'Oakridge Girls' Shine on Statewide Stage
June 10, 2016
By Tom Kendra
Special for Second Half
You have heard of the Oakridge boys.
No, not the country music quartet best known for its 1981 hit “Elvira,” but the Muskegon Oakridge football team, a perennial playoff power which boasts five championship game appearances and three MHSAA titles.
Now, the “Oakridge Girls” are getting their time on the statewide stage.
The young Oakridge softball team (34-2) hopes to take another couple of steps on its journey at Saturday’s MHSAA Division 2 Regional tournament at Gladwin, starting with a noon game against Cadillac.
“Our big goal is to win a state championship,” said junior ace pitcher Alyssa Fessenden, who is 18-1 on the season. “But that starts with the next pitch and the next at-bat. You have to be focused all the time or you’ll get beat. We learned that last year.”
After advancing to the Division 3 Quarterfinals in 2014, the Eagles never even made it to District weekend last year, falling to neighboring rival Ravenna, 3-2, in a Division 3 Pre-District game.
Fessenden said that loss has helped to bond and focus this year’s team, which has fearlessly made the move up to Division 2 for the first time. That lack of fear starts with an outstanding freshmen class, including shortstop and leadoff hitter Sophia Wiard, big-hitting outfielder Kaylie Piper, and pitchers Kayla Fessenden (Alyssa’s younger sister) and Madison Carroll.
“It has taken a lot of weight off of my shoulders,” said Alyssa Fessenden of the addition of the two freshman pitchers. “Last year, I had to pitch every single game and if I just didn’t have it for some reason, I had to keep going. This year, we have those two who can come in and that takes a lot of pressure off of me and keeps my arm fresh.”
Those three pitchers powered Oakridge to its first Greater Muskegon Athletic Association county tournament championship since 2001, as well as an undefeated season in the West Michigan Conference. The Eagles have continued rolling in the postseason, winning three games at last week’s Division 3 District at Sparta by a combined score of 29-1.
Oakridge has produced a storybook season despite having only three seniors – second baseman Alessa Buchner, centerfielder Abby Lowe and Miranda Vanderwort.
The leader of the Oakridge girls is Joe Coletta, the longtime offensive coordinator of the school’s football team and right-hand man of legendary coach Jack Schugars on all five of the Eagles’ runs to the MHSAA Finals.
“I took over the program because we had a good group of girls coming through that needed a coach,” said Coletta, who coached football at Oakridge for 25 years. “I figured I’d do it for two years. But it has gotten into my blood, and I just love it.”
Coletta has transformed the softball program and helped spearhead the renovation of the school’s dilapidated softball facilities, which he says are now a source of community pride. This summer, the field will get new dugouts, also funded by community donations.
Coletta gives much of the credit for the on-field turnaround to his assistant coach, Red Pastor, who has worked with most of the team’s 14 players since their youth days in the community recreation program, and a tremendous run of female athletes at the Muskegon County school. Oakridge also won a girls soccer District title this year and the girls basketball team has won 50 consecutive league games in the West Michigan Conference.
“This is a very competitive group of girls, but they genuinely enjoy being around each other and pushing each other,” said Coletta, who teaches physical education at Oakridge High School.
Oakridge can score runs in bunches as leadoff hitter Wiard (.513 batting average, 38 stolen bases) and No. 2 hitter Lowe are adept at getting on base, setting things up for the power bats of Alyssa Fessenden (3 home runs, 48 RBIs), standout catcher Hannah Reinhold (6 home runs, 58 RBIs) and Buchner (55 RBIs) to knock them in.
Both of the Eagles’ losses came on the same day – at the Michigan High School Blue Chip tournament at Byron Center, which featured 12 state-ranked teams out of 16 total.
Fessenden hopes the fast pitching the Eagles faced in that tournament will pay off Saturday, when they go up against Cadillac senior ace Gabby Hoagland in the Regional opener. Ironically, Oakridge found a way to beat Hoagland two years ago in a Division 3 Regional game, when Hoagland was pitching for McBain.
Cadillac also will have to find a way to get to Fessenden in what has the makings of a pitcher’s duel. Fessenden sports a 0.96 ERA, 160 strikeouts and just 27 walks in 102 innings pitched.
Fessenden tries not to be superstitious, although she does wear two pairs of socks every game and will do it again Saturday even though temperatures are expected to soar into the high 80s (Buchner is the opposite, wearing socks with the toes torn out).
“Fessy” knows the key to continuing the tournament run has nothing to do with socks, and everything to do with preparation and performance.
“Our coaches cranked up the pitching machine at practice this week and moved it in closer, so we’ll be ready for the fast pitching,” Fessenden said. “It should be a great game.”
Tom Kendra worked 23 years at The Muskegon Chronicle, including five as assistant sports editor and the final six as sports editor through 2011. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Muskegon, Oceana, Mason, Lake, Oceola, Mecosta and Newaygo counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Junior ace pitcher Alyssa Fessenden delivers for the Muskegon Oakridge softball team, which is 34-2 entering Saturday's MHSAA Division 2 Regional at Gladwin. (Middle) Joe Coletta, the longtime offensive coordinator for the powerful Muskegon Oakridge football program, is in his eighth season as the school's softball coach. (Photos by Sherry Wahr.)
Standish-Sterling Claims 1st Softball Title on Senior's Season-Ending Blast
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
June 17, 2023
EAST LANSING – If Saturday’s MHSAA Division 3 Final was a boxing match, Ottawa Lake Whiteford would have won on points.
But it was a softball game, and it was Standish-Sterling senior Macey Fegan who delivered the knockout punch – a double over the left fielder’s head in the bottom of the seventh inning to score classmate Lexi Mielke from first base with the only run in an epic, walk-off, 1-0 victory over shell-shocked Ottawa Lake Whiteford.
“My pitch is a ball up in the zone,” said Fegan, one of three seniors for the Panthers, who went out with the school’s first softball state championship.
“She threw one up in the zone, and I sent it.”
Fegan sent it to the left field wall, allowing Mielke – who led off the inning and reached first base by getting hit by a pitch – to turn on the jets and round the bases as seemingly the entire town of Standish went crazy in the Secchia Stadium bleachers.
“Once I saw it got back to the wall, I just started running as fast as I could,” said Mielke, the team’s leading hitter with a .562 batting average. “Then I rounded third and saw Coach (Rich Sullivan) waving his arms, and I knew I had to get home.”
Mielke made it home, then was quickly mobbed by teammates in front of home plate, a historical moment for unheralded Standish-Sterling, which knocked off – among others – No. 1 Evart (Regionals) and No. 5 Gladstone (Quarterfinals) en route to the championship.
“I knew this was a special team and potentially a historic team,” said Sullivan, who finished up his ninth season. “They are the scrappiest group I’ve ever had. That dugout kept getting louder and louder as the game went on, with more and more energy, even though they were striking us out a lot.”
Certainly, it was Whiteford that had all of the scoring chances over the first six innings – with five hits and seven runners left on base through six, compared to one hit and one left on base for Standish-Sterling.
Whiteford junior ace Unity Nelson, who threw a two-hitter with 11 strikeouts in the Semifinal win over Laingsburg, was mowing down the Panthers (38-7) in the same fashion, with 12 strikeouts through six innings.
But it was a classic pitchers’ duel as Standish-Sterling senior Devri Jennings wasn’t blinking. Jennings allowed five hits (all singles) and two walks in seven innings, but repeatedly pitched her way out of jams.
“We had chances throughout the game,” said fourth-year Whiteford coach Matt VanBrandt, whose daughter, Alyssa, was the team’s senior shortstop. “We didn’t get our bunts down, and that hurt us. We had a lot of baserunners, but we just couldn’t push that run across.”
Whiteford (38-5), which also finished runner-up last year in Division 4, was led by Alyssa VanBrandt with two hits.
Despite getting absolutely nothing going for the first six innings, the Panthers entered the seventh with confidence and the top of the order at the plate.
After Mielke reached base on the uncharacteristic hit-by-pitch from Nelson, Fegan entered the box with a good feeling.
“I had made contact my first two at-bats (a fly out and ground out),” explained Fegan, a 5-foot-10 centerfielder who leads the team with 61 RBIs. “I knew I could make contact, and I wasn’t scared.
“Once I saw it go to the wall and Lexi coming around to score, I couldn’t wait to get in the middle of the dogpile with everyone else.”
Fegan, a Division I basketball commit to the University of Toledo, who is actually leaving for Toledo on Sunday, said she couldn’t have scripted a better ending to her high school sports career.
“It’s going to be replaying in my head tonight, that’s for sure,” said Fegan, a two-time basketball all-stater who finished her career with more than 2,000 points and 1,000 rebounds.
“It was perfect. You don’t want to win 10-0; that’s no fun. Winning 1-0 in a walk-off, now that’s where it’s at.”
PHOTOS (Top) Standish-Sterling’s Macy Fegan (23) stands in for a pitch during Saturday’s Division 3 Final. (Middle) Panthers players pile up after clinching the title. (Below) Devri Jennings begins unwinding toward the plate. (Photos by Olivia Napier/Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)