Mendon Coach Takes Reins from Mentor
By
Wes Morgan
Special for MHSAA.com
September 6, 2016
It wasn’t the right time for an interview because John Schwartz didn’t want to be the center of attention. Besides, he had said all he wanted to say in February when he announced his retirement.
More than anything else, just a few minutes prior to the Mendon varsity football team opening the 2016 season against Bridgman, he wanted to address his attire.
Swiftly moving through the parking lot toward his car, Schwartz looked up, made eye contact with me, and his voice boomed through a shop broom of a mustache, “I put my shirt on backwards.”
Of course he did. His routine was off after more than four decades.
Schwartz exchanged pleasantries as he stood bare-chested about 30 parking spaces from the entrance to the field named after him. He checked to make sure the tag of his T-shirt was at the back of his neck this time.
We walked back to the stadium and talked about his kids and his grandchildren, whom he adores, and for whom, along with his wife, he retired from the game he treasures. When he turned in his letter of retirement to the Mendon school board in February at the age of 66, he said it was time to make more time for them.
He then climbed the bleachers to the press box, where he plans to watch the Hornets and provide advice when requested. Of all places, most of our interaction these days is on Facebook, where he’s quick to like a family photo.
I never took John Schwartz, a man who enjoys crafting things out of wood in his spare time, for a social media fan. But I learned over the years he’s full of surprises.
For a long time, Schwartz boasted the all-time best winning percentage in Michigan prep history. At the end of the 2014 season, his record at Mendon was 269-43 for a .862 percentage. That would have been a good time to retire. He knew, however, the Hornets were in for a rough 2015 season with low numbers in terms of bodies, and, as it turned out, victories. Mendon went 5-5, making his career record 274-48 and his winning percentage .851 — second all-time behind former Schoolcraft coach Larry Ledlow (.853).
He took one for the team.
It’s Bobby Kretschman’s team now, and you’re not going to find anyone in the small town of Mendon who would disagree with Schwartz concerning Kretschman’s worthiness to continue a tradition that includes 13 MHSAA championships — 10 of which were with Schwartz at the helm.
Kretschman, a former star linebacker for the Hornets and an assistant coach with the program for 10 years, was groomed for this role. In the same week in March when his first child, Connor, was born, Kretschman officially accepted the job.
Ranking third all-time in program history with 360 career tackles, including 11.7 stops per game as a senior on the 2005 Division 8 championship team, Kretschman fully understood the significance of becoming the school’s 23rd head coach.
“I’m excited,” he said at the time. “It’s going to be fun. We’re replacing a legend here. This is why I went into coaching and teaching. I didn’t think it was actually going to be at Mendon.”
The Hornets are 1-1 this season under his watch, with a loss to an excellent Cassopolis team in Week 2. But after the Hornets topped the Bridgman Bees in Kretschman’s debut, the new ball coach sounded an awful lot like the old one.
He asked the players gathered around him in the west end zone if they wanted to win a state title this year — perhaps a reach to some after Mendon went .500 last fall. They all believe they can. So did every kid who put on the green jersey since 1989.
Schwartz would always tell you that the Mendon staff coached the kids the same from the Rocket level to varsity. The plays, the verbiage and the expectations were consistent.
And it was all underscored by a sense of responsibility.
“There’s a great sense of pride at Mendon and I’ll be damned if that’s going to be lost,” Kretschman said. “That’s why you want to put the time into things and make sure you’re putting the best product out there you can. Your name is on it and you want it to be done right.”
Wes Morgan has reported for the Kalamazoo Gazette, ESPN and ESPNChicago.com, 247Sports and Blue & Gold Illustrated over the last 12 years and is the publisher of JoeInsider.com. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Berrien, Cass, St. Joseph and Branch counties.
PHOTO: Former linebacker Bobby Kretschman takes over the Mendon program this season from longtime coach John Schwartz. (Photo by Wes Morgan.) VIDEO courtesy of JoeInsider.com.
King Eager to Begin Next Championship Pursuit Following Familiar Leader Patrick
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
August 22, 2024
DETROIT — To many around the state, it was a collective gasp and curiosity as to how the Detroit Martin Luther King football program would move forward.
To those within the King program itself, it was a collective shoulder shrug and “we’ll be fine.”
Days after a 26-20 loss to Mason in a Division 3 Semifinal last fall, King saw longtime head coach Tyrone Spencer leave to take the same job at East Kentwood.
It was no small loss, given Spencer had guided the Crusaders to one Division 2 and three Division 3 championships over eight seasons.
Not long after, longtime assistant Terel Patrick was named the new head coach for King. But even he was still processing what happened.
“A little bit of shock,” Patrick said of his initial reaction. “Every year, there were people trying to gauge whether he would or not leave. It wasn’t new that people were interested in him because he did that good of a job. But he always said no. With him saying yes, it kind of shocked me a little bit.”
But after the initial shock, it became business as usual for one of the top programs in the state.
Spencer certainly didn’t leave the cupboard bare in terms of the elite blue-chip talent the program usually enjoys, and there was about as much continuity in a coaching transition as one could hope.
All of King’s assistants stayed with the program, and Patrick said 14 are graduates of the school. Patrick has been on King’s staff since 2009 and called the continuity within the coaching staff a “unique situation.”
“Spence was always in charge of the defense, and I was always in charge of the offense,” Patrick said. “The biggest thing for me was that I had to relearn a different side of the football.”
To do that, Patrick spent the offseason at clinics and in phone conversations with defensive experts he knows. “Just to pick their brains and see what they think in certain situations,” he said.
Patrick shouldn’t be too concerned about picking up any new defensive acumen, given it helps to have supreme talent as always.
Senior defensive ends Xavier Newsom and Willie Fletcher, Jr., are highly-rated college prospects and considered among the best players in the state. Newsom said because the coaching staff remained mostly intact after Spencer left, there was no need to reassure the rest of the team and others that everything would be OK.
“We didn’t have to do that,” he said. “We still had Coach TP, so it’s not like we got a whole new coach. We told everybody that the program is still going to be the same. Nothing is going to fall off.”
King also should be loaded on offense, with sophomore quarterback Darryl Flemister coming off a terrific freshman year as the starter. He is already on the radar of prominent college programs.
Junior running back Michael Dukes rushed for 925 yards last year as a sophomore, while shifty senior slotback David Calmese is also back.
“The biggest thing is keeping the main goal the main goal,” Calmese said.
The coaching change certainly wasn’t enough to change the expectations of others within the Detroit Public School League. The Crusaders were picked to win the Blue division ahead of rival and fellow state power Detroit Cass Tech.
In addition to still being talented, King will be plenty motivated after not making it down the street to Ford Field last year thanks to the Semifinal loss to Mason.
“We’re not used to losing,” Newsom said. “Seeing us fall short, it definitely made us hungry.”
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.
PHOTOS (Top) Detroit Martin Luther King’s Xavier Newsom awaits the next play during last season’s Detroit Public School League Blue championship game at Ford Field. (Middle) First-year Crusaders head coach Terel Patrick speaks during PSL media day Aug. 1. (Top photo by Olivia B. Photography; middle photo by Keith Dunlap.)