Record Win Streak Setters Meet in Opener
September 4, 2019
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Friday’s varsity football season opener between Ithaca and Hudson at Alma College was the first time the teams had met on the field.
But the programs have been mentioned in the same conversations concerning record success frequently over the last decade. They are the only programs statewide that have won more than 44 consecutive games during the state’s long history of the sport.
The Hudson teams from 1968-1975 put together a 72-game winning streak that remains the MHSAA record and fourth longest in national high school football history. The Tigers’ streak ended at the first MHSAA Finals with a loss to Ishpeming in the inaugural Class C championship game.
Beginning on opening night 2010 and until a loss in the 2014 Division 6 Final, Ithaca mounted a serious challenge to Hudson’s accomplishment, winning 69 straight games to rank second in Michigan and tie for seventh on the national winning streak list. The Yellowjackets’ run included four straight Division 6 championships. Coincidentally, both teams won their first MHSAA Finals titles in 2010 – Hudson won Division 7 that fall.
Ithaca won Friday’s first matchup against Hudson, 38-24, and the teams came together after for this photo below (and partially above).
Journalist’s Schools to Remember Him
Southwestern Michigan is mourning the loss of Sturgis Journal sports editor Corky Emrick, who died unexpectedly Aug. 19.
The high schools he covered for two decades also will be honoring the memory of their ardent supporter.
Bronson, Burr Oak, Centreville, Constantine, Colon, Mendon, Sturgis, Three Rivers and White Pigeon all will be wearing helmet stickers and uniform patches with “CE” in green and yellow during this 2019-20 school year.
Emrick joined the Journal staff fulltime in 1999 and took over as sports editor in 2008, according to the paper’s report after his death. Click to read that Sturgis Journal piece in full.
Moment: 'The Catch' Saves Rockets' Day
October 22, 2020
By John Johnson
MHSAA Director of Broadcast Properties
In every playbook there’s a gadget, a trick play that’s only meant to be used to save the day, to be used at the perfect moment. When they work the way they’re drawn up.
But in this case, it didn’t work the way it was drawn up, and it still won the game.
In the 1992 MHSAA Class A Football Playoff Final at the Pontiac Silverdome, Muskegon Reeths-Puffer was in that moment and coach Pete Kutches called the play in the final minute.
With 32 seconds left, Geoff Zietlow pitched to Demarkeo Hill, who handed the ball to Luke Bates on the reverse. Bates pitched back to Zietlow, who lofted a pass downfield. Tipped at the 10-yard line by a defender, the ball landed in the hands of an alert Stacey Starr, who dashed into the end zone with the game-winning touchdown and Reeths-Puffer’s first MHSAA football championship by a 21-18 score over Walled Lake Western.
Just like they drew it up. Right.
Starr had missed practice that week when “the play” was practiced, and with no one to block, he headed downfield. And as fate would have it, he headed straight into Finals lore.
“I saw two guys going up for the ball. It was Scott (Goudie) and a guy from Walled Lake Western, and they knocked it up the air. I was like ‘I can get to it.’ I got to it, and honestly have no recollection of anything else but being in the end zone,” Starr told the MHSAA Second Half when the 1992 team had a reunion at the MHSAA Football Finals in 2017.
“It’s a special part of our life,” Starr said. “Not that we would ever want to get away from it, but it’s something that will never escape us. Even when it’s time for us to pass on, at our funerals, someone will probably talk about this.”
It wasn’t a particularly pretty game. The Rockets had to overcome losing four fumbles, and Walled Lake Western struggled offensively and turned the ball over twice. The scoring started with a safety for the Warriors when the snap on an intended Reeths-Puffer punt flew out of the end zone. Still, it was a one-point game at halftime, 15-14, in favor of Western.
Early in the final period, the Warriors got a 32-yard field goal from Travis Ilacqua to pad their lead to four. After Western turned the ball over on downs with 1:40 left near midfield, Zietlow hit on a couple of passes to get the Rockets to the 37-yard line and set the stage for what has become known in Michigan high school football history as “The Catch.”
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PHOTO by Gary Shook.