Reed City's Sami has Spring in her Step
June 6, 2012
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Sami Michell knows her starts could be better. And she's sure she can improve her arm position when she’s going over hurdles.
The Reed City junior is a self-admitted perfectionist. And she’s already thinking about next season.
The rest of Michigan should watch out.
Michell established herself as one of the top hurdlers in MHSAA history at Saturday’s Division 3 Final while becoming the first in Lower Peninsula girls history to win four events at a championship meet since Mason County Eastern’s Maria Shoup in 1979. And she’s got a few more goals she’d like to achieve before moving on to a future that's looking brighter with every stride.
"I'm always thinking about next year and what I want to do, the times I want to run -- even after I won four events Saturday," Michell said. "I want to run a faster 200 and get the Division 3 record, and I want to get the all-division record in the 100-meter hurdles. It's just not hard for me to think about it. I know there are things I don't do perfectly."
Michell gets a Second Half High 5 this week as arguably the brightest of an incredible group of stars who combined to break 19 meet records during Saturday's Finals.
She set Division 3 milestones in three events at Comstock Park – the 100 hurdles (13.84 seconds), 300 hurdles (42.23) and long jump (18-6.5). Her 300 hurdles time also broke the all-Finals record set by Benton Harbor’s Carolyn Ferguson in 1984.
The four championships gave her eight total with a season left to compete. She just missed winning four in 2011 as well – she finished runner-up in the 200, five hundredths of a second back. But her mom Vikki, also Reed City’s girls track and field coach, knew something special was coming long before Sami’s first high school competition.
At a youth meet when Michell was 10 or 11, she won the long jump – despite being so much smaller than her opponents that when she climbed to the top step of the medal stand, she still stood shorter than the runner-up next to her but a level below.
Soon after, Michell began pulling out her smaller 12-inch hurdles during her parents’ practices – dad Brent is the Reed City boys coach – and during seventh grade, she was able to switch from four-step to three-step hurdling. That step was a significant one in helping her go from good to great.
In her first high school race, Michell broke her mom’s school record in the 100 hurdles that had stood since 1987.
“She had made the finals (as a youth) but never won sprints. But I knew as a coach, if I could get her to love hurdles, with her speed, if she perfected her hurdling form, she’d go a long way,” said Vikki Michell, who also ran at Ferris State. “I never honestly dreamed she’d go (this far).”
In some key ways, Michell is a natural for hurdles and jumps. She’s 5-foot-8, but with more than half of her height in her legs. She’s pushing 30 inches in the vertical jump, good enough to touch the metal that connects the rim to the backboard on a basketball hoop. She’s been her volleyball team’s setter since freshman year, and this fall also began playing middle blocker.
But her rise to elite didn’t come without work to back up that talent – fueled by that aforementioned attention to detail.
Reed City is about two hours drive from the nearest indoor track facility, so Michell spends winters running the 75-meter straightaway of her school’s main hallway. The uncharacteristic warm winter allowed her to continue training on the school’s track into January, but often she competes in winter indoor meets to also take advantage of a rare opportunity to practice hurdles and long jump.
She’s also doing some heavy lifting, literally, taking a class daily and focusing on squats and other lifts that have increased her leg strength significantly over the last two years.
“She’s a dedicated person. She doesn’t do anything halfway, I can say, as both her coach and her mom,” Vikki said.
As a child, If Sami made any kind of mis-mark on a math assignment, she’d tear it up and start over – but got over that after realizing how much extra homework she was doing. She's ranked first academically in her class, with a 4.0, and for a long time she did everything she could extra to get 100 percent in every class. These days, she's decided she'll be good with a 95, as long as it still gets her an A.
She'll work on track skills with both parents, but does plenty of research on her own watching YouTube videos of the best from her sport.
Michell likes winning, like anyone else. But she's possibly more driven by distaste for losing.
"I get frustrated. Kinda disappointed and mad at the same time," she said.
"I guess I just hate losing when other people just think they're fast. It's so much fun to just beat them."
And she can do so in more ways than what she showed Saturday. Michell also is the fastest in school history in the 400 with a time of 56.83. She ran the 800 only once, in 2:24.9, and she’s run the 100 three times, the fastest in 12.39. Those 400 and 100 times also would've been good enough for first place at this Division 3 Final.
Clemson, Michigan State and Stanford are among those showing the most early interest in her post-high school plans, and she'll likely hear from many more when college coaches can contact her later this summer.
Click to read more about Michell's track family connection and future plans.
PHOTO: Reed City's Sami Michell (center) edged Bridgeport's Kimberly Balls (left) in the 200-meter race at the Division 3 Final at Comstock Park. (Photo courtesy of RunMichigan.com.)
Lyons Shows Way to All-Around Success
June 20, 2018
By Dennis Grall
Special for Second Half
ESCANABA – There have been a ton of awards and accomplishments recognizing the high school career of Laura Lyons, but the recent Lake Linden-Hubbell graduate remains extremely well grounded.
"I have to prioritize," she said in a recent telephone conversation from Fortune Lake, near Crystal Falls, where she is working at a summer camp that attracts youngsters, campers with disabilities and families.
"You have to focus on things you want to do," she said, listing school work, sports, family and faith among her priorities. "They have to stay out top."
It is easy to see Lyons has her priorities in place when considering the kind of person she has become.
Lyons was a four-sport standout for the Lakes and just as successful off the field. She was one of 32 students statewide to receive an MHSAA/Farm Bureau Insurance Scholar-Athlete Award this winter and one of four Upper Peninsula students to receive a four-year college scholarship from the U.P. Sports Hall of Fame. She was also valedictorian of her graduating class.
"She is one of the best athletes I have coached in my (nearly) 40 years," said LL-H track coach Gary Guisfredi. "She is just an all-around great person. She is not just a great athlete, she is a top-notch kid."
Lyons earlier this month helped her track & field team repeat as U.P. Division 3 champion, winning long jump (16-feet-0.5), placing second in the 200-meter dash (in a personal-best 27.34) and taking third in the 100 (13.4) and 400 (1:01.77). Guisfredi said she probably could have placed in pole vault and excelled in other events if meet rules didn’t limit athletes to only four.
"She is a very versatile athlete," said Guisfredi. "There are a lot of different attributes (for athletic success), and she has them all. And she also works with our younger athletes. Other kids look up to her."
Lyons missed the final week of track practice because she was already working at Fortune Lake, but she followed a training regimen provided by Guisfredi before she began her daily camp duties. "She probably did more than I told her to do," he said with a laugh.
In addition to running four track events this spring, Lyons was also a conference all-star shortstop and pitcher in softball as one of eight teammates who doubled up in both sports. She was all-conference in basketball at guard and was an MVP setter in volleyball for the three-time conference and District champions.
Handling all the sports was not a challenge because, she said, "It is cross-training for all the rest. Everything you do in one sport can be applied to the others."
She’s never had problems being ready for the different track & field events, although she recalled at the 2017 U.P. Finals being midway through her 400 race when her name was called to compete at long jump.
She enjoys track more than the other sports because of the team camaraderie, on the field and off. "It is really a social sport," she said of teammates, members of the boys team and opponents having fun in the infield during other races. She said even the LL-H boys and girls who did not qualify for the Finals still attended and were very supportive.
"We are like one big family," she said of her track teammates. "I don't hang out with a lot of the kids outside of school (she does have to study, after all) but we do spend a lot of time together at our daily routines. Somehow it all works out."
She also enjoys talking to athletes from other schools prior to her track events so "I don't get as nervous. I warm up a lot before the races."
Lyons and her teammates also serve as role models for the younger athletes. "A lot of us help coach other sports. And it makes me thankful for having the support of the community. We are a mirror athletically in the community," she said, indicating her accomplishments are a direct result "of my upbringing, the way I was raised."
Definitely not a me-first person, Lyons also expressed happiness over how women at church collect newspaper clippings of her deeds and pass them on to her. "I realize how they are a part of what I am doing," she said.
Asked what she is most proud of accomplishing, she hesitated for several seconds, then answered, "That is a tough one. I am most proud of the fact I have been so motivated in so many different things and (of) showing younger kids they can do the same things if they set their mind to it."
Lyons anticipates joining the track team when she attends nearby Michigan Tech University. She plans to follow an academic path of biomedical engineering with a focus on pre-med.
"She's got the whole package," Guisfredi said. "This kid is always smiling. She is a very special young lady."
Denny Grall retired in 2012 after 39 years at the Escanaba Daily Press and four at the Green Bay Press-Gazette, plus 15 months for WLST radio in Escanaba; he served as the Daily Press sports editor from 1970-80 and again from 1984-2012. Grall was inducted into the Upper Peninsula Sports Hall of Fame in 2002 and serves as its executive secretary. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for the Upper Peninsula.
PHOTOS: (Top) Lake Linden-Hubbell’s Laura Lyons is embraced by Ontonagon’s Fahren Kolpack and holds a hand of Felch North Dickinson’s Masyn Alexa after they took the top three places in the 400 at the UP Division 3 Finals, all within half a second of each other. (Middle) Lyons, third from left, stands with honorees on the Breslin Center floor during the Scholar-Athlete Awards ceremony in March. (Top photo by Cara Kamps.)