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.)
Working Together to Give Teams Their Best, Dechow & Crew Win Every Time Out
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
October 22, 2021
Football historians can debate this forever.
Tonight at Rodes Field in Kingsley – perhaps for the first time in Michigan High School Athletic Association history – three teams with perfect records will meet each other on the same football field in the same game.
Two of them, Traverse City St. Francis, and Kingsley, are playing for the right to boast of an undefeated regular season and an outright conference championship. The third team and its captain — better known as the referee crew — has already been assigned a first-round playoff game by the MHSAA.
Where they will go hasn’t been determined, but Joe Dechow’s crew knows it will referee at least two rounds this postseason. The veteran crew already has assignments from MHSAA but just like the schools, the crew is waiting for the postseason pairings to be announced Sunday.
Dechow, the crew leader and an MHSAA 41-year veteran official, will put on his white cap and be ready for the 7 p.m. kickoff tonight knowing Kingsley/St. Francis is a big, big game. Dechow’s crew members will go into kickoff confident they know at least one team that will win, just like every game they’ve done together for about the last 20 years are so.
“We always win,” Dechow jested.
But how officials define their victories is different, Dechow explained.
Taking the field with Dechow tonight will be umpire Joe Johnson, back judge Roark Pargeon, line judge Brett Spalding, head linesman Jeff Bretzke, side judge Peter Moss, and field judge Rick Zych. All seven officials worked together in the Betsie Valley Officials Association for many years and have continued together as a crew with the Northern Sport Officials Association after the two combined a few years ago.
“We don’t win or lose, but we’re a still a team,” he said. “One of the great things about working with the same guys for years and years is you know where people are going to be, and you know how they’re going to take care of things.
“It is a trust factor, ‘cuz it’s a team.”
Dechow’s team has taken the field every week for decades for the benefit of student-athletes. Moss has been an MHSAA registered official for 44 years. Spalding and Zych have been registered 36 years. Bretzke, Johnson and Paragon follow with 22, 20 and 16 years of MHSAA service, respectively. All officiate at least two sports.
Dechow was on the wrestling and football teams at Maple City Glen Lake High School. Upon graduating, he started officiating wrestling — at the age of just 18.
“That got interesting, you know, because you go from a player to a ref all at once and all these old coaches are looking at you like ‘Who are you, kid?’” Dechow recalled.
Dechow has been officiating football for 36 years and was a registered wrestling official for 15. There have been a few times he’s considered giving up the white cap that signals he’s the game’s referee. (The white cap originated to benefit television viewers for college and the National Football League.)
The referee has general oversight and control of the game. Dechow is the final authority for the score, the number of a down in case of a disagreement, and all rule interpretations when a debate arises among the other officials. He’s also the only official who wears a white hat; all the other officials wear black hats.
The “white hat” also announces all penalties and confers with the offending team’s captain, monitors the quarterback area during the game, requests the linesmen to bring the yardage chains in for first down measurements and notifies the head coach of player ejections.
Dechow was ready to put his white hat down for a while when he first attempted to give up refereeing due to family and career demands. He was planning to get out and was asked to help another crew for a “few” games.
“I was going to just do a couple of games, and then somebody else quit and I wound up getting back into it,” he said. “There was another white hat that had left just before the season started … so all of sudden I started hearing ‘Do you still have a white hat? Would you like to maybe …’
“So I did.”
Dechow’s crew has seen a lot of changes in MHSAA football during their careers. Rules to improve safety have been their favorites. They have also seen the addition of 8-player football and the use of two-way radios.
But it’s positive changes in sportsmanlike conduct among players, coaches and fans Dechow excitedly singles out.
Everyone, Dechow notes, is noticing the lower number of recruits joining the current officials in all MHSAA sports.
“More people appreciate the fact that we have to be out there, and we’re not out there to get anybody,” he said. “By and large the coaches are great.
“Of course they are emotional and of course they are pulling for their team and they’re going to argue for the right outcome for them,” he continued. “Over the last several years we have seen an absolutely marked change in people – spectators, players and coaches — all providing a lot more respect the officials.”
The crew had tonight’s game on its schedule at the beginning of the season. The guys couldn’t help looking ahead to how big a game it could be.
St. Francis coach Josh Sellers and Kingsley coach Tim Wooer probably had a better idea of how big a game it could be when they — and football enthusiasts all over Northern Michigan — likely circled it on the calendar. Kingsley won last year’s match 36-23 at Thirlby Field, the Gladiators’ home turf.
This year the Stags host with the Northern Michigan Football Conference’s Legends division championship on the line.
“Sports mean a lot to kids,” Dechow pointed out. “They meant a lot to us.
“That’s why we’re out there.”
Tom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.
PHOTOS (Top) “White hat” Joe Dechow talks things over with crew members Roark Pargeon (left) and Brett Spalding during this season’s Mancelona/LeRoy Pine River varsity football game. (Middle) Those three plus Jeff Bretzke (middle) and Joe Johnson (second from right) huddle up. (Below) Dechow and Johnson confer with Mancelona coach Dan Derrer. (Photos by Miles Postema.)