Lumen Christi Grinds, then Rises in D6
November 25, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
DETROIT – The low was never that low, given the circumstances Jackson Lumen Christi played through during a 1-2 start this season.
But the high was definitely up there Friday as the Titans reached a peak they hadn’t visited since 2009.
Reminiscent of the teams that won three MHSAA championships during the first decade of this century, Lumen Christi’s latest contender rattled off 11 straight wins this fall, eliminated two top-three ranked favorites during the playoffs and finished with a workmanlike 26-14 win over Maple City Glen Lake in the Division 6 Final.
The title was the prize, of course, but the journey is worth celebrating as well. The Titans opened this season with a 17-point loss to Grand Rapids West Catholic, which will play for the Division 5 title Saturday. Two weeks later, Lumen fell to another eventual playoff team in Battle Creek Harper Creek. But the ensuing win streak included a run through the rest of the competitive Interstate 8 Athletic Conference and playoff wins over No. 2 Schoolcraft and No. 3 Millington before the fifth-ranked Titans took down the No. 6 Lakers.
“We were just so determined to get to this point, and we did,” Lumen junior fullback/linebacker Kyle Minder said. “After starting off 1-2, we were kinda down. We still had faith that we were going to make the playoffs. We had some tough games coming up; it was going to be a battle just to get into the playoffs.
"(But) we were on a roll, and it just never stopped.”
The Titans ran for 298 yards and held the Lakers to a mere four on the ground, overpowering them at times on the line and pounding with Minder on both sides of the ball while senior Bo Bell rattled off one of the busiest rushing games in MHSAA Finals history.
Bell ran 40 times for 238 yards – 11th-most for a championship game – to finish this fall unofficially with 2,666 yards, 16th most in MHSAA history for one season. His 340 carries ranked seventh, and he ran for a touchdown as well to give him 33 total, which is tied for 21st on that single-season list.
“I like putting the team on my back, but I can’t do this on my own,” said Bell, as he pointed out the contributions of his offensive line, Minder and junior quarterback Troy Kutcha. “All the hard work’s worth it; that’s all I can say,” Bell added.
Lumen Christi had 13 seniors on its roster. Although all but a couple were starters or second string by the end of the season, only about half had seen the field at the beginning – and the Titans also started three sophomores and a freshman.
But the 24-14 Harper Creek loss left longtime coach Herb Brogan optimistic.
“I said to the coaches, ‘I’m not down, because we really competed hard against a good football team, and we’re going to get better,’” said Brogan, who has led Lumen Christi to 331 wins – fifth all-time – and seven of its nine championships since taking over the program in 1980. “The next two games, we pulled out games that were critical games going in.
“The kids, they really like each other, and not every team likes each other. It’s difficult when you have a small senior group. … When you get a mix of young kids in there, you have to have a special senior group to make that thing jell. That’s what I give a lot of credit to our seniors for; they gave us the leadership we needed.”
Minder, who ran for 66 yards on 21 carries, chugged in for his first of three touchdowns to start the scoring with 4:36 left in the first quarter. He added his second score 4:31 into the second, and picked up the third with 10 seconds left in the first half to make the score 20-7.
Along the way, Glen Lake junior quarterback Cade Peterson found junior Nick Rice for a 57-yard touchdown strike down the right side, and his 9-yard scoring pass to junior Nick Apsey brought the Lakers to within 26-13 with 9:47 to play.
But as a team that runs well is able to do, Lumen Christi (12-2) ground 8:04 off the clock going only 50 yards but on 17 plays, leaving Glen Lake little time to attempt a final rally.
The Lakers (11-3) were playing their first MHSAA Final since 1996 and after also eliminating top-eight teams in Calumet and Roscommon along the way.
“We didn’t get it done on two 4th-and-1s, or 4th-and-inches, which really was the surprising part,” Glen Lake coach Jerry Angers said. “And of course, they rushed the ball well. We blew some assignments. We made a couple big mistakes and didn’t get our run fits correctly, and it opened up the door for those guys.”
Peterson completed 15 of 20 passes for 254 yards, especially impressive because of Glen Lake’s troubles balancing things on the ground. Rice caught five passes for 116 yards.
Apsey, senior linebacker Tony Duperon and senior safety Jared Jackson had 11 tackles apiece for the Lakers.
“I’m just so grateful that we came down here with our team. A lot of people didn’t really expect this out of us,” Peterson said. “Obviously, we proved them wrong and we gave these guys a good fight.
“I’m going to miss these seniors a lot. They’re a great group of guys. But we’re coming back next year.”
The MHSAA Football Finals are sponsored by the Michigan National Guard.
PHOTOS: (Top) Jackson Lumen Christi players hoist the championship trophy after winning Division 6 on Friday. (Middle) Titans running back Bo Bell follows the blocking of teammate Kyle Minder.
Martin Caps Frantic Final Minutes with Unforgettable Comeback at Superior Dome
By
Jason Juno
Special for MHSAA.com
November 18, 2023
MARQUETTE --- Martin had it easy last year, at least from a stress and anxiety standpoint.
Sure, the 8-Player Division 1 Final was competitive in the first half, but Martin went on to win the championship game by 50 points, hardly anything to sweat too much about.
But this year?
Oh goodness.
Martin took possession of the ball on its own 15-yard-line with 1:15 on the clock and trailing by two scores, 26-14, to an Indian River Inland Lakes team determined to win its first Finals title on the football field.
And Martin won. A state title game for the ages, the Clippers claimed it 30-26 to repeat as champions despite also trailing 20-0 to start the fourth quarter.
It was still a 20-point margin, 26-6, when the Bulldogs scored what seemed to be the insurance points they needed with 6:26 left.
“It’s amazing,” Martin coach Brad Blauvelt said. “I’m not gonna lie – doubt creeps into your head when it’s 20-6, they’re driving down the field, they’re running the clock. … We made plays, we made plays when it counted the most.”
Inland Lakes built its big lead with a stout red zone defense – Martin got there on every one of its possessions but didn’t cash in until the final quarter – and a four-touchdown day from junior quarterback Aidan Fenstermaker.
It was the first Finals appearance for Inland Lakes, which had its two winningest seasons over the last three years. Coach Travis Meyer’s message to the team after such a heartbreaking loss was about focusing on getting here – no easy feat itself – and about the upperclassmen guiding the rest of the team so that their run of success isn’t complete.
“No one in the state, based on any rankings, based on any newspaper articles, based on anything really, expected us to do what we did,” Meyer said. “And then even the ones that weren’t totally shocked that we were here didn’t think it was going to be a four-point game. Regardless of when the points were scored, that’s still a four-point game, that’s a hell of a state championship. That could have gone lots of different ways, and I don’t think anybody really expected us to give them a shot.”
They certainly did that. Martin, though, had an epic response.
The Clippers scored quickly, going 70 yards in a minute and a half, with Haylen Buell’s one-yard touchdown run pulling the Clippers within 26-14 with 4:54 left.
The Bulldogs recovered the Martin onside kick attempt and marched right into the red zone on the ensuing drive. But they turned it over on downs with 1:33 left.
That meant Martin had to go 85 yards just to pull within one possession with the clock even more daunting than the distance.
It took them a minute. The Clippers capped the drive as Taegan Harris caught a 10-yard scoring pass from Gavin Meyers with 33 seconds to go. The conversion pass made it 26-22.
Everything came down to the onside kick by sophomore Ben Romero. The bouncing ball went off at least two Inland Lakes players before Martin’s Mike Branch recovered it.
Martin had tried an onside kick after its previous two scores as well, but this was the only one that worked.
“They timed it perfect,” Meyer said. “That kid has a heck of an onside kick, it gets there at the same time as his kids. Whether you’re ready for it, whether you’ve got your best athletes there or not, that’s hard to do, especially on a stage like this, in that moment. That is hard on anybody, even the pros.”
The Clippers took over at their 45 with 32 ticks on the clock. Before long they were at the 21.
Meyers looked to pass, scrambled and then ran 21 yards for the touchdown with five seconds remaining.
“It was a pass play, trying to get it to Abe (Dykstra),” Meyers said. “The middle opened up, and I just took off.”
He said he was just hoping to get out of bounds, with the clock running down, but he was able to get in the end zone.
“We thought we could keep them out for two more plays,” Meyer, the Bulldogs’ coach, said. “We lost contain somewhere there around the edge.”
The unfathomable score: 30-26 after the conversion.
Martin lost a lot of seniors from last year, including three all-staters. The Clippers didn’t win their conference, and they fell to 2-2 early in the year with losses to Bridgman and Gobles. They haven’t lost since, though, winning nine straight games with a young team.
“It’s nice to be able to leave a legacy,” said Harris, a senior. “Last year, we had a pretty stacked group of guys. We had three of our star players injured this season, it wasn’t looking good, 2-2, then we won, what, nine, eight straight? … It feels really good.”
Meyers, who threw for 216 yards and ran for 142 on Saturday, filled in for one of those all-state graduates quite well, J.R. Hildebrand.
“He’s a damn good football player,” Blauvelt said of Meyers. “And he’s grown a bunch. Halfway through the year, he started moving in the pocket, keeping his eyes downfield. You saw it today, right, he kept his eyes downfield.”
After a scoreless first quarter, Inland Lakes scored twice during the second quarter. The Bulldogs took over for the final drive of the half at their own 12 with 3:05 remaining. They went for it on 4th-and-6 at their own 31 and again on 4th-and-6 at the 47. They converted both and were rewarded with a touchdown as time expired. Despite being pressured, Fenstermaker hit Jacob Willey in the corner of the end zone for a 24-yard touchdown pass that put Inland Lakes up 14-0 at the half.
Meyer said his team punted once this year and once last year.
“We don’t put a ton of time into punting,” he said. “So when the best we can do is maybe get off a 25-yard punt and they return it 10 yards before we cover it, we figured that was only 15 yards of field position anyway, so we might as well give ourselves a shot. It was playing the odds. Maybe people don’t like that logic, but we like to play aggressively. We like to see what we can do.”
They built the lead to 20-0 late in the third quarter as Martin came up empty on all four of its drives, even though every one of them got into the red zone.
“It was very frustrating,” Blauvelt said. “We saw on film, they stopped Pickford (in the Semifinal) inside the red zone multiple times, they tightened up when they got in there. We shot ourselves in the foot in the first half. But we moved the ball consistently, but yeah, that was a little frustrating. We had some good drives, and we just couldn’t punch them in.”
It just wasn’t as frustrating as the finish was for the Bulldogs.
Inland Lakes senior Payton Teuthorn said getting to this point was what they wanted since youth football.
“We made it here. We just couldn’t finish,” he said.
PHOTOS (Top) Martin players celebrate with their fans Saturday the program’s second-straight 8-Player Division 1 championship at Superior Dome. (Middle) Martin quarterback Gavin Meyers charges toward the end zone on the way to scoring the game-winning touchdown. (Below) Inland Lakes’ Andre Bradford (20) pulls in a catch as two Martin defenders converge including Bryer Watson (2). (Click for more photos by Cara Kamps.)