Seaholm Finds Next Gear After Fast Start
November 19, 2016
By Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half
YPSILANTI – Four events into the preliminaries Friday, Birmingham Seaholm girls swimming coach Karl Hodgson knew something special was brewing.
On Saturday, his pot boiled over as the Maples won the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 championship at Michael H. Jones Natatorium on the campus of Eastern Michigan University. Seaholm finished with 287.5 points to outdistance runner-up and reigning champion Dexter, which had 250. Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central was third with 215.
It was the first MHSAA team title in girls swimming and diving for Seaholm since it ran off three in a row from 1995-97. Hodgson was an assistant coach on those teams.
“In the first four events on Friday, the medley relay did well and Allie (Russell) dropped two seconds in her I.M. to qualify first,” said Hodgson, who was named the Coach of the Meet by LPD2 coaches. “I had a 200 swimmer Hannah Erickson do her lifetime best, and in the 50 (Haley) Dolan and (Linnea) Anderson had lifetime bests.”
So, with that kind of performance Friday, it would seem Hodgson was relaxed and slept well Friday night.
“Not a chance,” he said with a chuckle. “Not with Dexter hanging around.
Actually, Hodgson said the start of this quest began last year when the Maples finished fifth as Dexter captured the title.
“That was when the girls realized that they had the talent to do it and that they could do it,” he said.
With the excellent performances from Friday behind them, the Maples began the finals portion of the meet in style Saturday by winning the 200 medley relay. The foursome of Nichole McMaster, Russell, Anderson and Dolan finished in 1 minute, 43.98 seconds to win by nearly 3 seconds.
“That was huge,” Hodgson said. “It told me that I had four kids who were on. We set a school record on Friday and came back and crushed it on Saturday. That really set the tone. It was a big deal.”
The swimmers agreed that the first event was a tone-setter.
“After that, everyone’s adrenaline was so up, and that’s when we knew we had a chance of winning,” said McMaster, a senior.
Russell, another senior, also felt the medley relay was the key.
“Our medley relay has always been kind of our strong suit,” she said. “So to lead off the meet with a win, I think that sort of set in motion what could happen.”
Dolan, a junior, had the only individual title for Seaholm. She won the 50 freestyle in 23.56 seconds. As a sophomore, she made it to the MHSAA Final but failed to qualify for the championship heat in the 50.
“This year I’ve been doing a lot of outside training with a trainer, and we worked with a lot of weights, and I think that helped a lot,” she said. “Karl is an amazing coach too, and last year I think I just had an off race.”
Dolan, who also was fifth in the 100 freestyle, was the only three-time Finals champion for Seaholm, which also won the 200 freestyle relay in 1:35.49 with a team of Anderson, Russell, Erickson and Dolan.
The Maples surrounded the three race victories with plenty of depth in the scoring. Russell had the lone runner-up finish as she was second in the 200 I.M.
“I couldn’t be happier,” she said. “I would rather win the state title with my team than as an individual.
“Our freshman year, the state meet was here and got it started for us without really knowing what we were doing, so to finish it off here in my senior year is great.”
Erickson chipped in with a third place in the 200 freestyle and fourth in the 100 freestyle, while Anderson was third in the 50 freestyle and fourth in the 100 butterfly.
“This is amazing; there is nothing like it,” Anderson said. “We knew we had a chance, and we knew we all had to do our best to win it.”
Runner-up Dexter was led by junior Annette Schultz, the swimmer of the meet a year ago when the Dreadnaughts won the title. She was no less spectacular Saturday as she repeated as champion in the 100 freestyle and 200 freestyle and also swam the anchor leg on the 400 freestyle relay team that finished first.
Schultz came close to breaking the Division 2 Finals records in both the 100 and 200 freestyles. Her time of 50.30 seconds in the 100 was just short of the record (49.87), and her 1:48.27 in the 200 threatened the record mark of 1:47.88. Schutz was joined by teammates Amelia Kinnard, Grace Kacmarek and Sarah Zofchak in the 400 freestyle relay, which won in 3:31.14.
Schultz was not too disappointed in failing to break a Finals record.
“I’m just hoping that next year I can improve on them and get a state record,” she said. “I dropped my time in the 100, and that was what I was looking for.
“I just wanted to get some best times, and I did. I got a best time.”
Olympic swimmer Allison Schmitt, who still holds two all-class Finals records, including in the 200 freestyle, attended the meet and was thrilled to watch the competition.
“Swimming for four years at the state meet was a great experience, and coming back and seeing these girls doing the same thing that I did eight years ago is great,” Schmitt said. “It’s great to be back.
“These girls were little girls when I was in high school, so to see them succeed doing what they are doing is amazing, and I’m cheering for my records to be broken just like everyone else.”
Felicity Buchmaier of Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central was named the swimmer of the meet by the LPD2 coaches. Buchmaier, a junior, won the 100 butterfly in 54.04, and she added the 100 backstroke in 55.30.
“It’s a big relief,” she said. “I felt like I had a lot of expectations from both myself and from other people.”
Buchmaier repeated as champion in the 100 butterfly.
“It was just as exciting as the last time,” she said. “I tried to block out as much emotion as possible, but my body started to hurt – as usual – and I had to get it in my head that it was just another race.”
Forest Hills Central also had the champion in diving, and it might have been the best finish of the meet. Anna Hansen, a sophomore who moved to Grand Rapids from Chicago last year, trailed by three points going into the final dive of the meet. She nailed a forward 2½ somersault in the tuck position – 2.4 degree of difficulty – to score 50.40 points and pass Taylor Shegos of Fenton.
“I was really nervous,” Hansen said, “but I just focused on what I needed to do and nothing else.
“That is my favorite dive, so I was confident with it.”
Hansen’s victory extended the dominance in diving by Forest Hills Central. It was without two-time champion Erin Neely, who missed this season with an injury, but still had four of the top seven finishers.
“Erin is such a big supporter of the team,” Hansen said. “She really has pushed us, so it means a lot to take her place.”
Seaholm, Dexter and Forest Hills Central combined to win nine of the 12 events. The other three were won by Vicki Postmus of Byron Center in the 200 I.M., Charlotte Pierce of Birmingham Groves in the breaststroke and Julia Boswell of Royal Oak in the 500 freestyle.
But the day belonged to Seaholm.
“It’s so surreal I can’t believe it,” Doan said. “It’s so exciting. I think it has sunk in a little but later it’s really going to hit me. It’s crazy.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Birmingham Seaholm poses with its Division 2 championship trophy. (Middle) Anna Hansen of Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central. (Click to see more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
Longtime Coach's Legendary Expertise Keeps Manistee Surging
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
November 19, 2021
Name any high school or community pool in Michigan, and odds are Corey Van Fleet has been there.
Perhaps it is true of any pool in the United States.
He might have even helped build it.
And, a little more odds. If the pool hosted an MHSAA Finals meet, one of Van Fleet’s teams likely participated. Although he won’t have any qualifiers making the trip to the Division 3 girls meet Friday, he’s been to championship weekend lots of times with Birmingham Seaholm and Manistee. His 1962-65 Seaholm boys teams won four straight Class A Finals, and his Manistee boys team is coming off a Finals trip last winter and its best season ever.
Van Fleet, now 85 years young, is in his 68th of coaching swimmers. He’s spent the last 13 with the boys and girls teams of Manistee High School. He started the program after helping build the pool.
The school utilizes the Paine Aquatics Center named after Bill Paine, who presented a proposal to the City of Manistee, the Manistee Area Public Schools and Van Fleet. Paine’s proposal called for the pool, which opened in July 2009, to be attached to the high school facilities.
“So I’m sitting in my office one day and this tall, lanky guy (Paine) walks in and closes the door and says my wife and I want to donate an aquatics complex in Manistee, and Sandy Saylor says you know something about swimming,” Van Fleet recalls. “‘Will you help me build it?’
“We talked about it for a while and I said yeah, I’d help him,” Van Fleet continued. “So we ended up with a nice eight-lane swimming pool in Manistee.”
Van Fleet, who also had coached at Florida State, coached and served as athletic director at Oakland University and then served as AD at Long Beach State (Calif.) during an illustrious career at the college level, took the next step naturally.
“The superintendent of schools at the time (Robert Olsen) said you build the darn thing, you might as well get some programs started,” Van Fleet recalled. “That was 13 years ago, and I’m still at it.”
At it, Van Fleet continues. He plans to stay with it until he just can’t do it anymore.
“I am still fairly healthy,” he said. “If I can find six people that can carry me out of church, I can think about quitting.”
During his tenure at Manistee, Van Fleet’s teams have dominated the Coastal Conference and produced multiple academic all-state swimmers. The boys team captured the 2020 academic all-state title with a 3.82 team grade point average.
“I am most proud, I think, about our academic progress,” Van Fleet said. “We take great pride in passing some classes.”
Van Fleet is also filled with pride when he reflects on all the swimmers he’s seen go on to become lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers and coaches.
“I am pleased with the number of kids who have gone on to do some pretty big things in the world off our swimming programs,” he said. “I’d like to think they might have learned lessons about goal planning and sticking to it and hard work and all that stuff.
“That’s what lights me up.”
Van Fleet’s initial high school coaching job was at Madison Heights in 1959. He’s coached at camps all over Michigan, including his first at Burt Lake in 1954. Today he owns and operates a summer swimming camp in Irons, 30 miles southeast of Manistee. He also built it.
Jeff Brunner, a veteran MHSAA official in multiple sports including swimming, and father of former members of the Traverse City high school swimming co-op, is among many singing praises of Van Fleet’s impact on the sport.
“Corey has a wealth of information that he has accumulated in his coaching career,” Brunner said. “If I was a high school swimmer, I’d want to learn all I could from him – swimming for him would be such a unique opportunity.”
Andrew Huber, principal of Manistee’s middle and high schools, agrees with Brunner.
“We're humbled to have had Corey as part of our school and community,” he said. “His wealth of experience, knowledge, and relationship building has helped create a foundation of well-being for students and adults alike.
“His enthusiasm for swimming is infectious, and his energy is amazing for anyone regardless of age,” he continued. “It's been truly impressive to observe him connect and inspire students for the many years he's been in Manistee, and realize his impact is generational.”
The Manistee boys swim team starts practice next week. The Chippewas, along with their girls squad, have battled through COVID. The pandemic is one of many changes through which Van Fleet has guided his athletes.
“We’ve seen changes in training methods,” he said. “We’ve seen changes in diet.
“We’ve seen changes in philosophies in terms of what’s important and what’s not important,” he went on. “Kids have changed, and parents have changed.”
Training methods have been modified the most, along with new multi-lane pools popping up in Michigan, Van Fleet noted.
“Swimming is more technical now,” he said. “The science of swimming has become paramount.
“It is not just going in and kick a few legs and swim a few hundreds and go home — we’ve gone the gamut,” he continued. “It is very specific now every time you want a kid to do something, and now our swimming pools are showplaces – they are magnificent.”
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) Corey Van Fleet (far right) visits with his Manistee girls team the wall honoring him at Oakland University. (Middle) Van Fleet is in his 68th year coaching swimming. (Photos courtesy of the Manistee girls swimming & diving program.)