Receiver-Turned-QB Finishes Job Helping GRCC Run Title Streak to 3
By
Scott DeCamp
Special for MHSAA.com
November 27, 2021
DETROIT – To the casual observer, Grand Rapids Catholic Central’s fifth MHSAA football title in six years may seem a little ho-hum.
Don’t tell that to John Passinault. This one was special – way different than what he may have envisioned at the start of the season.
The senior quarterback connected with Notre Dame commit Nolan Ziegler on a pair of second-half touchdown passes, and the GRCC defense did the rest in a 31-7 victory over Marine City in the Division 5 Final on Saturday at Ford Field.
Joey Silveri, GRCC’s three-year starting QB, suffered a season-ending knee injury in Week 4. That’s when Passinault, a 6-foot, 180-pound converted receiver, switched to the signal-caller position. Passinault picked up where Silveri left off and helped lead the Cougars to a second-straight Division 5 title, their sixth championship in the last dozen years and seventh overall.
“Well, it’s surreal. Before the season, if you would have told me this was going to happen, I would have told you you’re crazy,” said Passinault, who finished the game 15-of-28 passing for 221 yards with one interception.
“A bad thing happened to a really good kid, Joey Silveri, and that’s just the mindset of the team to step in where it’s needed. I went from wide receiver to quarterback and it’s pretty easy to do that when I have guys around me like Nolan, Ronin Russell-Dixon, Devin Fridley-Bell, Luke Kuzner, Jack Rellinger. I have all those guys around me, it’s easy to step into that role and just settle in.”
GRCC (14-0) completed its third perfect season in the last five years, but Marine City (13-1) made the Cougars work for it for the better part of three quarters Saturday.
GRCC led 10-0 in the second quarter after a 29-yard field goal by junior John Meyer and a 2-yard TD run by Rellinger, a senior. Marine City hung in there, however, and pulled within 10-7 on junior QB Jeff Heaslip’s 3-yard scoring pass to senior Charles Tigert with a little more than three minutes left in the half.
The score remained that way until the closing seconds of the third quarter. Ziegler, a 6-4, 210-pound receiver and linebacker, caught a pass over the middle from Passinault, turned the corner and raced down the sideline for a 59-yard scoring play.
That seemed to ignite the Cougars’ offense a bit.
“My team, they blocked well, it was a great pass by John,” Ziegler said. “We were just kind of playing backyard football out there honestly, and we just got things going. I got a good block from the receivers, and I just got down and got it in.”
The Passinault-to-Ziegler connection struck again four minutes later, this time on a 17-yard TD play, as the Cougars began to pull away. Ziegler finished with seven receptions for 136 yards, plus he notched a game-high 13 tackles in displaying his Power Five college football credentials.
Senior linebacker Jack Klafeta put the exclamation point on the victory for GRCC with a 34-yard scoop-and-score midway through the fourth quarter. Klafeta notched nine tackles, as did junior Jack Cook.
“Just their athleticism all over the field, their physicality up front, made things very difficult,” said Marine City coach Daryn Letson, whose team allowed no more than 14 points in a single game this season prior to Saturday.
“You know, our defense played their hearts out. I think our whole team played their hearts out,” Letson said. “You know, they have those kids and we just weren’t able to do enough offensively when we needed to.”
GRCC finished with a narrow edge in total offense, 228-215. The Mariners outrushed the Cougars, 77-7.
Heaslip was 14-of-22 passing for 138 yards. Senior Wyatt Walker led Marine City defensively with nine tackles.
This was the sixth state title in 10 seasons overall for GRCC coach Todd Kolster, who is now 112-12 at the Cougars’ helm. They also won titles under him in 2010, 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2020. GRCC’s first came in 1987.
Kolster said the Cougars made great strides from the start of this season.
“It’s a pretty surreal thing for these guys up here – just unbelievably proud of them for so much that they’ve accomplished this year,” he said. “This team probably has come as far as any football team in a season that I’ve coached.
“Just coming together, learning what it takes, getting experience, understanding each other, fighting, competing. That’s a process and we were far, far away with them at the beginning of the season. To come here and be able to get this done, the credit goes 100 percent to our seniors.”
It was an emotional farewell for Passinault. He carried on the strong QB play provided by Silveri, who is a college prospect and led the Cougars to Finals titles in 2019 and 2020.
As a passer, Passinault proved more than capable in his own right. He threw for 2,307 yards and 37 TDs this season.
“This is it. That will probably be the last time I ever play football, so it’s just crazy to think that that’s the last time I’ll play specifically with these people,” Passinault said. “ … It’s just crazy. As a kid, you just dream about this. And to have it happen, it’s just a surreal feeling – and having dreams come true, it’s crazy.”
PHOTOS (Top) Grand Rapids Catholic Central’s Will Smith (73) hoists teammate Nolan Ziegler as they celebrate during Friday’s Division 5 championship win. (Middle) A host of GRCC and Marine City players stack up to a standstill. (Photos by Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)
Sparked by Offense Switch, Summerfield Sets Record-Breaking Scoring Pace
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
October 29, 2024
Dylan Szegedi might only be in his second season as a head varsity football coach, but he knows when to pull the plug on an offensive scheme.
A change from the veer to a version of the gun-T has been the catalyst behind Petersburg-Summerfield’s 8-1 season, the best at the Monroe County school in more than a decade.
“I really love the veer. I’ve seen it work very well,” Szegedi said. “It just didn’t work for us. We always say we were trying to put a round peg through a square hole. It just didn’t jell with our guys, and we were smart enough to realize it.”
The Bulldogs went 5-4 last season but missed the playoffs for the second straight. With several second- and third-year starting seniors back, Szegedi decided to change offenses despite having spent nearly all his years coaching the veer. He and his coaching staff started researching offenses and landed on one that is the mastermind of a coach in Alabama that puts a lot of YouTube videos together and travels around the country talking about his offensive concepts.
“This offense is perfect for our guys,” Szegedi said. “It’s a good mix of running and passing. It’s a good mix of spread but still some downhill-style run concepts. It fits our athletes to a T. It is a spread-T concept, wing-T running concepts with a spread flair to it. It was exactly what we needed.”
Heading into Friday’s home Division 8 playoff game against Manchester – the first hosted by Summerfield since 2015 – the Bulldogs are one point shy of the school record for points scored in a season. Since a 20-14 win over Ottawa Lake Whiteford in Week 5, Summerfield has scored 48, 62, 70 and 58 points in victories. The 70 points against Vanlue, Ohio, was a single-game school record.
“It’s come together seamlessly. The proof is in the pudding. We have done great, and hopefully we will continue to do so,” Szegedi said.
The new offense suits quarterback Trace Secor much better.
“I like this one,” Secor said. “It fits our style of play and the players we have. It complements us.”
Secor has passed for 1,248 yards and 21 touchdowns.
Senior receiver Tyler Dafoe has 743 yards and 12 touchdowns receiving. Bruising tight end Brenden Myshock has six touchdown receptions, and big-play Eli VanHuysen has caught 18 passes for 391 yards and another six touchdowns.
Senior running back Mitchell Gomulinski has had a tremendous season as well. Through nine games, he has rushed for 1,398 yards, averaging more than nine per carry. He has scored 17 touchdowns.
“Mitchell is he is our emotional leader,” Szegedi said. “He keeps everybody going and is the guy the other people look for to set the example. He’s worked very hard. I’m just proud of what he was able to do.”
The Summerfield defense has been rock-solid too. Since halftime of the Whiteford game, the Bulldogs have allowed just two touchdowns over 18 quarters. Gomulinski has 80 tackles. Dafoe and Gabe Ostrosky have five interceptions apiece.
The biggest win came against Whiteford, which played in MHSAA Finals in 2022 and 2023. It propelled the Bulldogs to the Tri-County Conference championship.
“When we beat Whiteford, that really changed the attitude of a lot of our guys,” Szegedi said. “Not that they didn’t believe before, but after that victory, I think we just started believing even more. It gave them affirmation that if we could beat them, we could hang with anybody. It gave them the belief that, ‘Hey, maybe we are pretty good.’”
The community has rallied behind the team. At a watch party Sunday when the MHSAA released the playoff pairings, about 150 parents, students and other community members met in the high school cafeteria.
“There is talk about how they are going to decorate the town and decorate the stadium,” Szegedi said. “Last Friday the stadium was packed. That’s the way it should be.”
The Oregon, Ohio, native graduated from Toledo St. Francis in 2011 where he played football and was on the Knights swim team. He then continued at Wayne State University and was a two-time Division II national champion diver, earning All-America honors eight times. He was the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Diver of the Year multiple times and was inducted into the Wayne State Athletic Hall of Fame.
After college he came home and decided he wanted to get into coaching football. He called his former freshman coach at St. Francis, Geoff Skibinski, and joined the coaching staff.
Since then, he and Skibinski have coached at multiple stops together. When Szegedi was hired at Summerfield in 2023, his first call was to Skibinski, who runs the Summerfield offense.
“He and I work well together,” Szegedi said. “We have a good trust in one another.”
Summerfield’s 8-1 record is the best for the school since 2010, which was also the last time the Bulldogs won a conference championship.
Szegedi is glad to see the success the 11 seniors are enjoying.
“These are guys who have played a ton of varsity football,” he said. “It’s fun to see all of the time they spent in the summer running and all of the extra lifting pay off. They are guys who deserve it. They’ve worked very hard and deserve the success they are now experiencing.”
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) Petersburg Summerfield’s Mitchell Gomulinski (23) prepares to take on a defender from Erie Mason this season. (Middle) Bulldogs quarterback Trace Secor considers his options from the pocket. (Below) Summerfield coach Dylan Szegedi. (Action photos by Kendra Dafoe; Szegedi photo by Doug Donnelly.)