GR Christian Runs Finals Win Streak to 3
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
January 16, 2021
BATTLE CREEK – Grand Rapids Christian volleyball coach Tiffannie Gates said she knew Lake Odessa Lakewood wanted another crack at her team in this season’s Division 2 Final.
Lakewood earned that opportunity, but it was the Eagles who walked out of Kellogg Arena as champions.
Grand Rapids Christian defeated Lakewood 25-20, 25-20, 25-19 Saturday to claim its third-straight Finals title.
“I think each year has had its own special meaning to me as a coach with these championships,” Gates said. “This year, with this group of seniors, has a very special place in my heart – they all do – but they’ve been here, most of them, from Day 1 as freshmen. Just to see their determination to social distance and not go to parties and make sure they could get to this day, you don’t see that very often from kids this age. It really moved me.
“Our message today in the locker room was love each other above all else, and if we do that, we’re going to be fine.”
It’s the third title in as many Finals trips for the Grand Rapids Christian program – and second straight against Lakewood – and after the match, the players were sporting shirts that had been made up for the occasion, which read, “Our tweets 3-peat.”
“I can’t even really put it into words right now, I don’t think,” Grand Rapids Christian senior Lauren Peal said. “It’s still kind of setting in that that just happened, if I’m being honest. It’s just an overwhelming feeling of the love from our teammates every single year, and the support that we have for each other. How we go into this game is 100 percent loving on each other and being there for each other the whole entire time. That whole entire game, we were playing for each other. I think that over any other feeling is what comes out of this, the overwhelming feeling of love you have during this game.”
Lakewood coach Cameron Rowland said it was Grand Rapids Christian’s multi-dimensional attack that gave his team problems, specifically the contributions from middle hitters Stephanie Stewart and Kate Breems, who had nine and four kills, respectively.
Much of the credit for that goes to setter Alyssa DeVries, who had 43 assists while spreading the ball around the court.
“I think she had the best match of her season tonight,” Gates said. “She had big shoes to fill, and she came in and she worked her butt off. We did extra practice with her every day of the regular season. She transformed into a completely different player from the first day until today. I am extremely proud of her.”
Addie VanderWeide led the Eagles’ attack with 19 kills, while Evie Doezema had 16. Peal added 17 digs, while VanderWeide had 11.
It was VanderWeide and Doezema that Rowland said he was expecting to have to deal with, and while they had strong matches, the rest of the Eagles’ attack was enough to get his team off rhythm.
“When we got the ball to the net to (Lakewood setter Skylar Bump), they served really, really well so we were scrambling a little more than we were used to,” Rowland said. “We’ve been the team that’s been in system all year, and they kind of took that away from us with their ability to do what they did from the service line.”
Aubrey O’Gorman led Lakewood with 17 kills, while Maradith O’Gorman added eight kills and 15 digs. Bump had 23 assists and 14 digs, and Carley Piercefield had 14 digs.
“I’m just so incredibly honored to play in a program that is able to get to this point every single year, year after year,” Aubrey O’Gorman said. “It has been established that we will be here in November every single year – or January – and I’m just so incredibly honored to be a part of that.”
PHOTOS: (Top) A pair of Lakewood blockers defend against a Grand Rapids Christian kill attempt Saturday night at Kellogg Arena. (Middle) Maradith O’Gorman keeps a ball in play for the Vikings. (Click for more from Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)
Team of the Month: Gladwin Volleyball
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
November 15, 2022
Tony Wetmore hadn’t arrived yet the last time Gladwin’s varsity volleyball team won a Jack Pine Conference championship. But he had a trustworthy witness able to give a first-hand account of what his Flying G’s have been chasing over the last 40+ years.
Wetmore’s mother and junior varsity coach Jane Wetmore, then Jane Huber – played on that last league championship volleyball team. She also was the one who got her son into coaching; he started his Gladwin tenure as the freshman volleyball coach teaching a sport he admittedly didn’t know much about himself.
But Mom clearly was onto something.
Less than a decade later, Wetmore has just finished up his sixth season as Gladwin’s varsity coach – and his team has finished its first league championship season since 1978, earning the MHSAA/Applebee’s “Team of the Month” honor for October.
Gladwin has been hovering in contention much of the last decade, but this team had all the ingredients to end the drought. Start with senior outside hitter Erin Breault and senior setter Delaney Reynolds – Breault broke the school’s single-season and career kills records this season, and Reynolds broke the same records for assists. Additionally, Breault led the JPC in kills, and junior middle Lizzie Haines led the league in hitting percentage.
But that high-caliber talent also was surrounded by several contributors who helped Gladwin push past longtime nemesis Beaverton and into the top spot.
“I felt like the whole season I could split the team in half, and one team could take first in the conference and the other team could take like fourth. I just felt like we were that deep where we were good and we could practice at a pretty high level, which was really cool,” Wetmore said.
“It’s obviously linked together, the assist record breaker and the kill record breaker on the same team,” he added. “And I think the thing that really pushed us over the edge this year is we had so many different attackers that were really, really good. My outside hitter Erin broke the record, she led the league in kills. My middle hitter led the league in hitting percentage. Both of those are reflective of our ability to get the ball to our attackers, which is the setter’s main job – but our back row played really well also all season, so a super-big team effort for all of them.”
The Flying G’s were able to win the Jack Pine in large part because they became the first league opponent since 2018 to defeat annual power Beaverton – Gladwin swept the pair of matches against its rival, and those remain Beaverton’s only league defeats over the last five seasons.
The Flying G’s had been building toward this. They won their District in 2018, and then finished second in the JPC in 2019. The team was only .500 in 2020, but came back to finish 29-5 last season and 29-10 this fall.
Wetmore brought Breault, Reynolds and senior libero Delaney Conley up to varsity as sophomores that 2020 season. Breault, Reynolds and Haines earned all-region honors this season, and Wetmore was named his region’s Coach of the Year by the Michigan Interscholastic Volleyball Coaches Association. (Conley, a standout softball player, has signed to continue playing that sport at Saginaw Valley State.)
More quickly than hoped, of course, Gladwin made its season-ending exit in District play again. But the Flying G’s don’t plan on the prior good times coming to an end.
True, the seniors who will graduate are part of a class that’s been long-anticipated across all sports – another example this fall has been the football team, 12-0 and playing in a Division 5 Semifinal on Saturday.
Wetmore expects his volleyball seniors’ impact to last as younger players who watched them succeed this fall take their turns on the court with a larger idea of what’s possible.
“(It’s) just getting over the hump. Talk about our goals – every year trying to win the conference championship but we can’t get there. Every year since 2018, trying to beat Beaverton but we can’t do it. Districts, we’d won every once in a while … we won in 2011, so from 2011-15 we couldn’t get over it, but in (20)16 we got a District and then we got the next two,” Wetmore said. “When you break that barrier, it makes it easier to realize you can do things.”
Past Teams of the Month, 2022-23
September: Negaunee girls tennis - Report