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.)
High 5s - 4/24/12
April 24, 2012
Each week, Second Half gives "High 5s" to multiple athletes and a team that have performed exceptionally on the field or made a notable impact off of it.
Please offer your suggestions by e-mail to editor Geoff Kimmerly at [email protected]. Below are this week's honorees:
Mallory Weber
Northville senior
Soccer
Weber, a two-time Division 1 all-state forward, leads one of the best teams in the state. Northville is 5-0-2 and ranked No. 3, with its most significant win so far coming last week, 1-0 over reigning Division 1 champion and current No. 5 Novi. Although Weber did not score that goal, she did help open up the field by drawing two and at times three defenders. She has nine goals and five assists this season, and has signed with reigning Big Ten regular-season champion Penn State after also considering the University of Maryland and the University of Miami (Fla.). She also played basketball at Northville.
For love of the game: "I love soccer. It's so competitive. It's just fun. It's fast-moving; basketball you stop so much, but in soccer you're always continuing."
I learned the most about soccer from: "Probably my (club) coach Andy Vanover. He was my coach for probably six years, and he taught me to never give up. That work ethic is part of what makes my game so hard to defend."
I model my game after: FC Barcelona star Lionel Messi. "Just how he's so good with his foot skills. That's the biggest part of my game I try to work on."
Up next: Weber is undecided on her major at Penn State, but is considering something in food science and nutrition. "I just like the whole thing of how food affects your body, how it plays into your performance."
Jake McFadden
Clare senior
Track and Field
McFadden won the 110-meter hurdles (14.9 seconds), the 300 hurdles (39.3) and the 200 dash (22.3) on Saturday at the Remus Chippewa Hills Invitational as Clare scored 174 points to finish first. He's the reigning MHSAA Division 3 champion in both hurdles races and helped Clare to a third-place team finish at the 2011 Final. He also owns school and Jack Pine Conference records in the 110 (14.82) and 300 (39.28), according to a report by the Mount Pleasant Morning Sun. McFadden played football in previous falls until this school year, when he switched to cross country to help him get into better shape for track season.
Up next: McFadden has signed to run track at Michigan State University, and will study biomedical engineering. "I just like the working-with-my-hands aspect, making new things (like) replacements for hips and knees, making innovations in that kind of stuff."
Quick learner: McFadden shot put and ran on a relay in junior high, but didn't try hurdling until high school. "I just watched a lot of film on myself, just fixed stuff there."
I look up to: "I'd say my brother (Mike McFadden, a 2010 Clare grad). He's the one who really got me into track. He played baseball freshman year and ran track sophomore year, and he really liked track. I wanted to follow in his footsteps and see what I could do."
Crossing over: "I played football every year but senior year. I ran cross country this year. It was a good experience, got me in shape. I ran about what I wanted to run, time-wise."
Stevensville Lakeshore softball
In a battle of top-ranked teams, Stevensville Lakeshore -- ranked No. 1 in Division 2 -- downed Division 1 No. 1 Mattawan 4-3 in eight innings to win Saturday's Mattawan Invitational. The Southwestern Michigan Athletic Conference rivals also met in last season's Mattawan championship game, with Mattawan winning in eight innings, and again in last weekend's Portage Invitational final -- a 4-2 Wildcats win. Mattawan had won 38 straight games before falling to Portage Central earlier Saturday.
Lakeshore also beat Division 1 No. 3 Grandville, 7-1, and Vicksburg 6-1. The Lancers improved to 11-2 with the tournament sweep.
This spring's previous honorees
Sarah Appold, Saginaw Valley Lutheran softball
Nick Stiles, Bath baseball