Program Builder Boyd Honored by Our Lady
October 12, 2016
By Keith Dunlap
Special for Second Half
WATERFORD – Mike Boyd always had a grand vision how his last home game as head coach at Waterford Our Lady of the Lakes would play out.
As it got into the later stages of a nearly 50-year tenure as football coach, athletic director and so much more at the school, Boyd had one specific idea for how he wanted to go out.
“I always said that the last game I coached before I retired, I was going to play it here under the lights,” said Boyd, referring to the field at the school that doesn’t have permanent lights. “I didn’t get a chance.”
Boyd did not, since in April 2013 he decided to retire as football coach from WOLL after a 46 year-career in order to move full-time to Sarasota, Florida.
However, last Friday proved to be the next best thing for Boyd and the Our Lady of the Lakes community.
In a ceremony that was more than three years in the making after he made his retirement official, Boyd was brought back for the honor of having the entire athletic complex at Our Lady of the Lakes named after him.
To top it all off, the ceremony took place under portable lights in what doubled as the first night game ever at the school.
The game was against Royal Oak Shrine, which is not only the biggest rival for Our Lady of the Lakes, but coached by Boyd’s longtime best friend in coaching, John Goddard.
All anyone needs to do is look at MHSAA record book for evidence that it was a no-brainer for Our Lady of the Lakes to name the athletic complex after Boyd, one of the state’s all-time greatest prep athletic figures.
As football coach, Boyd won 357 games in his 46 years, which currently is good for fourth place on the all-time wins list for coaches in that sport.
He led the Lakers to three appearances in MHSAA football championship games, with the zenith of his coaching career on the gridiron coming in 2002 when his Our Lady of the Lakes team won its only Finals title in school history with a 13-10 overtime win over Gaylord St. Mary in Division 8.
Facing a 4th-and-goal from the 1-yard line that day, Boyd didn’t hesitate in sending his offense out to go for the win on a do-or-die running play, and the decision paid off when running back Murray Percival broke the goal line to give Boyd his long-awaited title.
The jubilation was apparent on Boyd with how high he jumped over and over again in celebration following the handshake line.
While that was the only time Boyd celebrated an MHSAA championship in football, he did so plenty of times on the softball diamond.
Boyd led Our Lady of the Lakes to what remains a team state-record eight MHSAA championships in softball, going a perfect 8-for-8 in title game appearances and finishing with 703 career wins before retiring from that sport in 2007.
During his tenure, Boyd also coached two games for the hockey team, track & field and started the baseball program by coaching it for its first year of existence.
When not on a playing surface, Boyd was a principal, bus driver, the athletic director and overall face of not only what has become one of the state’s best small-school athletic programs, but the school as a whole.
One of Boyd’s big contributions was creating the home football field at Our Lady of the Lakes behind its school in stunningly quick fashion after some unexpected news.
Our Lady of the Lakes used to play home games at other high schools or middle schools in Waterford, but that changed suddenly in 2001 before a scheduled home game against Royal Oak Shrine.
“They got a new school board one year,” Boyd said. “We used to pay like $250 a game. They came back and said ‘We want $1,200 a game.’ The Dads club got together and put (the press box) up on one week and got the field ready.”
Indeed, in a matter of days a three-story press box was built (fully furnished later in the season) and space for a football field was created (the right side of it through the infield of the baseball diamond) to allow Our Lady of the Lakes to play games on its campus.
It was fitting that the first home game in 2001 was against Shrine and that the ceremony last week was against Shrine, given his nearly 50-year friendship with Goddard.
The two had a nice chat on Shrine’s bench before the game last Friday, and one can only imagine the stories that were re-hashed.
In fact, when Boyd announced his retirement in 2013, he said how much he would miss playing against “that old turkey” in Goddard.
No doubt, Goddard misses competing against Boyd just as much.
“One year he had a kid that got hurt during practice during that week and he shows up at our place for a game, and after kickoff he comes out and starts running a single-wing,” Goddard said. “I go, ‘What the heck is this offense he is running?’ We beat them, but it took us half a game to figure what he was doing. He made it up on Saturday and we played on Sunday. He was a great coach.”
Boyd still follows the Our Lady of the Lakes program from Florida, watching film online and communicating regularly with current Our Lady of the Lakes head coach Josh Sawicki, a player on that 2002 title team – although Boyd was quick to point out he wants no part in decision-making with the Lakes team. “He’s his own coach,” Boyd said of Sawicki.
Boyd also returns to Michigan every August to help out with preseason practices for Lake Orion, which is coached by his son-in-law, Chris Bell, and he visits Sawicki at his preseason practices while in the area.
Before the game last Friday, Sawicki spoke about how little the topic of the ceremony came up with Boyd during conversations in the days leading up to the game.
“He was talking to me Wednesday or Thursday night, and there was not one question about (the ceremony),” Sawicki said. “It was all about the game plan. ‘What have you got? What have they got? What will you do if they do this? Watch out for Goddard because he likes to do this and likes to do that.’ Still to this day, that was all he was talking about.”
Sawicki said doing things without fanfare is who “Coach” has always been, and it’s a legacy that will be carried on in name now that the athletic complex is named after Boyd.
More importantly, it will also be carried on in spirit.
“He built that brand,” Sawicki said. “It’s the responsibility of the coaches and the players to continue that brand on. That is what we are focused on doing.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Our Lady of the Lakes football coach Mike Boyd hoists the Division 8 championship trophy in 2002 after his team defeated Gaylord St. Mary at the Pontiac Silverdome. (Middle) Boyd (left) receives a plaque from Rev. Lawrence Delonnay, Our Lady’s pastor, on Friday to recognize the naming of the school’s athletic complex in Boyd’s honor.
Marysville, St. Clair Join Together to Honor Beloved Coach with Rivalry Trophy
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
October 11, 2023
Denny White brought quite a bit to the Marysville and St. Clair communities.
In 1961, as a junior in high school, White was part of the first team to bring a football state title to Marysville.
Fifty years later, as an assistant coach, he played a vital role in bringing St. Clair its first MHSAA Finals title in baseball.
During the years in between, and decade after, White brought his knowledge of and passion for those sports to hundreds of student athletes.
But most recently, he brought the two communities together.
This past Friday night, the rival schools played for the Denny White Trophy, an award created to honor the late coach and connect the two communities where he was most revered.
“I’m so happy with all the support that has been around the project,” said Brady Beedon, a family friend who helped to create the trophy and was in the booth calling Friday night’s game for Get Stuck On Sports. “It’s the least we could’ve done for a man who helped so many athletes. His legacy deserves to be preserved.”
In a fitting tribute to White, who died Jan. 22 of this year following a long battle with cancer, the two teams played a hard-fought game at East China Stadium, with White’s alma mater Marysville coming away with a 25-20 victory.
Both teams featured players who had been coached by White at some point in one or both of the sports, as his time on the bench lasted through the fall of 2022.
That season, he coached the JV B football team at Marysville. Most recently before that, he had been the varsity baseball coach at St. Clair from 2015-21.
“Not much can unify rivals, but Coach White’s influence goes beyond that rivalry,” Marysville football coach Derrick Meier said at a press conference unveiling the trophy. “He’s affected thousands of local athletes. … It is awesome that someone had such an influence across the board with all local athletes (in multiple) sports. I contacted him my first year coaching varsity, and he was not willing to leave where he was at. I called him three subsequent years; he graciously declined. The last year he did accept, we added a JV B team, his wisdom and knowledge went well beyond just coaching on the field. We’re all lucky for his influence.
“Heroes get remembered. Coach White will be remembered.”
White was a 1963 graduate of Marysville, who then attended Ferris State and Central Michigan. His coaching journey did not begin in the area where he grew up, however, as he coached baseball and football at Newaygo High School before coming to St. Clair.
He spent 35 years in the Saints athletic program, coaching baseball and multiple levels of football.
Much of his time was spent as the pitching coach for St. Clair for coaches Richie Mallewitz and Bill McElreath. That included the 2011 season, when his pitching staff included current major leaguer Jacob Cronenworth, who now plays second base for the San Diego Padres.
Also on that staff were Joel Seddon, who was drafted twice – once out of high school and again after college – and would go on to be the closer at South Carolina; and Jared Tobey, who pitched at Wayne State and was drafted by the Detroit Tigers, playing four years in their minor league system.
While White coached nearly 1,000 baseball games in his career, he was involved with more than just high school sports. He also coached a 13-year-old Little League team to a state title and the semifinals of the Great Lakes Regional in 2015.
No matter the level, White poured all he had into coaching, and that included his final season on the sidelines at Marysville, just months prior to his passing.
“Every single kid that he touched with that team, you could just tell, gravitated toward him immediately,” said Travis Disser, who coached with White that final year at Marysville. “His lessons and his light-hearted humor are just something that you can’t replace, or ever hope to. I was lucky enough to learn pitching from Coach White when I was a younger kid, as well. He was the exact same Denny White as he was all those years ago, as he was last year during his battle with cancer. Coach White was a warrior in every sense of the term. His lessons, both on the field and off the field from him, are something that I’ll never, ever forget.”
The idea to create the trophy honoring White came about not long after his death, as Beedon worked with Meier, former St. Clair athletic director Denny Borse and St. Clair assistant football coach T.J. Schindler to create and design the trophy.
The final product is a two-tiered trophy topped with a pair White’s hats – one from St. Clair, the other from Marysville – that have been bronzed. It includes the years in which he won his state titles at his respective schools, and a passage about his life. There is also room to list the yearly winners, as it is planned to represent the rivalry and shared respect for White in the two communities for years to come.
“Whether it was Little League kids over the last 20 years, or some of the football players and baseball players that he coached over the decades that he coached, all of them when they get together have great stories and fondness for all the memories that (White and his fellow coaches) helped them create,” said Sandy Rutledge, the current St. Clair athletic director and a longtime friend and colleague of White. “I think it’s awesome that now as we play for this trophy every year, it will give our coaches a chance to kind of explain who Coach was. The next generation, maybe they didn’t even know him, will know that he is a legend, and he’ll always be remembered.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS (Top) From left: St. Clair’s Larry Wawryzniak, Liam Nesbitt and Peyton Ellis, Denny White’s wife Karen White, and Marysville’s Bryce Smith, Carter Saccucci and Caz Carty stand with the first-year traveling trophy celebrating Denny White’s coaching career. (Middle) White was a mainstay in the area’s sports community for more than six decades. (Below) The trophy celebrates his contributions to both schools and will list the winners of their annual football game. (Trophy photos courtesy of Brady Beedon. Headshot courtesy of the White family.)