Top-Ranked Inland Lakes Sets Bar High
May 4, 2017
By Dennis Chase
Special for Second Half
INDIAN RIVER – Rain wiped out a Tuesday doubleheader, but it was not a complete wash for Inland Lakes softball coach Krissi Thompson and her top-ranked Division 4 team.
Thompson learned afterward that the Bulldogs will be honored by the Michigan High School Softball Coaches Association for their cumulative 3.83 grade point average, the highest among softball teams in Division 4.
“In the classroom and on the field, these girls are 100 percent dedicated to what they do,” Thompson said. “We have four 4.0 (grade point average) players and others who are really close.
“I can’t say enough about them. They are amazing kids. You don’t get this every day. We know we have something special here. We’re very fortunate.”
Two of the team’s four seniors, Cloe Mallory and Vanessa Wandrie, are among those sporting 4.0 averages.
Mallory, a four-sport athlete until this school year, signed to play softball at Central Michigan University, where she’ll study biomedical sciences.
“It’s hard juggling sports and school, but it (4.0) shows that I put forth the effort and did the best I could,” the all-state pitcher said.
Wandrie, a three-sport athlete, signed to play for Siena Heights, where she’ll major in biology.
“I’ve worked really hard, academically and athletically,” the shortstop said. “It’s cool to see that hard work pay off.”
That type of work ethic is also paying dividends for the team’s two other seniors, second baseman Kimmy Rorick and catcher Pam Braund. Rorick, a 3.9 student, and Braund, a 3.7, will both attend the University of Detroit Mercy in the fall. Rorick will enroll in an advanced program, where she can earn a master’s degree in five years, to become a physician assistant. Braund will enter the pre-dental program. The two will room together.
“We’ll lean on each other for support, just like we have in high school,” Braund said.
Mallory, Wandrie, Rorick and Braund are four-year starters in softball. They are the sparkplugs for the 16-1 Bulldogs, who reached the MHSAA Quarterfinals two years ago and then lost to Unionville-Sebewaing 1-0 in the Division 4 championship game last June.
They would like nothing better than to capture just the second MHSAA team title in school history – and the first in a bracketed sport. The girls track team won it all in 1979.
“That’s our goal – to make history at Inland Lakes,” Wandrie, who turns 18 today, said. “Last year we came so close to winning it all, and we don’t want to let it slip away again.”
Unionville-Sebewaing, which has won five MHSAA Finals titles in Divisions 3 and 4 over the last 11 years, scratched out a run in the sixth inning and Stanford-bound pitcher Nikki Bauer made it stand.
That near miss is motivating the Bulldogs this season.
“It left a bad taste,” said Braund. “We talk about it every day in practice.”
Most of that runner-up squad is back.
“It’s an extremely veteran team,” Thompson said. “Most of the girls play travel ball throughout the summer so they have a lot of game experience.
“Each year we’ve been getting closer and closer. Then, when we got there (MHSAA Finals), it was like ‘Wow.’ But (the outcome) left us hungry for more. We have high goals.”
Through 17 games, Inland Lakes has outscored the opposition 218-16. The Bulldogs are hitting .415 as a team.
“We’re a strong hitting team, but we’re pretty strong defensively, too,” Thompson said. “We’re quite solid on both sides. It’s fun to watch them hit, though. I do enjoy that.”
To prepare for the upcoming MHSAA tournament, Inland Lakes ramped up its schedule. The Bulldogs competed in a tournament at Midland Dow last weekend, finishing 2-1 against Division 1 foes, all of whom are ranked.
Inland Lakes opened with a 2-1 eight-inning win over Clarkston, then rallied from a 4-0 deficit to edge Mount Pleasant 6-5 in nine innings. The Bulldogs fell to White Lake Lakeland 5-2 in the final game.
That tournament helped answer some questions since Inland Lakes has been rolling over its competition in the north. Particularly impressive was the comeback win over Mount Pleasant.
“We’re not used to losing,” Rorick said. “It was neat to see that we continued to play hard when we were down, and that we were able to come back. We never give up. Our coaches make sure of that.”
Thompson, who was a pitcher on the school’s 1999 Semifinal team, is in her 15th season as head coach. But she’s the first to admit it’s “not a one-person show.” Her husband, Nate, has been right there along the way, too. Nancy Wandrie has assisted four years, Dan Mallory three.
“They’re amazing,” Thompson said. “They work so great with the kids. Everybody has a certain job and makes sure everything is taken care of.”
Cloe Mallory leads a talented pitching staff that also includes junior Lindsay Van Daele and freshman Grace Henckel.
Mallory – who has also lettered in volleyball, basketball and track – had a procedure on the patellar tendon in her knee in August. That kept her out of volleyball and most of basketball. She opted not to run track and focus solely on softball this spring.
“It was an overuse injury – the continuous pounding from pitching and all the other sports I did,” Mallory said.
The injury has not set her back on the diamond.
“No, not too much at all,” Thompson said. “She’s been taking precautions.”
Mallory entered the season with a career 0.60 earned run average, striking out nearly 50 percent of the batters she faced. She also hit .495 with 20 home runs over her first three years. She’s added another eight home runs to that total this season. But it was her pitching prowess that caught the eye of Central Michigan coach Margo Jonker.
“Cloe is a pitcher with moxie,” Jonker said in a release on signing day. “She owns the circle when she has the ball in her hand. Her mental and physical skills make her a pitcher that one can be excited about.”
Mallory, 18, has been working with two pitching coaches the past few years – Steve Howard of Grand Rapids and Peter Finn of Midland.
“Once I saw (Howard) I gained five to eight miles-per-hour on my pitch,” Mallory said. “He mostly works with form. That helped me because I was all over the place when I was younger. I had to dial it in. (Finn) has helped me with the mental aspect of the game, the strategy, what pitches to throw and when.”
At Inland Lakes, Mallory is one cog in the machine.
“She’s surrounded by 11 other girls that help contribute to make her that good,” Thompson said.
The coach prefers to talk about team and not individuals.
“We’re family oriented,” she said. “That’s what keeps us humble.”
Her players agree.
“We’re a tight-knit group,” Mallory said. “We’re there for each other day in and day out. That’s what brings us our success.”
“Everybody gets along,” Rorick added. “There’s no team drama.”
“We abide by that (family motto),” Wandrie said. “We know we’ve got each other’s back. We know we can rely on each other. I love this group of girls. We’re like sisters. It’s fun to be with them.”
“There’s a togetherness,” Braund concluded. “Someone makes a mistake, everyone is there to pick them up.”
The four captains have played softball together for nearly 10 years, dating back to Little League. Their squads advanced to the state tournament three times, giving coaches an inkling of what was to come.
“It’s a small school (253 students),” Rorick said. “Everybody knows everybody, but growing up with (the other seniors) it’s really given us a connection and it makes it easier on the field because we know what each other is thinking.”
In addition to the four seniors, the varsity roster consists of four juniors (Van Daele, outfielders Sydney DePauw and Maki Henckel and third baseman Madison Milner), two sophomores (outfielders Precious Delos Santos and Mara Clancy) and two freshmen (Henckel and catcher/infielder Amber Passino).
There’s also 13 underclassmen on JV and a growing legion of players in Little League.
“This team has done huge things for our community,” Thompson said. “Softball has taken off like crazy in our town. There are so many young girls now that want to play softball, that want to be part of it. It’s amazing to see. These girls have sparked something here.”
The players have helped foster that growth by mentoring young girls in the Little League program.
“They look up to us,” Rorick said. “It’s nice to see girls eager to do so well and work so hard. It makes me feel like the program is going to keep going farther after we graduate.”
And that competitive edge? Well, it applies to the classroom, too.
“We keep tabs on each other’s grades,” Braund admitted. “We’re competitive.”
Even with the younger players, Braund added, the upperclassmen “instill the importance of academics.”
So, now that the Bulldogs are atop the polls, they would like to remain there and finish it off with a title.
“At the end of the day, it comes down to who is the better team,” Mallory said, “and we’re working really hard to be that team.”
Dennis Chase worked 32 years as a sportswriter at the Traverse City Record-Eagle, including as sports editor from 2000-14. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Indian River Inland Lakes' Cloe Mallory unloads a pitch during last season's Division 4 championship game. (Middle) Catcher Pam Braund secures a pop fly against Unionville-Sebewaing.
Flashback 1980: Thrilling Conclusions
June 2, 2020
By Ron Pesch
Special for Second Half
With all Spring sports canceled for 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s been a season of recalling fond memories as we all sit and wait for the return of high school athletics in Michigan.
This time we’re diving 40 years deep to the Baseball and Softball Finals from 1980, which saw five of eight championship games decided by two runs or fewer and mostly on late-inning dramatics while played at various parks across the Lower Peninsula.
Here’s a flashback to the 1980 championship rounds:
BASEBALL
A strong argument could be made that Matt Costello’s ninth-inning heroics rank among the top moments in MHSAA tournament history.
In the days when the state Semifinals and Finals were played on the same day, and split across four separate sites spread across the state, an impressive 1,025 fans turned out for the Class A title game between Royal Oak Kimball and Grosse Pointe North, hosted at Wyandotte’s Memorial Park.
For Kimball, it was the fourth appearance in the state title game. The Knights, led by coach Frank Clouser, had appeared in the Class A title game for three straight years, 1971-1973, earning a championship in 1972 with a 3-1 win over Detroit Western.
It was the first appearance in the Finals for North and coach Frank Sumbera. Earlier in the year, the Norsemen had been the top-ranked team in the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association Class A poll, but the squad hit a mid-May speedbump. Within five hours, North dropped two games, falling to St. Clair Shores Lakeview, 6-5, then 3-2 to Harper Woods, which was undefeated and ranked No. 1 in Class C. North rebounded, and finished the regular season as the top team in the Class A rankings with a 23-4 mark.
North opened the championship game scoring with three quick runs in the first inning. Kimball made it 3-1 in the bottom half of the inning, then grabbed a 4-3 lead in the third as 6-foot-4 senior Dave Kopf, (a 32nd-round draft pick of the Detroit Tigers one week earlier) crushed a three-run homer. North tied the game at 4-4 in the sixth when junior Bill Babcock led off with a double, moved to third on a sacrifice, then scored when the throw to first base on Keith Schatko’s suicide squeeze bunt went wild. Following a pop out, Costello picked up his first RBI on the day, on a double over the left fielder’s head that scored Schatko, giving North a 5-4 lead.
Babcock, who had tossed a 2-0 no-hitter earlier in the day in the Norsemen’s Semifinal against Wayne Memorial, replaced starter Tom Shook in the bottom of the sixth inning. Following a walk, Kimball’s Scott Sturley smashed a two-out triple to tie the game, 5-5.
Neither team could push across a run in the last inning of regulation play. Kimball threatened in the bottom of the eighth, notching a leadoff double. But the danger ended when North catcher Mike Seagram picked off the runner.
Sumbera told Wright Wilson of the Grosse Pointe News that the play was the “turning point of the game.”
Singles by Babcock and Scott Young and a walk by Al Lucido in the top of the ninth inning set the stage for Costello.
“I had Matt swinging away because they were charging their infielders all the time, so we were playing for the hit,” said Sumbera to the Detroit Free Press following the title contest.
“I was just trying to get the run in when I went up there,” stated Costello, who “cracked a 2-2 pitch over the left field fence, more than 365 feet away.”
“When I hit it I knew it was going to be a home run. That was the greatest.”
Costello finished with three hits and an MHSAA championship game-record five RBIs, a mark that stood alone until Jacob Holt from Muskegon Catholic Central tied the record 35 years later, in 2015.
Trailing 9-5, Kimball loaded the bases in the bottom of the ninth inning and scored a run on a two-out wild pitch. But a pop-out to first ended the rally, and North grabbed a 9-6 win and its first diamond title.
Sumbera , who had taken the reins of the North program in 1973, would lead the Norsemen to a second title in 2006. Today, he ranks third in all-time baseball victories in Michigan after a 45-year coaching career.
Flint Powers downed Mount Pleasant 8-7 in a Class B thriller, played at Lansing’s Municipal Park. Mount Pleasant grabbed a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the second inning, before Powers’ Jim Morrissey popped a two-run homer to knot the game in the fourth. The Chargers added two more runs in the top of the fifth, but Mount Pleasant shortstop Bob Lee followed in the bottom of the inning with a two-run shot that tied the game at 4-4.
Powers took a 7-4 lead in the sixth inning and upped the lead to 8-4 on a Mike Morgan bases-loaded single in the seventh. With the game on the line, Mount Pleasant’s Scott Tuma blasted a two-out, three-run homer to cut the margin to 8-7. Morgan, who tossed a five-hit shutout complete game for Powers in its win over Farmington Hills Harrison earlier in the day, allowed two more runners before striking out pinch-hitter Todd Tuma to end the game.
Rain delayed the second Class C Semifinal game and postponed the championship contest until Monday, June 16. Leading 5-0 after three innings, Dundee finished off Lansing Catholic Central 7-2, then topped Parchment 3-1 for its first and only baseball crown. Norm Pentercs, who would later pitch at Grand Valley State, struck out 11 and allowed only four hits in the title game. Those games were played at Broome Park in Flint.
A seventh-inning walk-off bases-loaded single by Scott Trudell broke a 1-1 deadlock to give Grass Lake a 2-1 win over Muskegon Western Michigan Christian in Class D, hosted at Marshall High School. David Knoll allowed just three hits and struck out 13 for the win. It was the second appearance in a Final on the year for WMC, which fell to Detroit East Catholic in an MHSAA basketball championship game in March.
SOFTBALL
Veronica Miller’s single with two outs in the fifth inning drove home Julie Guerra, snapping a 1-1 tie and propelling Flint Carman to a 2-1 victory over East Detroit and all-state pitcher Roxanne ‘Rocky’ Szczesniak in the Class A championship game. Linda Allen picked up her second win on the day. Earlier she tossed a shutout in Carman’s 14-0 victory over Holland West Ottawa. Szczesniak, who would later star at Wayne State, allowed only three hits in the contest after delivering a one-hitter in East Detroit’s 11-3 victory over Ann Arbor Huron in the Semifinal.
“Everything worked great for me today,” Deanne Moore told the Lansing State Journal after tossing a two-hit, 6-0 shutout in Fenton’s Class B Final victory over Grand Rapids Northview. “I knew I had to pitch strikes and my fastball was moving around. I threw a couple of changeups to keep them guessing.”
In the title game, Moore opened the scoring with a solo home run in the second inning. It was followed by a triple by Sandy Thornton, who scored when Theresa Flynn singled up the middle. Moore scored again in the fourth inning following sacrifices by Sue Mora and Flynn, for a 3-0 lead. Northview’s fate was sealed in the fifth as Fenton tallied three more on Thornton’s two-run single and a fielder’s choice by Lori Glass.
It was the third-consecutive Class B title for the Tigers. Moore, a senior righthander, finished with a 24-2 record and would go on to an All-American career at Michigan State, earning entry into MSU’s Hall of Fame in 1996.
Rhonda Thran added her name to the MHSAA Championship Game Record Book, knocking in five runs as Berrien Springs routed Lakeview 11-4 in the Class C title game. Thran matched the RBI record set by DeWitt’s Cindy White in the Panthers’ Class C title victory over Center Line St. Clement in 1977. The sophomore centerfielder, along with second baseman Jan Dowell, was one of two regulars who were also starters on the Shamrocks’ volleyball team that won the Class C championship during the 1979-80 winter sports season.
Junior Cindy DeFay fired a three-hitter in the championship. “The whole team really wanted this one. I had a good feeling that we were going to win so I was ready to play. It’s the best game I’ve pitched all year,” she told Jack Walkden of the Benton Harbor Herald-Palladium following the game. DeFay had “missed much of the first half of the season with a severely sprained ankle.”
In the Semifinal, Berrien Springs downed Leroy Pine River 10-8 and banged out 21 hits across the day’s two games, highlighted by five hits by both Rachel Roots and Sheila Duffel, followed with four by Thran.
A police escort guided the team and its retiring coach, Roy Rennhack, back into town after the games played across the state in Oak Park near Detroit – “More than 150 cars joined the caravan, which paraded the team through town atop firetrucks.”
“It was a perfect going away present,” said Rennhack.
It was truly an amazing sports year for the Shamrocks girls, who also won Regional titles in track and basketball. Between 1979 and 1985, Berrien Springs volleyball teams won five Finals volleyball titles. (Those squads were honored in the second year of the MHSAA’s Legends of the Game program in 1999).
In Class D, Central Lake scored a dramatic 2-1 win over Vestaburg. In the top of the seventh inning, Vestaburg had knotted the game at 1-1 before relinquishing a walk to Pam Ellison in the bottom of the inning that set things in motion for the Trojans. Ellison stole second, then advanced to third on a sacrifice by Wendy Johnson. Following a walk to Wendy Baker, catcher Mary Hopp singled Ellison home for the win. Central Lake had finished as state runner-up to Laingsburg in 1978, then fell to Morenci 6-5 in the Semifinals in 1979.
“We were a pretty close-knit team,” said Ellison., recapping the rally.
“I had fantastic kids,” recalled coach Gary Johnson 40 years later. “We played a lot of big-time schools. I never had a second pitcher when I coached. Back then, if you had a girl who could throw a fastball you were at the top of the world. We had Judy Koens.“
Koens allowed just four-hits in the title game and along with Hopp was named to The Associated Press Class D all-state team as Central Lake finished 33-4. Koens would pitch at Central Michigan, posting stellar ERAs during her four seasons and earning all-Mid-American Conference honors in 1984 as a senior.
Ron Pesch has taken an active role in researching the history of MHSAA events since 1985 and began writing for MHSAA Finals programs in 1986, adding additional features and "flashbacks" in 1992. He inherited the title of MHSAA historian from the late Dick Kishpaugh following the 1993-94 school year, and resides in Muskegon. Contact him at [email protected] with ideas for historical articles.
PHOTOS: (Top) Berrien Springs celebrates its 1980 Class C softball championship. (Middle) Grosse Pointe North claims the Class A baseball title in its first Finals under coach Frank Sumbera. (Below) Central Lake improves from Class D softball runner-up in 1978 to champion two years later. (Photos gathered by Ron Pesch.)