'Let Them Lead' Shows How Through Coach's Eyes During Huron Hockey's Rise
By
John Johnson
MHSAA Communications Director emeritus
September 17, 2021
Over 30 years of riding shotgun with Jack Roberts, I quickly learned to respond whenever I was asked about the lifetime values of high school sports, with a laundry list with these two items at the top:
Hard Work - Team Work
In reviewing the newly-released book by Ann Arbor’s own John U. Bacon – “Let Them Lead, Unexpected Lessons in Leadership From America’s Worst High School Hockey Team” – everything flows from those two values all of us in prep sports hold near and dear.
I met John in 1997 when he was a sportswriter at The Detroit News, where he was covering his high school alma mater – Ann Arbor Huron – in the Class AA Football Final at the Pontiac Silverdome. Just a few years later, the story that holds the detailed leadership lessons together in this book would begin when he was named the head hockey coach at Huron, inheriting a team that finished the previous season 0-22-3.
Building everything he put into that team with the premises that no one would outwork the River Rats, and as a team they supported each other, Bacon’s charges rose from not even being listed in the national team winning percentage listings - about 1,000 schools - prior to his arrival, to a top-five spot in the state’s rankings in his fourth year.
Along the way, the buy-in to the leadership themes made Huron Hockey cool again at the school and earned the River Rats the respect of their opponents. The values being taught gave value to the program. In making it hard to be a part of the team, more kids wanted to join it. They valued the experience. They led and supported themselves on and off the ice.
With the book being written nearly 20 years after the events it is based on, Bacon solicited input from a variety of players to verify the accuracy of events, and they flooded him with additional stories of their own from their playing days and adult lives which illustrated the leadership skills they learned in the locker room, training sessions, practices and games.
Like any book on leadership, you forge through those details about applying certain things in the workplace, but what keeps you engaged is the team. You’ve gotten hooked by the River Rats, and you just have to see how this thing turns out.
This feel-good tome resonates whether you’re a coach or a corporate type. It’s an easy read, and you'll take a lot from it.
John U. Bacon did play ice hockey for the River Rats, owning the distinction for playing the most games at the time he graduated – but also never scoring a goal. His writing, teaching and speaking career have produced seven books which have been national best sellers; he’s an established historian on a variety of topics – including the football program at University of Michigan, where he currently teaches; and he’s in demand as a public speaker.
Let Them Lead is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and available through a variety of bookstores.
PHOTOS (Top) Huron's hockey team runs the Michigan Stadium stairs in 2002. (Middle) "Let Them Lead" tells the story of the program's transformation. (Below) The River Rats celebrate their Turkey Tournament championship in 2001. (Photos courtesy of John U Bacon.)
Balanced, Talented Chargers All Playing Roles in Pursuit of Ultimate Goal
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
February 23, 2022
Nolan Salayko is confident heading into the MHSAA ice hockey postseason because he’s confident in his Flint Powers Catholic teammates.
All of them.
“I think with this team, we just have so much depth with all of our lines,” the senior defenseman said. “In years past, we had maybe a superstar, and then it would drop off a little bit. This year, everybody plays their role perfectly and it’s helping us win.”
Salayko and the Chargers have done plenty of winning, going 20-4-1 this regular season. They enter Regionals ranked No. 1 in Division 3 and No. 2 in the Michigan High School Hockey Coaches Association Super 10.
They’ve done it with an incredibly balanced attack, as five players have scored 10 or more goals, and eight have more than 20 points.
“Ever since the summer, Coach has said how we’re going to be built on depth this year, and we can all see it,” Powers senior forward Luke Cramer said. “We don’t look to just one guy if it’s the end of a game and we’re down a goal. We really rely on each other. Everyone can make a great play, and we all know it.”
By relying on everyone, the Chargers are hoping to take the next championship step after coming up just short over the years. Despite having won 34 Regional titles, qualifying for 21 Final Fours and seven Finals, Powers has never won a Finals championship.
“That’s a big one with the program,” Powers coach Travis Perry said. “We’ve had a lot of success over the years, and there were three guys before me, and those guys all had a lot of success, as well. But we still haven’t won that last game. Hopefully, one of these years it’s going to happen and we get that bounce to go our way.”
Perry added that he didn’t like talking about the program’s lack of a title, but he admitted to feeling a sense of urgency with this year’s team, as it features most of the 2020-21 roster, which advanced to the Division 3 Semifinals.
“From my end, you never know when you’ll have a team this good again,” he said.
The players are very aware of the program’s history, but they also would rather not talk about it.
“Each year is a different year,” Cramer said. “You hear about it from time to time from outsiders. But inside our team, we don’t think about it too much.”
In order to try to end it, though, Perry continued to schedule up this season, adding some of the state’s top teams to the Chargers’ slate.
They’ve played the No. 1 teams in both Division 1 and 2, losing 2-0 against Detroit Catholic Central and defeating Hartland 2-1. In total, they’ve played 10 ranked teams, going 7-2-1 in those games.
“We knew we had a good team coming back, so we wanted to put those guys in over their heads,” Perry said. “We tried to make the schedule as hard as we could. That was one of the things we said as a coaching staff this year, we thought that we could go into the playoffs at 15-10, and if we did, we’d be battle tested.”
The schedule didn’t just test the Chargers, it gave them a new level of confidence.
“Playing those teams again this year, we have the confidence in knowing that we can play with them,” Cramer said.
And that confidence runs through the roster, as they’ve all contributed to building it. All 18 skaters have scored at least one goal this season, led by Mason Czarnecki with 17.
Czarnecki is also tied for the team lead in assists with 21. Jacques Lavrack (14 goals, 19 assists), Cooper Gerhardt (11 goals, 21 assists), Trey Carlock (seven goals, 19 assists), Weston Reinig (seven goals, 18 assists), Brenden Tarpening (11 goals, 14 assists), Nolan Berner (10 goals, 14 assists) and Kyle Barbour (eight goals, 15 assists) are all averaging nearly a point a game or more.
Behind a strong Powers defense, goaltender Nick Kurtiak is having a solid season as well with a 1.49 goals-against average and .918 save percentage.
It all adds up to a confident group heading into Thursday night’s postseason opener against Big Rapids. But it’s also one that’s very aware anything can happen in a single-elimination tournament.
“You just take it, honestly, one game at a time and one practice at a time,” Salayko said. “We just keep trying to get better and better every game.”
If they allow themselves to dream a bit, however, and think of winning that final game and bringing a first hockey title to an already prestigious program, the tenor changes – if only for a moment.
“That would be, honestly, great,” Cramer said. “Not only for our school, but for our team and this program and what we’ve tried to build all these years. It would be a great way to leave our mark here.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Mason Czarnecki (25) and his teammates skate toward their bench during Saturday’s game against Livonia Stevenson. (Middle) Chargers Jacques Lavrack (3) and Kyle Barbour (16) are among those working to push the puck into Stevenson’s goal during the 4-2 win. (Below) Powers players huddle up. (Photos courtesy of the Flint Powers Catholic hockey program.)