Wirth Shows Worth Again for D3 Power
June 2, 2016
By Dean Holzwarth
Special for Second Half
WESTPHALIA – This past March, fewer than 2 minutes remained in Pewamo-Westphalia's Class C Regional Semifinal basketball loss to Ypsilanti Arbor Prep when junior Brenna Wirth heard a pop in her right ankle.
She fell to the floor in pain, unaware if her upcoming track and field season would be in jeopardy.
“That was one of my main concerns when it happened because I didn’t know how bad it was at first,” Wirth said. “It hurt a lot, and I heard a pop when it happened. I think I came down on a girl’s ankle and I was pretty worried.”
Wirth’s anxiety was eased by the good news that awaited her after the game. It turned out to be only a badly sprained ankle. Nothing worse.
“I got lucky I guess,” Wirth said. “But it has motivated me to push myself a little harder to get back to where I want to be.”
Wirth, one of the elite sprinters in Lower Peninsula Division 3, has fully recovered from the injury and is expected to compete in Saturday’s MHSAA Track & Field Finals at Comstock Park High School.
The Pirates have won two MHSAA girls track and field championships over the past three years and will look to go back-to-back Saturday.
Wirth will be an important component in their quest.
“We have a lot of depth, and she is part of that,” P-W track and field coach Scott Werner said. “One of the first pieces we look at is where we can utilize Brenna, and then we build around her to maximize our team points.”
She is thankful the ankle injury didn’t set her back longer than a few weeks.
“It healed a lot faster than I thought it would,” Wirth said. “I slowly began walking on it again, and I went from there. I’m excited for this weekend, and I think our team has a good shot this year again.”
Werner said Wirth has made the necessary strides to make a speedy comeback.
“I consider her healthy now,” he said. “She has been building up and feeling as good as she has the whole year. Things are starting to come together, and we hope we can peak this Saturday and finish things off right.”
Wirth will take part in the 200 and 400, as well as join her teammates as a member of the top-ranked 400 and 800 relay teams.
She won both individual events at last week’s Regional and is considered among the favorites to take home an individual title Saturday.
Wirth has plenty of motivation, especially in the 400, which is her signature event. She placed runner-up at the Finals as a freshman and sophomore.
“I’ve gotten so close in the 400 these past few years, so I’m hoping this is the year,” Wirth said. “I just want to give it my best effort. I’ve worked hard all season to get to this point, so I’m just hoping to run fast for the team. My team is the end goal, everything for them.”
Wirth’s work ethic separates her from other athletes, and it has helped propel her to success on the track and in other sports.
She also competes on the cross country team and delivered a new personal record at the Finals last fall.
“She is just a real athletic kid, and every sport that she is part of she is very good at,” Werner said. “She is such a hard worker, and where she excels at the most the past few years is the 400. That’s a type of race that you have to grind through, and she’s really strong mentally. She can go in and fight through and do her thing.”
Wirth will run Saturday without her older sister, Marissa, by her side. The two shared the track and past two seasons before Marissa graduated.
They drove each other to compete at the highest level.
“We ran on the same relays, and at times I had to run against her,” Wirth said. “It’s a lot different this year, and I really do miss her. She really pushed me, and I think I helped push her a lot. We kept each other going.”
Wirth made her presence known early on in her high school career, emerging as one of the top sprinters on a team chock-full of talented runners.
“She immediately came in and was among our best sprinters of what I would consider a pretty strong sprint program the past few years,” Werner said. “She was an instant-impact-type kid. She has a real positive attitude and sets a really great tone. She’s a good leader, and she’s a part of the strong culture that we have here.”
PHOTO: Pewamo-Westphalia's Brenna Wirth (left) crosses just before Hart's Jennie Gottardo to finish second in the 400 at last season's Lower Peninsula Division 3 Final. (Photo by Jamie Geysbeek/RunMichigan.com.)
'Fleet Feet' Tells Story of State HS Track
August 30, 2019
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
As a Hall of Fame radio broadcaster, Jim Moyes has told stories of high school sports for more than 50 years – and helped others do the same with his contributions as an authority on Michigan high school track & field history.
In the latter role, Moyes decades ago endeavored to uncover the names of every champion in MHSAA Finals history. And amid that research, he uncovered stories he knew he must share from the state’s rich tradition.
Moyes’ initial inspiration added to the expertise of another of the state’s foremost historians in the sport – Michtrack.org creator and Track & Field News associate editor Jeff Hollobaugh – has culminated in a 439-page must-have tome covering more than a century of the state’s best.
“The Fleet Feet of Spring: Michigan’s High School State Championships in Track & Field, 1895-2018” is co-authored by Moyes and Hollobaugh and tackles exactly that – more than 100 years of track & field results, beginning with an era before the MHSAA was created during 1924-25, with summations of championship meets, photos and features along the way that paint an all-encompassing picture.
“My initial project was simply to develop a data base of state champions in track & field, but it soon mushroomed into much more. While delving into the research I was inspired by many of the vast accomplishments dating back over the years,” Moyes said. “It wasn’t long before I realized that this was a story that should be told, and it soon became a labor of love.
“Before my research, I had never heard of many of these great athletes of the past. I was dumbfounded to learn that Alan Smith, an eight-time state champion, was killed in action in World War II, as well as deeds of others both on and off the athletic fields.”
Moyes said he first was “piqued” to write during his days as a student at North Muskegon, where at his school library he picked up a copy of “Athletics in Michigan High Schools: The First Hundred Years” by Lewis L. Forsythe, the first president of the MHSAA Representative Council.
Moyes’ gathering of names began long before the internet and led him to libraries all over our state. He also wrote hundreds of letters as he tracked down thousands of names – mostly first names, as often only the last names of competitors were listed in newspaper reports during the early eras.
With Hollobaugh’s imprint, all of those years of research became not just an encyclopedia, but a story.
“What Jeff has accomplished with this book cannot be thanked enough with just words,” Moyes said. “Jeff took this data base and created a format for state champs that took him many hours, days, weeks, months and even a couple of years to finalize.
“He laboriously fact-checked this entire book and created many of those amazing ‘nuggets’ that gave this publication the character that goes beyond boring our readers with just stats.”
“The Fleet Feet of Spring” is available from Amazon for $24.99. The first 268 pages are filled with stories of every meet dating back to events conducted by the Michigan Inter-School Athletic Association. The next 170 pages are packed with every championship listing imaginable, including names of contributors to winning relays through the years and a list of total individual champions per school.