Vicksburg Not Done After Historic Run

By Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com

May 23, 2017

VICKSBURG — The first time Grace Stock played softball, she absolutely hated it.

The Vicksburg senior was just 8 or 9 at the time, and that dislike lasted all of one game.

In her second game, “I played second and there was a ball that was hit above me, and I went on tip toes and reached out my mitt,” she said.

“My eyes were closed and I caught it. After that, I just loved it and wanted to play all the time. I have a picture of it, too, which makes it even better.”

She may not be playing all the time, but she and her Bulldogs teammates hope to be playing well into the postseason.

Last year, her team became the first in Vicksburg school history to make an MHSAA championship game, losing 2-0 to Richmond in the Division 2 Final.

Losing just two seniors from that team, “people ask, reflecting back on last year, are your expectations the same?” fifth-year head coach Paul Gephart said. “I say, last year is in the past, and this year we’ve got to focus one game at a time.”

After flying under the radar last season, this year’s Bulldogs are ranked fourth in state with Districts set to start next week.

“It’s absolutely extra pressure,” Gephart said. “I think it motivates other teams. They’re going to bring their best effort against you.

“I think it’s bulletin board material for other teams and kind of fuels them. Now we’re on the other side of that, and there is that pressure as far as expectation.”

The Bulldogs take a 25-9-1 (16-2 Wolverine Conference) record into the final week of the regular season. They have clinched the conference title for the second consecutive year.

Three key seniors – Stock, Carlie Kudary and Shaidan Knapp – earned all-state honors last year and have been starters since their freshman season.

Sadie Martin – the team’s second pitcher and an “awesome” outfielder, Gephart said – and “really solid” first baseman Raquel Rice round out the senior class. Gephart said in his mind he refers to the seniors at the Fab Five.

“All five of them, the four years they’ve been here, the team has been academic all-state,” he said. “I think that’s huge that they’re that intelligent and that driven.

“The way it works in softball, individual academic all-state you get that award your senior year, and all five will get that award this year.”

Stock is second on the team with a .487 batting average and 44 RBI.

“She is a solid catcher, all-around catching,” Gephart said. “Offensively, defensively, she’s the best catcher I’ve been around or associated with in female softball.”

Stock was behind the plate and Avery Slancik on the mound for every postseason game last season.

“I used to be a pitcher, but I wasn’t too good at that. But I liked that I was in every play, so catching suited me well,” Stock said.

Slancik, a junior, started playing travel ball with the Portage Hurricanes when she was 8 and was coached by her dad, Michael Slancik.

“Dad actually coached nine of the 11 girls we have on the team,” she said. “Back in the day I was a pitcher and a catcher, but my brother was a catcher so I chose to pitch.”

When she was a freshman, her father put up a barn with three batting cages inside.

“Me and my brother (Trace), who is a freshman at Hope and plays baseball there, and a neighbor are out there all the time practicing and getting better every day.”

Slancik has been the Bulldogs number one pitcher since she was a freshman and earned all-state honorable mention last year.

“He’s coached baseball his whole life until I started playing softball,” she said. “Whenever we went to his house, we’d always play catch.

She and Stock are best friends, which will make for an interesting season in another year. While Stock will play softball at Calvin College after graduation, Slancik plans to play at Hope the following year. “It’s going to be fun,” Slancik said. “They’re big rivals, but we’re going to stay best friends.”

Kudary, meanwhile, is a slap-hitter and one of the fastest players on the team.

“She gets on base a lot for us and since she bats leadoff, that gets us going right away,” Gephart said. “As a freshman, initially she was on the JV and we brought her up when we had an injury, and she’s been a starter ever since.

“She has so much speed, there are teams who would have really good hits in gaps, but she gets to them. That makes us really solid up the middle with Avery pitching, Grace catching, Shaidan at shortstop and Carlie at center.”

Knapp leads the team with a .510 batting average and 50 RBI. Her grandfather, Ed Knapp, got her started playing softball.

“He’s coached baseball his whole life until I started playing softball,” she said. “Whenever we went to his house, we’d always play catch.

“I’d ask to go to the park to hit instead of playing at the playground. I’d want to hit softballs. He’s been with me through the whole experience.”

Ed Knapp, who has coached various sports since 1964 and baseball until 1998, is Gephart’s assistant. He is also a member of the Michigan High School Coaches Association and Vicksburg halls of fame.

Knapp’s sister, Tailynn, is a freshman infielder – but they don’t get special treatment from their grandfather.

“He doesn’t really treat me like a grandchild, but at the same time, he’s such a sweet old man he acts like everyone’s his grandchild,” Shailyn said. “It’s nice to be able to see him on the field because I know him off the field. He’s a really fun guy.”

Ed Knapp said there is a down side to coaching his granddaughters

“People are always going to say, yeah, they’re playing because he’s the coach. They always say that until they look at how they play. No coach can survive if they play favorites.”

On the up side, “It’s a lot of fun watching them progress and get better. They really listen. It’s easy to work with them because you can do it in more of a grandfatherly approach.”

He hopes to instill words of wisdom to the players from his decades of coaching.

“You have to have fun. That’s the main reason kids play sports, is to have fun,” he said.

“I just cringe when I hear some of these coaches screaming and yelling at their players. You can just see those girls with their heads going down.”

Team bonding plays a big role in Vicksburg’s success.

“The key is how close we are and just trusting that the person behind us has each other’s back,” Slancik said. “For instance, if one of us gets out, the next person will get another hit.

“If one person makes an error, the next person can step up and say, ‘It’s all right, I’ve got you.’ We’ve been implementing that into our game.”

Stock recalled how the team also got a boost from the community when it returned from the MHSAA Finals last year.

“Fans were lining the street and, we got escorted by police officers and fire trucks, so that was pretty cool,” she said. Later that summer, “There was a party at the football field for family and friends. We got all of our awards, and parents told us how proud they were of us.”

Of course, Vicksburg was disappointed to end the Cinderella season with a loss. But being one of two Division 2 teams standing at the end was special.

“You never want to lose,” Kudary said. “We have to look at it from a better perspective and realize we were the second team in the state to get there.

And yet, “We have to keep our focus and keep working hard at practice. We can’t let last year’s season interfere with this year’s season.”

The other junior on the team is third baseman/outfield Lauren Goertler.

The lone sophomore is pitcher/infielder Kali Yant, and other freshmen are catcher/outfielder Camille Wadley and third baseman/pitcher Rylie Richter.

Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.

PHOTOS: (Top) Vicksburg pitcher Avery Slancik warms up before an inning during last season’s Division 2 Final at Michigan State’s Secchia Stadium. (Middle top) From left: Carlie Kudary, Avery Slancik, Shaidan Knapp. (Middle below) Vicksburg’s Grace Stock, last season catching the championship game and also as a child catching with her eyes closed. (Below) From left: Bulldogs head coach Paul Gephart and assistant Ed Knapp. (Middle photo provided by Grace Stock.)

Whiteford, USA Win Big to Line Up Power-Packed D4 Decider

By Dean Holzwarth
Special for MHSAA.com

June 17, 2022

EAST LANSING – The Ottawa Lake Whiteford softball team has been an offensive juggernaut this entire postseason.

Not much changed in Friday’s Division 4 Semifinal.

The No. 2-ranked Bobcats registered 13 hits and used a big second inning to blank Mount Pleasant Sacred Heart 10-0 in 5 innings at Secchia Stadium.

Whiteford (40-4) will play reigning champion Unionville-Sebewaing in Saturday’s 5:30 p.m. Division 4 Final. The Patriots shut out Pickford 13-0 in the other Semifinal.

The Bobcats, who have advanced to the Semifinals four times over the last six years, have outscored their last four MHSAA Tournament opponents by a combined 48-0.

“We can score runs in a few different ways, which obviously is a big advantage, and because we’re so fast and aggressive on the bases that does force the issue for a lot of teams,” Whiteford coach Matt VanBrandt said. “When you know we are going to be running, sometimes you hurry too much defensively, and that’s to our advantage.”

Whiteford jumped out to an early 2-0 lead in the first inning. Junior Alyssa VanBrandt’s single to right field turned into an early run after a fielding error by the Irish allowed her to sprint all the way home.

“I did not expect that to happen,” Alyssa VanBrandt said. “He was waving me home and I was like, ‘I hit a grounder, why is he waving me home?’ But that felt amazing.” 

Senior Berlynn Keller followed with a solo home run over the centerfield wall.

The Bobcats poured it on in the second inning with seven runs on seven hits to take a commanding 9-0 lead.

The early barrage of runs helped set the tone. 

“Anytime you can get ahead of good teams at the end of the season, it can be a real momentum shift,” Matt VanBrandt said. “And it helps our pitcher stay calm. She knows we can typically score, and it gives her a little more confidence.”

Alyssa VanBrandt and Adrianna VanBrandt, along with Karlei Conard and Shaylin Alexander combined for eight hits.

Ambrelle Billau drove in a pair of runs with a single during the decisive second inning. Sophomore pitcher Unity Nelson tossed a two-hitter and fanned 11 in five innings of work. 

“Our whole team has confidence in everyone up and down our lineup, and Unity has been amazing,” Alyssa VanBrandt said. “She hasn’t hardly made any mistakes in our games, and she’s done really well when the pressure is on.”

Sacred Heart (27-12) was making its first appearance in the Semifinals since 2012. The loss snapped a nine-game winning streak.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve been here and I wanted them to experience this, so we got what we wanted out of this,” Irish coach Josh Wheaton said. “I would've liked to put up a little better fight, but anyone that was here to see this game saw one of, if not the best team in the state of Michigan. That is some legitimate next-level talent right there, and that's why they are here a lot.”

Click for the full box score.

Unionville-Sebewaing 13, Pickford 0 (5 innings)

The Patriots had no trouble advancing to the Finals for the third straight season behind a powerful offense and stellar pitching.

Senior Laci Harris threw a gem, and the offense supplied plenty of support.

This has been Harris’ first season as lead pitcher after playing third base the past three for the top-ranked Patriots.

Unionville-Sebewaing/Pickford softball“It means a lot to me to finish in a Final like this because this was my first and only season to be our No. 1 pitcher,” Harris said. “I threw a lot of curveballs, and it was my best pitch. They weren’t touching it at all.”

Harris struck out 10 and walked one. Her bid for a no-hitter ended with one out in the bottom of the fifth inning when Finley Hudecek singled.

“Her pitches were working today, and she overpowered them,” USA coach Isaiah Gainforth said. “When her pitches are working good, she’s always going to give us a chance to win.

“This is something as a little girl she’s dreamt of, to be the pitcher that gets her team to the state championship. A senior in the circle is a good thing to have.”

The Patriots have won four of the last six Division 4 championships, including the most recent two in 2019 and 2021.

“You always want to get to the last week of the season and play in the last game, and literally we can say we are playing in the last game,” Gainforth said. “It’s pretty cool. It’s what we’ve worked for and prepared for, and for it to come to fruition is good, but we’re not done yet. We still have one more tough one ahead.”

USA scored runs in each of the first three innings.

The Patriots exploded for six runs in the third inning, with five coming before Pickford could get the first out. Sophomore Gabrielle Crumm slapped a two-run double to the wall to put the Patriots ahead 9-0.

USA added three more runs in the fifth. 

Crumm went 3-for-4 with four RBI, while Rylie Betson added two hits and three RBI and Harris helped her cause with two hits and a pair of RBI.

A historic season came to an end for the Panthers (25-15-2), who won the program’s first District title en route to the Semifinals.

“This was an amazing run,” second-year coach Matt Hudecek said. “Districts was our goal, and then after that this was bonus softball. We caught fire in Regionals and were able to get down here.”

Click for the full box score.

PHOTOS (Top) Whiteford’s Shaylin Alexander sprints to first base during her team’s Division 4 Semifinal win Friday. (Middle) USA’s Laci Harris fires a pitch with a Pickford runner on second.