Manning Up for Brother Rice Title Run
March 14, 2015
By Bill Khan
Special for Second Half
PLYMOUTH — For Matt Manning, there were no hard feelings.
From his standpoint, it was a clean hockey play, even though a penalty was called on his opponent.
He just happened to be on the wrong end of a devastating hit that nearly deprived him of his senior season at Birmingham Brother Rice and the opportunity to lead his team to an MHSAA championship.
In a scrimmage on Nov. 17, two days before the season opener against Livonia Stevenson, Manning was forechecking on a penalty kill when he got the puck and slipped it behind a defender. With his head down as he was chasing the puck, Manning never saw what was coming.
"This kid just came from my blind side," the 5-foot-6 Manning recalls. "He got me in the right spot. He was a lot bigger than me. He won that battle."
But Manning and his teammates were the ultimate winners Saturday. He was in the stands as a freshman when Brother Rice won its last MHSAA title, in 2012, but was a key reason why the Warriors won their fourth with a 6-3 victory over Livonia Stevenson at Compuware Ice Arena.
Manning didn't immediately realize he was injured back in November, but he felt sharp pain when he tried to move his left arm on his way back to the bench. His left collarbone had been broken in half, an injury that required a plate and seven screws to repair.
Manning experienced some dark days in the immediate aftermath of the injury.
"It killed my confidence, basically, because we were just starting the season," he said. "We hadn't played our first game. It was the first scrimmage, the third shift. I was getting down about it. After that, and getting through the therapy, realizing it was going to get better with all the sessions we had, it just got much better a lot quicker."
Manning was back in the lineup on Jan. 7, adding a high-end talent to a team already ranked No. 1 in Division 2.
Manning had only one assist Saturday, but makes an impact as a tenacious, high-energy forechecker that isn't always quantified on the scoresheet. Stevenson coach David Mitchell agreed that Manning's presence was a huge plus for Brother Rice, which beat Stevenson 4-3 in the teams' season opener on Nov. 19 in Livonia.
"You saw some things around the net today where he made plays that were special hockey plays," Mitchell said. "It's tough playing an opponent like him, but I'm thrilled he's in high school hockey and he's helping high school hockey grow. Having a player like that in our game makes our game better and makes the level of competition better for everybody and more enjoyable for people to watch."
Brother Rice coach Lou Schmidt, in his 12th year with the Warriors, said Manning's comeback from a major injury was remarkable.
"I've never in my years seen anybody come back like he did," Schmidt said. "Usually, there's this very cautionary period where you don't want to get hit. He started skating five weeks after the injury; you never would've known he was out. He was a huge addition to our team. He made us deeper, he made us better."
Brother Rice wouldn't have had the opportunity to play for the title on Saturday had Manning not scored on a backhander 25 seconds into the fourth overtime to give the Warriors a 4-3 victory over Hartland in the Quarterfinals on Tuesday. It was one of two one-goal victories for the Warriors on their march to the championship.
Although Brother Rice won by three goals, the Warriors found themselves in another tough battle against a Stevenson team that was two years removed from an MHSAA championship.
Brother Rice dominated the early going, outshooting Stevenson 10-2 in the first period and taking a 2-0 lead just 53 seconds into the second period on a goal by Joey Vassallo.
The Warriors swarmed the Spartans' net after that in search of a knockout blow, only to be thwarted by junior goalie Cullen Barber.
After going without a shot on its first two power plays, Stevenson injected some life into the building when Alex Allen scored on the power play at 8:41 of the second period. The Spartans quickly tied it when Joe Alcantara scored at the 10:36 mark.
"I'm so proud of our guys," Mitchell said. "I think everybody saw it had the potential to get away when it was 2-0 and they were still carrying the play. But like we did all year, we answered back and made a game of it, which was great not only for us, but for the game of high school hockey. That second period was exciting. It's good that it was a good, solid hockey game that I hope did high school hockey proud."
Brother Rice regrouped and regained its two-goal lead on goals by Brendan Pyc at the 12:58 and 16:19 marks of the second.
"It was a big momentum shift when they scored their first one," said Brother Rice senior Nick Rosa, the only player remaining from the 2012 championship team. "When they got the second one, we knew we had to get the next one; that was big."
Stevenson got back within striking distance when Vince Glenn scored on the power play 44 seconds into the third period. Rosa's team-leading 25th goal of the year with 8:58 remaining in the game re-established Brother Rice's two-goal cushion.
Stevenson failed to click on two late power plays before the Warriors put an exclamation point on the championship with an empty-net goal by Jack Dansbury with 20.3 seconds to go.
"It's the longest journey ever," Rosa said. "Nine months ago, we started working out in the summer five days a week. We never stopped. This was our ultimate goal. We achieved it. Every day we came to practice and tried our best. I'm really proud of the boys."
Brother Rice was 3 for 4 on the power play, while Stevenson was 2 for 6.
"It was a special teams kind of day," Schmidt said. "We played well when we had to. We made it interesting there in the second — maybe for the fans, but not so much for the coaches."
PHOTOS: (Top) Brother Rice celebrates one of six goals Saturday against Livonia Stevenson. (Middle) Stevenson’s Nate Sudek drives into the Warriors’ zone during the Division 2 Final. (Photos by Andrew Knapik/Southgate).
Port Huron Unified Providing Opportunity
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
December 4, 2019
Growing up in Yale, Trevor Sugars never thought about playing high school hockey. He bounced around Sanilac, St. Clair and Lapeer counties finding house leagues to stay involved in the sport he loved, as Yale didn’t have a team.
But a year ago, thanks to an expansion of the Port Huron Unified cooperative team, a new option arose, and Sugars has taken full advantage.
“This is great for Yale because we get to come out and have a hockey team, and younger kids can get into the sport of hockey,” said Sugars, a junior defenseman. “They’re able to go further without having to pay all the money for AAA.”
Three players from Yale and six players from St. Clair join the 11 from Port Huron in donning the Big Reds jersey this season. It’s the fourth that Port Huron has collaborated with East China School District – St. Clair and Marine City – and the second it has collaborated with Yale. The collaboration has given players from those schools an opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have, while saving the Port Huron program.
“I went to a coaching clinic before the season started, and we actually had a roundtable about unified hockey programs,” Port Huron coach Ben Pionk said. “It was kind of interesting, because we all had one common theme. Most of us were all there for survival. That’s why we’re unified. A lot of the teams were in the same boat. Some of the other unified programs, they have like seven schools and you’re getting two kids from each school just to make a team. Honestly, it was all for survival, and that was solely ours. It wasn’t to build a superpower team; it was to make sure we had a team we could even put on the ice.”
Pionk has been at Port Huron for two decades, most of which spent coaching a team solely from his school. But numbers began to dwindle not long ago, threatening the future of the program.
“I can’t remember what year it was, but we had tryouts and I had eight kids standing here,” Pionk said. “I went to our former athletic director and talked to him and said, ‘What do you want us to do here? You really can’t put a program on the ice.’ We actually started the season that way and then we picked up a few more; I think we ended up with 12 that year. We got through the year, and kind of the next year was the same way. You go back four or five years and people weren’t working a lot, so what are you going to do? Are you going to play hockey or pay your bills?”
Not only was it hard to be competitive with so few players, but Pionk was worried about the safety of his players, who were forced to take longer shifts. He said he knew there were players in St. Clair – a school that had a program through the 2012-13 season – so Port Huron became a unified team for the 2016-17 season.
It didn’t happen overnight, but the team has now nearly doubled in size.
“Even after the first year or so of being unified with St. Clair, we still weren’t getting really good numbers,” Pionk said. “We just found that a lot of the older kids down there had been with their teams, and at this point they were established where they were and didn’t want to leave to come play high school hockey. They would love to have played high school hockey but didn’t want to leave at that point. Through Port Huron Minor Hockey’s help, they knew there were a couple kids in Yale who had kind of aged out and weren’t going to have anywhere to play, so we kind of approached their school about it and next thing you know, we had Yale as well. Now, a few years into it everybody knows we’re unified and the kids are coming out. We have 17 skaters and three goalies this year.”
The six players from St. Clair this season make up the biggest group Port Huron Unified has brought in from another school besides Port Huron High. While they may have grown up expecting to one day be Saints, they’re grateful for the opportunity they now have.
“The high school experience is so much fun,” said Duncan McLeod, a junior defenseman from St. Clair. “It’s just fun to play for something – something big.”
While players from out of town are excited about a newer opportunity, those within the program are excited to see their team growing again.
“My freshman year, my sophomore year, we were really struggling on numbers,” Port Huron junior Kevin Schott said. “It was tough having to double shift a lot and pretty much play wherever Coach needed you to play. This year I was really excited to hear that we had a lot of kids coming from St. Clair and Yale – some better skating kids that I knew had played travel. So, I was really super excited to see that we were going to have a full and deep team this year.”
With all the new faces and multiple schools combining to create one team, not a lot of the players had played with one another prior to high school. That hasn’t been an issue, though.
“We all came together real quick, because we all know how to play hockey – we've all been playing hockey for at least four years,” Sugars said. “We all know our positions, got together and figured it out.”
This year’s team has already enjoyed as much success as any of its unified predecessors. The Big Reds opened the season with a pair of wins, eclipsing last year’s win total (one).
“We’re trying to be at least .500 this year,” Sugars said. “I wanted to be the best Yale high school team, but we already did that.”
A flu bug hit the team right before Thanksgiving, which didn’t help during a busy week. But even sitting at 2-3, there’s optimism about the season and the future, as without a senior on the roster, there’s a possibility everyone could come back next year.
“It’s looking positive for the year,” McLeod said. “We have a good team going.”
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) Port Huron Unified’s Noah Gunderson (19) is among Port Huron High School students who help make up the program again this winter. (Middle) Duncan McLeod, a St. Clair student, controls the puck. (Photos by Jeremiah May.)