St. Francis Follows Bullough to D3 Title
November 7, 2015
By Bill Khan
Special for Second Half
BROOKLYN — Holly Bullough knows something about playing with pain.
She is, after all, from one of Michigan's most well-known football families.
So, she wasn't going to let a stress fracture in her left foot keep her from defending her MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 3 championship on Saturday at Michigan International Speedway.
Bullough wasn't able to run in practice the last two weeks, keeping in shape by hitting the spinning bike hard at a yoga center in Traverse City. It worked, as she was fit enough to dominate the Division 3 field, winning by 36.4 seconds with a time of 17:41.8.
Bullough shattered her own LP Division 3 record of 17:51.3, set last year when she surged ahead at the finish to edge Amber Way of Charlevoix by 0.2 seconds.
"I was pretty tired," Bullough said. "I just needed to finish and try to finish as strong as I can."
She said she felt some of the effects of running only once in the previous two weeks, that being in the regional meet a week earlier when she won in 17:15.40. It was a week before regionals that she noticed something didn't feel right.
"After this one meet, I was limping after it," she said. "I was like, "I need to get an X-ray.'"
The X-ray revealed a stress fracture in the second metatarsal bone in her left foot.
She has numerous examples in her own family of athletes who know a thing or two about toughing it out. Her grandfather, father and three brothers played football at Michigan State, with Riley and Byron on the current roster. Hank Bullough, her grandfather, was a starting guard on MSU's 1954 Rose Bowl championship team. Her father, Shane, was a linebacker at MSU. Brother Max is on the Houston Texans' roster.
An injury was going to be the only thing to keep Bullough from repeating as Division 3 champion. Nobody went out with her, as she built a 28-second lead by the two-mile mark.
"I was more worried coming into regionals, because that's when I had the longest break, but I was still nervous," Bullough said.
Winning the individual title was more special for Bullough this time around, because she was able to lead her team to a championship, as well.
St. Francis scored 69 points to easily beat Benzie Central by 72. Shepherd was third with 181 points.
The Gladiators didn't even qualify for the Final last year, finishing sixth in their Regional to miss out on a trip to MIS for only the second time in 14 years. Bullough is the only runner from that regional lineup that ran in the Final on Saturday.
"It's awesome. I love it. It's so much better than being alone," Bullough said.
Also scoring for the Gladiators were freshman Katelyn Duffing (fourth, 18:35.2), junior Emmalyne Tarsa (fifth, 18:42.3), sophomore Joyana Tarsa (12th, 19:05.1) and sophomore Lauren Bramer (66th, 20:23.5).
The title was the second for St. Francis, which was the LP Division 4 champion in 2003.
The MHSAA Cross Country Finals are sponsored by the Michigan National Guard.
PHOTOS: (Top) Alone on the final stretch, Traverse City St. Francis’ Holly Bullough surges toward the finish line. (Middle) Bullough and teammate Katelyn Duffing (1650) lead the St. Francis pack, including Emmalyne Tarsa (1653), off the start. (Click for more from RunMichigan.com.)
Lending some hands for 'Family'
March 30, 2012
Adrian senior Zach Sarrault had never seen, on the ground in front of him, the damage caused by a tornado.
Living only 40 miles from where a storm had torn through Dexter on March 15, he was close enough to get an idea of what had ripped through the home of one of the Maples’ Southeastern Conference rivals.
And that distance was little more than an afterthought in deciding to help out a member of the “track family.”
The tornado that day was driven by wins of up to 140 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service, and media reports said the storm damaged 100 homes and destroyed 10. One of those belonged to Dexter girls cross country coaches Katie and Bob Jazwinski – who with their children survived the storm in a bedroom closet.
“We knew we needed to go up there and help,” Sarrault said.
“I was really shocked by what it did. To see the roofs and blown-off siding. And the Dexter coaches’ house wasn’t even there anymore.”
Adrian coach Leo Lauver, his assistant coach and assistant coach’s wife and 21 members of their team – basically all who weren’t part of the school’s band and orchestra concerts that day – loaded into a bus and spent most of the daylight hours March 24 helping not only the Jazwinskis, but their neighbors as well.
A number of schools and teams have been represented in the Dexter clean-up efforts. Jazwinski said he’s seen athletes and coaches from Ann Arbor Pioneer, Pinckney, Chelsea, Ann Arbor Skyline, Whitmore Lake and the USA junior hockey team also based in Ann Arbor.
All have been appreciated. And most of that group had some kind of previous relationship with Dexter, or the Jazwinskis in particular.
But they’d known Adrian’s track people mostly through competition, and that was about it.
“My wife and I thought we were out of tears, but once we saw the Adrian bus pull up to our demolished house, we had tears flowing again, this time tears of joy and happiness,” the Jazwinskis wrote in a letter to Adrian superintendent Chris Timmis. “They have touched our lives for eternity.”
Lauver described the work as “cut down, cut down, cut down. Move, move, move.” Bob Jazwinski said his neighborhood isn’t one where people buy in as much for the houses as for the landscape – which included a number of mature trees including century-old oaks and 50-foot tall pines.
The tornado cleared many of those like it was building a golf course.
“It was a no-brainer,” said Lauver, in his 28th season coaching the Maples. “Adrian is a blue-collar town. It’s the right thing. You don’t think about it. You go help. That’s what we do here. … We’re a family, and Dexter is part of that family.”
Lauver first introduced the idea to his team the Monday after the storm. The athletes bought in immediately.
Thorns resulted in a few scratches, and the work was hard. But the Salvation Army donated gloves, and a local catering company was among those who fed the volunteers – who Bob Jazwinski had to order to eat because they were working so hard.
One of his neighbors, a Dexter cross country mom, had been in tears over all the debris scattered around her yard. The Maples cleaned up all of it, and now she calls Jazwinski just about daily to send along her thanks.
“They were very grateful. Everybody out there,” Sarrault said. “A Pioneer coach had a house there too, and I remember him telling us he’d never been so grateful to see an Adrian bus roll up.
“It really brought us together as a team, knowing we can help out other people. It will probably bring us into doing more volunteering.”
The family has received additional offers of help, including from the men’s gymnastics team from the University of Michigan – where Katie was a five-time All-American in cross country and track.
Bob Jazwinski said he and his family will move out of a hotel Wednesday. They’re working through preliminary steps at this point. But when it’s time to rebuild, Lauver – who has a background in landscaping – pledged the Maples for a return trip.
“The support of people who know us is pretty spectacular,” Bob Jazwinski said. “But to see a group of athletes from another team, that’s competitive (with us), drop everything, all the competitiveness is gone, and just want to help somebody, for us, is overwhelming.
“We’ll always be friends now, for sure.”
PHOTOS: (Top and Bottom) Adrian boys track and field athletes assist in clean of blown-down trees. (Inset) Bob and Katie Jazwinski's home was detroyed by the tornado that tore through their Dexter neighborhood March 15.(Middle) An Mlive.com report explained the damage and Jazwinskis' survival. (Photos courtesy of the Jazwinski family.)
