Title IX at 50: Royal Oak's Finch Leading Way on Football Field
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
November 3, 2021
Elyse Finch started playing football when she was 9 years old. She came up through the community league, played junior varsity as a freshman and sophomore and joined the varsity toward the end of sophomore year on the way to moving up as a junior this fall.
So playing the “boys” sport isn’t new to her, and it’s not as rare as many still think.
True, the girls who play high school football in Michigan make up a very small percentage of the more than 32,000 participants in the sport each fall. But 138 girls played in 2020, the fifth straight season with more than 100 taking part.
And Finch’s contributions to the Royal Oak football team are providing a path forward in more ways than one.
She just completed her first season as a starting offensive guard for a Division 1 school with more than 1,500 students, in part helping to open up running lanes for her teammates carrying the ball.
“I do feel kinda special sometimes, knowing I’m doing something that a lot of people have been reluctant to do,” she said. “I just really want to change that, change the view of how people see females in a sport like this.”
Her mom made the initial suggestion to give football a try, and Finch fell for the sport right away as she learned the game at the youth levels. The jump to high school a few years ago was similarly smooth.
Among family, Grandma was nervous – but Finch’s two older brothers also have given her tons of support.
As soon as Elyse met her coaches, she realized how much she adored them. “They believe in my every day, and they tell me they believe in me, and that makes the sport that much better,” she said.
Finch had grown up with some of her teammates, and “they treat me just like everybody else.”
And Finch’s other friends “haven’t seen me any other way.”
Just like any offensive guard, she loves the satisfaction of getting a good block. She loves pulling – running around the line and ahead of a play instead of blocking straight ahead – and finding that defender waiting and “just coming and blowing them up and ruining their day is just so much fun.”
But she does want people to see female football players differently – until they see everyone on the field the same.
“I feel like when people first look at me or just any girls on a football team, their first baseline thought is doubtful; they doubt her/me,” Finch said. “But then a lot of the time I or any girls on the football team, we prove them wrong.
“I want to change the view so when you first see them on the football team, you’re like, ‘Dang, she must be awesome.’ I want to change the view so that instead of starting it off being negative … the expectation is no different than for a guy.”
Second Half's weekly Title IX Celebration posts are sponsored by Michigan Army National Guard.
Previous Title IX at 50 Spotlights
Oct. 26: Coach Clegg Sets Championship Standard at Grand Blanc - Read
Oct. 19: Rockford Girls Set Pace, Hundreds After Have Continued to Chase - Read
Oct. 12: Bedford Volleyball Pioneer Continues Blazing Record-Setting Trail - Read
Oct. 5: Warner Paved Way to Legend Status with Record Rounds - Read
Sept. 28: Taylor Kennedy Gymnasts Earn Fame as 1st Champions - Read
Sept. 21: Portage Northern Star Byington Becomes Play-by-Play Pioneer - Read
Sept. 14: Guerra/Groat Legacy Continues to Serve St. Philip Well - Read
Sept. 7: Best-Ever Conversation Must Include Leland's Glass - Read
Aug. 31: We Will Celebrate Many Who Paved the Way - Read
PHOTOS courtesy of Fenech Photography (top action photo) and Elyse Finch.
Tradition-Filled Tri-County Conference Kicking Off Final Season of 11-Player Football
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
August 20, 2024
The bus driver went too fast.
It was fall of 1979, and Ottawa Lake Whiteford football coach John Hoover had come up with a plan for his Bobcats to dress in their own locker room, warm up on their own field and arrive at the Petersburg Summerfield football field for a Tri-County Conference battle just moments before kickoff.
The plan was working, except the bus driver went a little too fast.
“I don’t remember when I decided we would do it,” Hoover said. “But the night before our game, I got in my car, and I drove about the speed that I thought the bus driver would take from Whiteford to Summerfield. I had a stopwatch to time it just right. I didn’t tell anybody.”
The ploy was meant to rattle the opponent, perhaps make the other team lose focus on the game at hand.
“It’s only like 20 minutes between schools, so warming up at Whiteford and driving was no different than warming up at Summerfield and walking out to the field and waiting through the national anthem and the coin toss,” Hoover thought.
The scheme was working to perfection, but when Hoover determined the arrival would be too soon, he had the bus driver pull over just outside of Petersburg. Finally, the bus made its final trek and arrived.
On the first play from scrimmage, Summerfield fumbled, Whiteford recovered and scored a few plays later – the only touchdown of the game in a 7-0 Bobcats win.
“I don’t know if it worked,” Hoover said. “But, when the bus got near, when we were driving up the road where the Summerfield stadium was, the head coach (LeRoy Wood) was out in the middle of the street, looking down the road, looking for us. I knew right then that it probably worked. It wouldn’t have worked if we had cell phones like they do today.”
Summerfield and Whiteford have played some spirited games over the years as rivals in the Tri-County Conference. Unfortunately, the season that starts next week will be the last one for 11-player football in the TCC.
With the makeup of the league changing over the last decade or so and the move to 8-player football for three league schools, this is the final season for TCC football after 51 years of small-town competition.
The league has just three remaining schools playing 11-player football – Whiteford, Summerfield and Erie Mason. There is no TCC football schedule for 2025 and beyond, although the league itself will stay together for other sports.
“The 2024 season will be the last season that a TCC football champion is recognized in the current league format for football,” Britton Deerfield athletic director Erik Johnson said.
It will be the end of an era in southeast Michigan.
The league was formed in 1973 with schools from Washtenaw, Lenawee and Monroe Counties.
Several schools have taken turns at the top of the conference. Sand Creek has the most league championships, winning 15 between 1977 and 2011 – 14 of them under head coach Ernie Ayers. Morenci (9), Whiteford (7), Summerfield (7) and Clinton (7) have hoisted their fair share of league football trophies. Ayers is the winningest coach in league history, going 174-71 in league games over 38 seasons. Sand Creek left the TCC in football only after last season and will compete in the Big 8 Conference this season.
Whiteford is the only league school to win an MHSAA Finals football championship, but Sand Creek, Morenci and Clinton all have appeared in state championship games.
Both times Clinton played in Finals, Mathew Sexton was the star. Sexton would go on to play four years at Eastern Michigan University and has been in multiple NFL training camps and played in the XFL. He’s the league record holder for touchdowns and points scored.
“I loved being in the TCC,” Sexton said. “It was great competition and was always a blast. Played with some great players, coaches and love the atmosphere each game would bring. Clinton and the TCC made me who I am today. I’m thankful for the experience it gave me.”
Summerfield graduate Jamie LaRocca was an all-state running back in the league, coached in the league and later watched his sons play football in the league as student-athletes at Whiteford.
“There were some great games, great battles,” LaRocca said. “Most of all, it was competitive. Sand Creek was good, Summerfield had good teams and Morenci had some great teams. Different teams always seemed to make their run.”
Britton and Deerfield were two charter members of the TCC, along with Ann Arbor St. Thomas (now known as Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard), Summerfield and Adrian Madison. During the 1990s, however, Britton and Deerfield formed a co-op and became Britton-Deerfield. They later officially combined high schools to become Britton Deerfield
BD had a dominating run on the football field in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Among the players who played for BD teams were Dan Musielewicz and Dustin Beurer. Beurer is now the head coach at Division II Northwood University while Musielewicz is head coach at Division III University of Olivet.
Beurer said he remembers as a high school student going to class with others from rivals Sand Creek or Madison at the Lenawee County Vocational Tech school all week, then playing against them on Friday nights.
“I get goosebumps thinking about those days,” he said. “It was small-town football at its finest back in the day.”
Brad Maska, now the head boys basketball coach at Onsted, was the BD quarterback when that team won multiple TCC titles.
“It is sad,” Maska said of the end of the TCC football era. “It truly was a great conference that produced a lot of great teams, coaches, and players throughout the years.
“The best part of the conference was the small-school pride from the communities. Friday night playing at Sand Creek or Whiteford when I was in school was always the only thing going on in town and the communities always got around us, and the atmosphere for small-school football was amazing.”
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) Clinton’s Mathew Sexton scored more touchdowns in Tri-County Conference games than any player in league history. (Middle) Thomas Eitniear was the quarterback and Jason Mensing head coach at Whiteford when the Bobcats became the first school in Tri-County Conference history to win an MHSAA Finals football championship. (Below) Ernie Ayers coached at Sand Creek for 38 years and won 14 Tri-County Conference championships. (Photos courtesy of the Adrian Daily Telegram and Monroe News.)