area’s record for passing yards. (Action photos by Dana Stiefel. Reaume family photo courtesy of Buck Reaume.)