Repeat Champ Paces Hart's 1st Title Run
November 4, 2017
Second Half reports
BROOKLYN — The arrival of four girls from the same family at Hart High School resulted in a day the Pirates have never experienced in any sport.
With four Ackley girls finishing in the team’s top four spots, Hart won the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 3 cross country championship Saturday at Michigan International Speedway.
It was the first MHSAA championship for Hart, its best finish being a second-place showing by the girls track & field team at the 1987 Class C meet. The 1985 wrestling team was third in Class C. Three Hart teams in bracketed sports reached the MHSAA Semifinals.
Until recently, girls cross country seemed like an unlikely program to deliver Hart its first title. Hart had never qualified for the MHSAA Finals in the sport until 2011. The Pirates have been to the Finals six times in the last seven years, the best finish being fifth in 2014.
Hart scored 55 points to win by 69 over Benzonia Benzie Central. Grandville Calvin Christian was third with 137 points.
“My dad (Calvin) started a middle school team,” said Hart junior Adelyn Ackley, who repeated as individual champion with a time of 17:49.4. “He got a lot of kids to go out. Pretty soon, they started going out in high school. He would write them running charts and how many miles they should run in the summer. Kids hooked on to it and are running pretty well now.”
Freshman Savannah Ackley took sixth in 18:51.3, senior Alayna Ackley was seventh in 18:52.0 and Lynae Ackley was 20th in 19:23.7. Lynae is the first cousin of the other three Ackleys, who are sisters.
Sophomore Brenna Aerts was 37th in 19:51.7 to complete Hart’s scoring.
“We train every day over the summer and through the winter together,” Adelyn Ackley said. “It’s fun. We like to push each other.”
There was nobody to push Ackley as she repeated as individual champion.
She was 24.8 seconds ahead of Shepherd junior Amber Gall, who made the top five for the third time.
It was quite a contrast from last year when Ackley won a sprint to the finish with Lansing Catholic’s Olivia Theis by 0.7 seconds in 17:40.6.
“I kind of wish I had somebody closer to me, so they could push me,” Ackley said. “I was looking to beat my time from last year. I couldn’t quite push myself hard enough. I had a girl with me last year. I went out pretty hard so I could get out of the crowd. It felt pretty easy at first. The second mile was definitely the hardest.”
Gall was third in 2015 and fifth in 2016.
“I decided coming in to just run my own race,” Gall said. “I thought that would be the smartest. Usually, I started really fast. I have a condition called hypoglycemia. My sugar runs at a certain level, then it just drops. It’s hard when I start out super fast, because I waste the sugar immediately. Pacing myself at the start was necessary. I don’t usually wear a Garmin, but I did just because I had to watch my time.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Hart’s Adelyn Ackley (1589) begins to break away from the pack during Saturday’s Division 3 Final. (Middle) Alayna Ackley (1590) leads another pack around a curve in helping her team to its first MHSAA championship in any sport. (Click for more from RunMichigan.com.)
#TBT: Pioneer Mourns Champion Coach
July 9, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Ann Arbor Pioneer this week mourned longtime girls track & field and cross country coach Bryan Westfield, who died Sunday at the age of 72 and led Pioneers teams to a combined 19 MHSAA team championships over a career spanning more than three decades.
The Pioneers won their first girls track & field title under Westfield in 1985, edging Detroit Cass Tech 56-50 in Lower Peninsula Class A at Flint’s Houston Stadium. Pioneer went on to win the next six LP Class A titles, then strung together four more straight wins from 1996-99. His track & field teams won five more titles during the first decade of the 2000s, most recently in 2008, and the program holds the record for Lower Peninsula Finals championships with 16, six more than Detroit Renaissance.
Westfield’s girls cross country teams won back-to-back LP Class A titles in 1987 and 1988, and then won again in 1997.
Westfield graduated from Ann Arbor High School – the predecessor to Pioneer – in 1960 having lettered in football and track & field. He competed in both at Cornell University and eventually returned to Pioneer as a teacher. He also had a brief stint with the New York Giants’ developmental squad and qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials in 1964.
He began coaching Pioneer’s girls track & field and cross country teams in 1978 and coached both during the 2014-15 school year. He was inducted into the Michigan Interscholastic Track Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Michigan High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2014, among a number of accolades earned over the years.
A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday at Ann Arbor Pioneer High School. The school’s track was dedicated in 2012 to Westfield and former boys track & field coach Don Sleeman.
Click for Westfield’s obituary and coverage of his passing from AnnArbor.com.
PHOTO: Coach Bryan Westfield stands with his 1990 team after it won the Lower Peninsula Class A track & field championship.