Sand Creek's Muck Making His Move
August 16, 2018
By Doug Donnelly
Special for Second Half
SAND CREEK – Alec Muck doesn’t take for granted that he’s one of the fastest athletes in the state.
It just makes him want to become faster.
“I’ve always had speed,” said the Sand Creek senior. “I guess you could say I was blessed with speed. But I train hard, too. I do a lot of stuff on my own, I work with a personal trainer and I lift. It motivates me.”
Muck is a five-time MHSAA Finals track champion and has rushed for more than 2,600 career yards for the Aggies’ varsity football team. As he prepares for his senior season on the football field, he said he’s healthy and ready to go out a winner.
“I just want to go out and play hard and give it my all,” he said. “I’m going to do whatever it takes for my team. High school football is so different than anything else. I want to leave it all out there.”
Muck has a future as a college athlete. He’s just not sure in which sport. This summer, he went on a multi-state, multi-campus recruiting tour during which he blazed to a 4.3-second 40-yard time in Columbus, Ohio.
“That definitely caught the attention of a few coaches,” he said. “I kept my time around that 4.3 all summer.”
Other stops on the tour included Louisville, Cincinnati, Findlay and Western Michigan University. The 5-foot-10, 175-pound speedster doesn’t have any formal offers to play college football, but he expects that to change this season.
“I have a passion for both track and football,” he said. “But, I love the grind of football and everything about the game. If I could choose, I’d probably say football. I’ve always wanted to play at the Division I level.”
Muck was part of the Sand Creek varsity football team as a freshman. He blossomed into a weapon as a sophomore. In the third game that season, against Whitmore Lake, he carried the ball 11 times for 277 yards and five touchdowns. It remains his most productive game of his career. In all seven Tri-County Conference games that year, he rushed for at least 100 yards. He went on to rush for 1,505 yards as a sophomore, racking up nearly 2,000 all-purpose yards and 26 touchdowns.
His junior season saw a slight dip in his carries, but he still averaged more than seven yards per rush and came up two yards short of 1,000. He started the season spending some time at quarterback. That experiment ended early in the season, however, and he expects to line up at several different spots on the field this year – but not quarterback.
“I like running back,” he said. “That’s where I’ve played since my Pop Warner days. I like to run and see the whole field. Running with the football is way different than running the track. You have to know when to go only 50 percent, so you know where to make your cut, then explode. You have to have more lateral movement.”
Sand Creek coach Scott Gallagher said the Aggies need to find more and creative ways to get Muck the football.
“He’s explosive,” said Gallagher, in his second season leading the program. “We have to put him in different positions and get him the football in a lot of different ways. He’s had the best camp he’s had since I’ve coached him.”
Muck causes headaches for opposing coaches. He is a threat to score every time he touches the ball.
“Obviously Alec has tremendous speed; however, his ability to take over and change a game is underrated,” said Ottawa Lake Whiteford coach Jason Mensing. “His imprint on the TCC will be lasting.”
Gallagher said Muck sets high expectations for himself.
“He’s hard on himself,” Gallagher said. “He is very driven to be successful, and he wants to that success to rub off on his teammates.”
Muck’s training has involved a lot of speed drills – often on his own. His weightlifting is for strength and maintaining speed, not bulking up.
“My normal warm-ups are low sprints, not long-distance running,” he said. “When I run the short sprints, I set a goal for each sprint and try and beat that time. I run for time.”
Prior to the Regional track meet this spring, Muck injured his hamstring. He took a week off running before the Lower Peninsula Division 4 Finals, but the break didn’t slow him as he won both the 100 and 200 dashes. He won the same events as a sophomore and won the 200 as a freshman. His championship winning times this spring were 10.98 seconds in the 100 and 22.02 in the 200.
“I was really careful warming up at the state meet and, in the preliminaries, I ran easy, just so I could get to the final,” he said. “Once I got there, I knew I could do it.”
Throughout a summer of football camps and 7-on-7s, Muck also attended physical therapy for the hamstring. He said he’s now at 100 percent and ready to start football – and go out with a bang.
“This is the most dedicated the team has been since I’ve been playing,” he said. “The offseason training, the commitment to the weight room, it’s all there. I’m just ready to go out there and lead by example. It’s time to play football.”
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 Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTO: Sand Creek running back Alec Muck is a five-time MHSAA Finals track champion with more than 2,600 career rushing yards. He's healthy and ready for a breakout senior year of football. (Photo by Mike Dickie.)
North Central Extends Dominance with 37th-Straight Win, 3rd-Straight Title
By
Jason Juno
Special for MHSAA.com
November 19, 2022
MARQUETTE – What a run it’s been for North Central.
The Jets haven’t lost a game over the last three years and very few, if any of those games, have been close. They’ve won them all by multiple touchdowns and just three games have finished with a margin under 30 points. Most have been won by a lot more.
Their opponent in Saturday’s Division 2 championship game, Mendon, brought a strong tradition of its own, with 12 previous Finals appearances.
But this is North Central’s era, and that’s no secret. So imagine what it must do to a team’s psyche when that juggernaut returns the opening kickoff and adds another touchdown before a full minute runs off the clock.
The Jets turned that 14-0 lead into a 66-26 win for their third consecutive – and fifth total – 8-player championship Saturday at the Superior Dome. They also won a state-record 37th straight game.
“It’s gotta be part of the mystique and part of what these kids built,” North Central coach Leo Gorzinski said. “You want to have a two-touchdown lead in their head before you get off that bus. When you come out there and do that, set that tone, of course it’s going to get in their mind.”
And North Central did it with standout quarterback, and reigning Associated Press Player of the Year Luke Gorzinski, playing through what the Jets suspect is an ACL injury.
It was Elijah Gorzinski who returned the opening kickoff 85 yards to put North Central on the board just 11 seconds into the contest. Mendon muffed the ensuing kickoff and North Central’s kicker, Adrian Mercier, recovered. Two plays later, Lane Gorzinski caught a 14-yard Luke Gorzinski pass for a touchdown and a 14-0 Jets lead 50 seconds into the game.
And North Central didn’t let up.
The Jets scored two more touchdowns in the first quarter, one on a 36-yard run by Dillon Raab and the other a 36-yard pass from Luke Gorzinski to Lane Gorzinski to make it 28-0.
Luke Gorzinski threw two TD passes in the second quarter, a 30-yarder to Dylan Plunger and another 20 yards to Jordan Messenger for a 41-6 lead at the half.
That opening kick return that set the tone came after North Central waited and waited for the D-1 title game to get over. The Jets went from amped up to play to the concession stand getting brats.
“We were flat; they were ready to take a nap,” Coach Gorzinski said. “Once that (return) happened, it was game on from there.”
That made four touchdown passes in the half for Gorzinski, who is explosive getting to the edge normally, but not Saturday with his injury. Leo said he wouldn’t get it checked out before the game because he just wanted to play, but Leo fears it will be an ACL injury once diagnosed.
“Thank God they didn’t catch on for a whole half that Luke Gorzinski can’t run,” Coach Gorzinski said. “He never ran a single time, and they never adjusted or blitzed him. I’ll praise God for that. Because if they would have blitzed him, I would have pulled him. That, for me, was the single thing – we knew they had a weak pass defense.”
Gorzinski ran for one touchdown in the second half, from a yard out. He caught a 33-yard TD pass and Lane Gorzinski ran 38 yards for six.
Jacob and Lane Gorzinski picked up the slack running the ball with 132 yards and 90 yards, respectively, with both getting eight carries. Four receivers caught touchdowns – Lane Gorzinski, Plunger, Messenger and Luke Gorzinski.
“If you watch what Jacob Gorzinski did today (on the ground), that’s Luke to a T, that’s Luke’s specialty. With Jacob Gorzinski stepping up, with Lane stepping up, with Dylan Plunger stepping up, the heart that Dillon Raab showed up there tonight, all of them, Max Nason, Jordan Messenger, Andrew Weber,” Coach Gorzinski said.
Luke Gorzinski finished the day with the single yard on the ground, and only that one carry, but he was 13 of 24 passing for 207 yards and four touchdowns.
He didn’t want to talk about how much it hurt.
“It’s Luke, man, he can play through anything,” Jacob Gorzinski said. “He’s a tough kid.”
Any way you slice it, Luke helped boost his team to a third-straight title.
“You come into this game knowing we could probably get the edge on these guys and we had good running out of our trip set, but with a bum wheel, we were limited,” he said. “We came out throwing a little more and put faith in our pass catchers, and they got it done.”
They made so many big plays, the kick return, long runs by the other guys, those big pass plays. It’s hard for an opponent to keep up.
“We did a lot of good things; we just gave up too many big plays. That’s really been our Achilles in our losses is giving up those big plays. But I give them a lot of the credit – they made the plays, they were making plays, ” Mendon coach Robert Kretschman said. “(Gorzinski) can sling the ball, he just put the ball on the money. They’re physical on the edge. That was probably one of the best perimeter blocking teams I’ve seen in a long time, 11-man, 8-man, they get after it. … Their physicality on the edge is something I don’t think we were quite prepared for.”
Mendon had an explosive player of its own in junior back Jack McCaw. He ran for three of the Hornets’ touchdowns, a 30-yarder in the second quarter to get on the board, a 58-yard rush to start the second half and a 70-yard score a few minutes later. Evan Lukeman scored Mendon’s final TD.
“We have Jack coming back. We’re excited about that,” Kretschman said.
North Central wants to keep its run going next year, but it won’t be easy after losing such a decorated group of seniors headlined by Luke Gorzinski.
Now they can savor all that they’ve done the last three years.
“We came out here to do it again; that was the goal for this season,” Jacob Gorzinski said.
And nobody was able to stop them.
PHOTOS (Top) Powers North Central’s Lane Gorzinski (6) and Dylan Plunger (10) celebrate an early touchdown Saturday at the Superior Dome. (Middle) Mendon’s Jack McCaw (21) bursts into an opening. (Below) The Jets line up on offense, led by quarterback Luke Gorzinski. (Photos by Cara Kamps.)