Oscoda Teams Rise From Past to Perfection
February 8, 2019
By Chris Dobrowolski
Special for Second Half
OSCODA — The tide has turned in Oscoda.
After struggling year after year in boys and girls basketball, the Owls are enjoying quite a turnaround on the hardcourt this winter as both teams enter the final month of the regular season undefeated — just one of two schools in the state to be collectively unbeaten in boys and girls hoops.
The boys team boasts a record of 15-0 and is 9-0 in the North Star League Big Dipper division, while the girls squad has cruised to a 12-0 mark, including going 5-0 in league play.
It hasn’t always been that way, however.
“There’s a lot of years where we really struggled,” said Oscoda varsity boys basketball coach Seth Alda, a 2003 graduate of the school who is in his seventh year at the helm. “It wasn’t that long ago. There were a lot of years where we not only struggled but a lot of teams beat us by quite a bit.”
The boys team has reached a stretch where it has failed to win a league championship in 27 years or District title in 18 straight seasons, while the girls program became infamous for having lost 89 consecutive games at one point.
“We went almost four and a half years without winning a game,” said Oscoda varsity girls basketball coach Mark Toppi, who took over the girls program four years ago. “They had only had a couple wins in the past three years before I took the job.”
The Owls had been caught in a rut for most of the last few decades, partly due to a precipitous decline in the school’s enrollment after Wurtsmith Air Force Base was decommissioned in 1993. As families left the area, Oscoda became a shell of itself. At one time Class B playing within the North East Michigan Conference, the school was unable to remain competitive with its league rivals as its student population was slashed in half. It eventually made sense to leave the NEMC, and Oscoda toiled as an independent before finding a landing spot in the Huron Shores Conference, which eventually morphed into a reconfigured North Star League in 2014.
Things began to trend in the Owls’ favor last season as a group of talented and ambitious athletes started making their mark. It’s a core of players who have gotten better by working hard, dedicating themselves, including honing their games and picking up additional competition on local travel teams.
“We kind of saw it coming,” said Alda. “Last year we were 14-8, which was our first winning season in 15 years. We returned a lot of players off that team. Last year we were young, and this year we’re still young. We have a lot coming back next year too.”
The Owls’ main core consists of juniors Brayden Mallak, Gabe Kellstrom, Devin Thomas and Chance Kruse, as well as sophomores Owen Franklin and Gavin Lueck.
“We’re guard-oriented,” said Alda. “We like to get up and down the court. We press. We shoot a lot of threes. Typically, we go four out and one in — four guards and one post player. We like to push the tempo. We like to increase possessions. We’ve got three kids (Mallak, Kellstrom and Franklin) who are shooting over 35 percent — a couple of them over 40 — from the 3-point line.”
The girls team managed to come up with 13 wins a year ago despite not having a senior on the roster. That was part of the ascent from three victories in Toppi’s first season, to seven wins two years ago. The 13-9 record in 2017-18 earned Toppi the Associated Press’ Class C Coach of the Year Award.
With all that returning experience from the best girls team Oscoda had seen in years, the Owls were primed for an even better season.
“I could tell we were going to have a good year, just because of all the work they put in over the summer,” said Toppi. “We had a lot of success (last summer). We play up all the time whenever we go to team camps. We always try to play Class B or Class A schools. We take a lot of beatings in the summer. This year was the first year that we were winning against some of those schools. That was a nice sign. I try to tell them, ‘If we’re losing by 15 to a Class A school, that’s not bad.’ This year we were beating some of them.”
The Oscoda girls team has a bit more experience than the boys, with senior Katelyn Etherton in her fourth year as a starting guard. She reached the 1,000-point mark in her career earlier this year. Junior post player Lauren Langley is another key veteran who teams with Etherton, and each average close to 17 points per game. Sophomore Macy Kellstrom leads the team in steals and assists as the point guard, and classmate Izzy Hulverson is averaging a double-double in points and rebounds.
The problem the girls team has discovered is it isn’t getting pushed by the teams on its schedule. The Owls are winning by an average of 34 points per game. A 41-25 win over Tawas was the closest to date. Toppi hopes not having a close game during the regular season won’t hurt the Owls when they get to the postseason. For now, he’s just focused on getting the Owls ready for a tournament run.
“I’m just trying to get them to play hard and practice hard,” he said. “I don’t want them to look at the schedule. We’re still trying to get competition in practice and get better every day.”
The boys games have been a little less one-sided, particularly two clashes against league rival Mio. Oscoda beat the Thunderbolts both times, but one was a seven-point win in a back-and-forth game a week ago and the other was a 35-33 nail-biter earlier this season that wasn’t decided until Mallak drove the length of the court and scored on a buzzer beater.
The buzz has caught up to the Owls as the wins have continued to pile up for both teams.
“Around the school I feel like everybody’s wearing Oscoda across their chest a lot more proudly than what it was a while ago,” said Franklin. “Wherever you go, people know who you are now.
“Every practice Mr. Alda talks to us about how we could be the first in so many years to do this (or that). Early in the year we were 8-0 and he was like, ‘You’ve got a chance to go 9-0. That hasn’t happened in 30 years. He talks to us a lot about making history.”
The struggles the school endured in basketball are not forgotten, but both teams are doing their part to make better memories on the court. The girls already snapped a 48-game losing streak to nearby rival Tawas, and the boys swept the Braves for the first time in 20 years. The boys team is also close to ending that elusive conference championship drought, and both teams have their eyes on earning some District tournament hardware.
“I keep talking about how exciting it is when you get to tournament time, if you can make a run,” said Alda, who was a freshman on Oscoda’s last basketball Regional champion in 2000. “This is just a really cool thing to be a part of.”
Chris Dobrowolski has covered northern Lower Peninsula sports since 1999 at the Ogemaw County Herald, Alpena News, Traverse City Record-Eagle and currently as sports editor at the Antrim Kalkaska Review since 2016. 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) Lauren Langley, left, and Brayden Mallak have been key to Oscoda’s perfect starts; Mallak here hits the game-winning shot against Mio. (Middle) Katelyn Etherton beats everyone to the basket during a win over Lincoln Alcona. (Below) The Owls celebrate that Mio victory Dec. 13. (Photos courtesy of the Oscoda girls and boys basketball programs.)
We Will Always Remember Trojans, Lumberjacks as 114-Year-Old Rivalry Nears End
By
Ron Pesch
MHSAA historian
February 9, 2024
The MHSAA basketball record book still lacks a rivalries category. The state’s football record book offers clues to likely candidates, but without deep research, the participants and sequencing of such lists will remain unknown.
Certainly, among the candidates would be the annual boys basketball battles between Saginaw’s east side and west side – Saginaw High vs. Saginaw Arthur Hill. Come Friday, Feb. 16th, 2024, twilight falls on one of Michigan’s most intense. Because of its significance, the game will be hosted outside of a high school gymnasium.
Saginaw’s Dow Event Center will stage the final regular-season showdown between the Trojans and Lumberjacks. Titled the ‘Game of Legends,’ all 5,000 tickets for the celebration were snapped up in 20 minutes. After years of discussions, at the end of the school year, Saginaw High and Arthur Hill will combine to finalize the formation of Saginaw United High School.
Based on the research of Dave Slaggert, the series between schools began during the 1910-11 season at the Saginaw Manual Training School gymnasium. Head varsity boys basketball coach at Arthur Hill from 1996 through 2001, Slaggert spent five years compiling a book documenting the rivalry. Much of the manuscript has already been committed to paper. That includes a chapter penned by Michigan State University coaching legend Tom Izzo, who highlights the uniqueness of the crosstown rivalry, the crazy fans, and the talent that brought him regularly to town. Titled “Remember the Trojans & the Lumberjacks,” the concluding chapter awaits the results of the 2024 season.
The Beginnings
In 1889, Michigan’s State Legislature consolidated the cities of East Saginaw and Saginaw City into what we know today as Saginaw.
East Side High School opened in 1865. In 1901, West Side High School was renamed Arthur Hill, in honor of a former school board president and mayor of Saginaw City.
Football teams from Saginaw High (sometimes called Saginaw Eastern) and Arthur Hill High first met on the gridiron in 1894. In 1904, both joined Flint (Central) and two schools from Bay City to form the Saginaw Valley League. During the 1910-11 season, the boys squads from the Saginaw schools squared off on the basketball court for the first time.
“Saginaw High easily defeated the Arthur Hill High school basketball players … in the first game of the interscholastic series,” stated the Saginaw Daily News, “the final score standing 60 to 17. … (Bill) Steckert contributed 12 field baskets for the winners. … (Leo) Vondette starred for the losers.”
Perhaps it was a typo – it’s impossible to know – but the final score differed in the 1911 Saginaw yearbook – “The Aurora” – when published in the spring. “Before a large crowd of enthusiastic fans, Arthur Hill was decisively defeated in the local gym, the final count being 69 to 17, with the East Siders on the heavy end.”
The author concluded with flair and flourish: “Steckert starred for Saginaw, getting 24 points to his credit, while Vondette was the celestial light for the vanquished quintet. Dancing was enjoyed after the game.”
A week later, the Saginaw girls basketball team opened its season against the west siders. According to the yearbook, “Saginaw out-played Arthur Hill and defeated them by the score of 41-4.” The newspaper credited Leona Buck as the leading scorer, with a phenomenal 29 points.
The Inevitable Finale
The doors open at 3 p.m. for the 2024 festivities at The Dow next Friday. Fittingly, the Saginaw girls team will tip off the action on the court at 5 o’clock. The girls programs already have consolidated, and the Phoenix of Saginaw United will face Flint Carman-Ainsworth – a school that consolidated in 1986. The Hill and High contest is scheduled for 7 p.m.
“It’s really going to be a big deal,” said Slaggert, thrilled by the prospect. “Saginaw’s going all out for this. They’re trying to do it up in style.”
The wrap-up comes a decade after what, initially, looked like the end.
On Feb. 15, 2014, Detroit Free Press sportswriter Mick McCabe wrote about the expected unification.
“Saginaw and Saginaw Arthur Hill likely met for the last time ever in the regular season Friday,” he wrote. Saginaw had just knocked off the Lumberjacks, the No. 2 team in McCabe’s weekly ranking of the state’s top teams.
“The Saginaw-Arthur Hill basketball rivalry is the best in the state, so you shouldn’t be surprised when the underdog wins. But Saginaw (11-6) was coming off consecutive losses to Midland and Midland Dow for maybe the first time ever.”
The school district was expected to announce the closure of Saginaw High that following Monday, merging its students into Arthur Hill. The move would mean a new school name, new school colors, and a new nickname.
Like many urban centers across the country, outbound migration of both jobs and people, combined with plunging birth rates, had altered the demographics of cities, and the education landscape.
“In just five decades, the city's population dropped from nearly 100,000 in the 1960s to fewer than 52,000 by the 2010 census,” stated the Saginaw News in 2014. “To say it another way, Saginaw lost 48 percent of its residents during the last 50 years.”
McCabe cut to what that meant to enrollment numbers at the two schools: “In 1987, Saginaw High had over 1,800 students; it is now down to about 600. Arthur Hill had 2,395 students in ’85; it now has 973.”
Despite the defeat, McCabe predicted Arthur Hill to be among the final four Class A teams still standing that season when the annual MHSAA Tournament shifted to Michigan State’s Breslin Center. But in the craziness of March, the Trojans again took down Arthur Hill in the Districts, 53-51.
Adding to the madness, the expected consolidation didn’t happen. A recommendation by a Saginaw interim superintendent to close Saginaw High found no school board support.
With the potential consolidation still hovering, one year later sportswriter Bill Khan recalled other recent departures from Michigan’s classic basketball landscape in an article for the StateChamps! Sports Network:
“The Saginaw-Arthur Hill rivalry is at risk of going the way of other great urban rivalries – such as Flint Central-Flint Northern, Pontiac Central-Pontiac Northern, Lapeer East-Lapeer West, Detroit Cooley-Detroit Southwestern, Detroit Mackenzie-Detroit Redford, Detroit Kettering-Detroit Northeastern, Detroit Miller-Detroit Northern and Detroit Southeastern-Detroit Eastern, that have ended in years past due to school closures and consolidations.”
Arthur Hill downed the Trojans twice during the 2014-15 regular season league action, and again in postseason District play, before finishing the year as Class A runner-up, and the holding pattern of the planned school merger continued.
Enrollment numbers continued to drop at both schools and after much community and school board debate, construction on a brand-new five-story Saginaw United High School began in 2022.
A Celebration of Statistics
The state basketball tournament kicked off in 1917. Over 107 years, on only two occasions – in 1943 during World War II, and in 2020, due to COVID-19 – the tournament was not completed.
Slaggert breaks down the City of Saginaw School District’s incredible basketball history in a quick series of numbers.
“47-36-18-8,” said Slaggert, stressing a bullet point of a well-rehearsed pitch, breaking out the incredible success of the two schools come tournament time.
“During those 105 tournaments, 47 times, Saginaw High (starting in 1919) or Arthur Hill (beginning in 1930) made it into the state Quarterfinals – the final eight.
“That’s almost half of the 105 possible years. And in most cases throughout that rivalry, they would have played each other in the Districts. So how many more times would they have made it if they were coming in different brackets or different directions? “
To take that further, he noted, 36 times one of those teams made it into the final four. On 18 occasions, one of the two schools reached the state title game, and on eight occasions, they emerged as MHSAA state champions.
Six of those titles were won by Saginaw High (1942, 1962, 1996, 2007,2008, 2012). Arthur Hill’s championships were won in 1944 and 2006.
“That's a pretty incredible stat for two schools in the same town, don’t you think?” Slaggert asked.
That history also points out another Slaggert challenge. As illustrated, come March the schools could, in theory, bump into each other one more time come the postseason. This year, the teams are in different Districts, and could potentially cross paths in an MHSAA Regional.
A Parade of All-Staters
Between 1938 and 2023, a combined total of 106 players from the two schools – 10 or more in each decade from the 1940s to the 2010s – have earned all-state basketball honors from The Associated Press and/or one or more of the Detroit newspapers: the Free Press, News or Times.
Since the introduction of Michigan’s Mr. Basketball award in 1981, honoring the best-of-the-best from the state’s top high school seniors, 10 players from the two schools have landed among the top five in voting: Eric Davis (AH –‘15), Maurice Jones (AH –‘10), Draymond Green (S –‘08), Dar Tucker (AH –‘07), Anthony Roberson (S –‘02), Eugene Seals (S –’00, and head coach of the United girls basketball team), Jason Richardson (AH-‘99), Jessie Drain (S –‘91) and Daryl Reed (S –‘87). Richardson won the award. Davis, Green, Tucker, Roberson, and Seals all finished second in the annual voting.
Tony Smith (S -‘74), Craig Dill (AH -‘63), Ernie Thompson (S -‘62), Webster Kirksey (S -‘51), Dick Rifenburg (AH -‘44), and Larry Savage (S -‘42) were all honored by the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan with their Retro Mr. Basketball Award when the organization sought to honor the great seniors in Michigan high school basketball from the years 1920 through 1980. Seven others – James Koger (S -‘79), Lovell Humes (S – ’63), Bill Agre (AH -‘47), Gene Glick (AH -’46), Jack Mott (AH -’45), Eddie Johnson (S – ’43) and Stanley Paskiewicz (S -’38) – were among the candidates for that award.
Based on research by Orchard Lake St. Mary’s Robin Goddard, Saginaw High is likely the state’s winningest basketball program, trailed by Benton Harbor, Kalamazoo Central and Orchard Lake St. Mary’s.
Initially, Saginaw dominated the crosstown series with the Lumberjacks. But by the 1920s Arthur Hill overcame the deficit, and by the mid-1950s the Hill had opened a wide 25-game lead in wins versus losses. But by 1975, the gap had narrowed with the Trojans just six games back in the series. And yet, the exact status of the rivalry is still unknown, as the capture of game scores is spotty going forward.
The digging to capture those missing scores continues, as does the race to game day.
Slaggert has committed to printing 1,000 copies of his book. His challenge to date has been selling copies of something that does not yet, physically, exist. As it stands, currently there are 772 pages in the book. It includes a mind-blowing 800+ photos dating as far back as 1905. The sale price is fixed at $40. That currently means the production cost per copy exceeds the retail price, so Slaggert continues to chase sponsorships to defray the printing expense.
“It’s a non-profit effort,” he noted. “If there are any profits, they go to scholarships for the new high school. All money is run through the Saginaw Community Foundation,” which makes sponsorships tax-deductible.
His favorite memory from the series is his last victory as an Arthur Hill coach. It comes from 2001.
“Saginaw High defeated us 90-37 in the second game of that season and finished with a 17-5 season record that year,” he retold. “We had a modest 10-10 season record heading into the Districts but showed lots of improvement through the season. We met again in the District Finals. Saginaw High was led by Anthony Roberson, LaMarr Woodley, Michael Thomas and Tanoris Shepard and was ranked seventh in the state. In front of a sold-out Heritage High School crowd, our kids played their hearts out and, led by Devaundre Whitson, Omar Linder, and Freddy Jackson, pulled out a 68-66 overtime win! (It’s) my greatest thrill in coaching, and most of the old-timers say it’s the greatest upset in the rivalry.”
Slaggert retired from coaching after that season, and in the years to follow, found a desire to record the history of the series.
“I have nine living coaches from Saginaw and Arthur Hill that have written a chapter for me. I have eight others that I've written on Larry Laeding, Chuck Fowler, and different coaches that are deceased,” he said. “My intent is to give something back to my community. I didn’t do this for money. I wanted this story to be passed down to future generations – people 100 years from now about Jason Richardson, Draymond Green, Ernie Thompson, Craig Dill, and all the great ones.
“It’s a labor of love for me, I’ve really enjoyed it.”
To order Slaggert's book, click for the Facebook link or visit the Saginaw Community Foundation website, click "Give Now" and select the book title as Fund. Cost is $40 with an option including shipping for $52.
PHOTOS (Top) Saginaw Eugene Seals drives against Arthur Hill’s Jason Richardson – with coach Marshall Thomas in the background – during a sold-out 1999 game at the Saginaw Civic Center. (2) Arthur Hill’s Ernie Thompson and coach Larry Laeding accept the 1962 Class A championship trophy. (3) Saginaw High’s Webster Kirksey (30) puts up a shot; he graduated in 1951. (4) Richard dunks at the final buzzer as Arthur Hill downs top-ranked Flint Northwestern in a 1999 Class A Regional matchup. (Photos collected by Dave Slaggert. Top photo courtesy of Saginaw News/MLive.)