Finals Qualifiers Show Strength of Muskegon Catholic Central's Gains on Mat
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
March 2, 2023
Muskegon Catholic Central is the smallest wrestling school in Muskegon County, with just 124 students in the high school.
It also happens to be the only school in the county with two individual Regional champions in senior David Hill (157 pounds) and junior Easten Cook (165 pounds), who hope to add all-state honors to their resume when they compete at the MHSAA Individual Finals on Friday and Saturday at Ford Field in Detroit.
Now, don’t expect wrestling to usurp football as the sport of choice at MCC – which with 12 state titles during the playoff era is behind only now-closed Farmington Hills Harrison’s 13 championships – but throw in another Finals qualifier in senior Zach Michael (175) and the Crusaders grapplers boast three headed to Ford Field, not bad for a school which had only four wrestlers in the entire program in 2019.
“It’s been a great year for our program and our school, and we’re having a blast,” said fifth-year MCC coach Barry Kieft, who is assisted by PJ Mitchell.
“Those three state qualifiers are all stud football players. That sends a great message to the younger kids that wrestling will make you better on the football field.”
Hill was a star running back for the Crusaders’ Division 6 District finalist football team this fall, who had to get over a stigma to become a star on the mat.
“I used to be a germaphobe, so it’s hard to believe I even started wrestling,” said Hill, who is 32-7 this season and has 107 career wins. “But at some point, something changed. I love the independent part of it. You have to go out there and do it; you can’t blame anything on other people.”
Hill, the son of former Muskegon Reeths-Puffer all-state running back DeMarkeo Hill, who led the Rockets to the Class A championship in 1992 and tragically died of brain cancer five years ago at the age of 44, calls his dad his athletic hero and his inspiration before every match.
David Hill made short work of the field at 157 pounds at the Feb. 11 Division 4 Regional at Ithaca, including a pin at the 1:00 mark in the championship match.
This will be his second appearance at the Individual Finals, after placing fourth at Regionals last year. He believes his experience, speed and unorthodox style give him a shot at the title.
“I have a unique style, that’s for sure,” said Hill, a three-sport athlete who also runs track in the spring. “My coaches don’t know what to say to me because a lot of what I do isn’t conventional wrestling moves. So they just say, ‘Go out there and wrestle like David Hill.’”
Cook, meanwhile, is a conventional tactician at 165, the next weight class up from Hill.
Cook, a starting guard and linebacker on the football field, embraces the mental and physical challenges of wrestling.
“I think my biggest strength is my mental preparation and thinking things through,” said Cook, who got started in the sport in fifth grade when he was hanging around his older brother and now-MCC assistant coach, Aiden Cook. “I like the hardships that come with wrestling and seeing if you are strong enough to overcome it.”
Easten Cook, who as his name suggests, loves to experiment with different foods (right now, he and Hill eat a small granola bar dipped in honey before each match), won his Regional championship match 9-4.
Cook sports his team’s best record at 37-7, with city, District and Regional titles. He has 82 career wins.
The third member of the Crusaders’ Finals trio is Michael, who has a 32-9 season record and 89 career wins.
In addition to the three qualifiers, MCC also had two wrestlers eclipse the 20-win plateau this season in juniors Andrew Rosema (138) and Sawyer Hanson (190).
That additional depth nearly pushed the Crusaders to a team District championship Feb. 8. MCC downed Holton, 52-18, in the District Semifinal, before a narrow loss to Ravenna, 42-36, in the championship match.
Kieft said his team’s three Finals qualifiers are all ultra-competitive and have pushed each other to greater heights.
“They just pound each other in practice, sometimes too much,” Kieft said with a laugh, thinking of some of the trio’s practice battles in the wrestling room above MCC’s James Morse Jr. auxiliary gymnasium. “We had to go to 30-second rounds when they practice because if they go 1 minute, it gets too intense.”
Kieft said another reason for his team’s postseason success is a regular season of competing against larger schools.
Kieft, 71, has also been an assistant football and baseball coach at MCC in recent years. He recently decided to retire from coaching those two sports, but plans to continue leading the wrestling program.
“People ask me all the time: “Don’t you want to be in Florida during the winter?’,” said Kieft, who was an assistant wrestling coach at Fruitport in the 1990s. “No, I love doing this. I’ve been down there in the sun and all that, but I miss this. I enjoy being with the wrestling kids.”
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) Easten Cook’s arm is raised in victory after a match this season. (Middle) Muskegon Catholic Central wrestling coach Barry Kieft. (Below) David Hill works to establish control during a match against Whitehall. (Photos courtesy of Karen Kieft.)
Past Shepherd Standout Moeggenberg Directs Wrestling's Return to Glen Lake
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
February 2, 2024
Showing support for school athletic programs is nothing new for the Glen Lake community.
And the Lakers faithful have welcomed back another team this winter that’s earning those cheers for the first time in more than 20 years.
That’s because wrestling hasn’t been offered at Maple City Glen Lake High School since 2001. But it’s back now, and quickly gaining momentum at a school known in part for its longstanding athletic success.
Nobody understands all of this more than Liz Moeggenberg, perhaps the most decorated athlete in the school’s history. As Liz Shimek and a graduate of the class of 2002, she was the winner of the statewide Miss Basketball Award. Her senior year also was the last that Glen Lake offered wrestling before the program returned this winter.
She went on to Michigan State University where she was a two-time All-America selection. She led the Spartans to the 2005 NCAA championship game, and later played in the WNBA. At MSU, she met her future husband Luke, a wrestler for the Spartans. The Moeggenbergs returned to the Glen Lake area after college and Liz’s professional and international basketball career.
Today the Moeggenbergs have five children — three of whom are competitive wrestlers. And Luke is the Lakers' head wrestling coach.
Liz, who served as the Lakers assistant basketball coach for years leading up to last season’s Division 4 championship run, was in an unfamiliar place Jan. 24 when Glen Lake hosted its first wrestling match in decades – the bleachers. The long-awaited moment featured Frankfort, Mancelona and Grayling in a quad meet.
“The community support has been pretty phenomenal,” Liz said. “It was amazing to see all the people that came out to that first home meet, and it was pretty cool to see that energy in the gym.”
Luke Moeggenberg wrestled in high school for Shepherd and was the Division 3 runner-up at 140 pounds in 2001 before going on to compete at MSU. He started the Glen Lake youth program a few years back and had dreams and hopes of starting a varsity program.
Originally the Moeggenbergs joined the Benzie County youth program. They wrestled there until they had enough wrestlers to start one for Glen Lake. The Lakers launched both a middle school and varsity program this winter.
For years, the young Moeggenberg wrestlers – Lamdin, 12, Fletcher, 10 and Cade, 8 – traveled for practices and competitions with their father, who recalls some very special times. The car rides regularly included discussions on how the boys and their youth teammates might impact the future of Glen Lake high school sports.
“The question would come up from my three boys, ‘When are we going to get wrestling at Glen Lake?’” the coach recalled. “I said actually, if we were ever to get wresting at Glen Lake, it would be because of you guys and all the three boys … they just got quiet.”
Coach Moeggenberg noted it may be years before the boys fully comprehend what they helped start.
“It got pretty emotional when wrestling got voted in by the school board,” he said. “I still don’t think the boys realize what they’ve done.”
The interest shown in wrestling by their oldest son, Lamdin, now a sixth grader on the middle school team, sparked the effort to bring wrestling back to the school’s athletic offerings. Also helping provide momentum was Josh Bullard, who comes from a long line of outstanding Bullard wrestlers in Shepherd’s history. He’s been a big help to Moeggenberg since getting his two sons involved way back in the Benzie travel days. Greg Ford and Kaleb Foss serve as youth coaches, and Moeggenberg has built a varsity staff including assistants Ethan Smith, Jaime Smith and Lance Bies. Ethan Smith is the middle school coach as well.
“I made it pretty clear if we’re going to get a program going I need everybody’s support and everybody to buy in and give it a chance,” Moeggenberg said.
Administrative changes played a big role in Glen Lake bringing back wrestling, Moeggenberg noted. Of particular significance was Jaimie Smith coming aboard as the Lakers’ athletic director. Smith, who now serves as the high school principal, was Frankfort’s wrestling coach previously. Her husband Ethan was previously an assistant coach at Frankfort and Traverse City Central.
The Smiths’ adopted daughter Emily Alaimo is one of 13 student-athletes on the roster. Alaimo, a junior, entered the season as the only Glen Laked competitor with high school wrestling experience. She was a part of the Frankfort program when her parents coached, and then on last year’s Glen Lake championship basketball team.
“Emily is the only one who’s had experience competing at all,” Moeggenberg said. “She has really been our most successful wrestler.”
The Lakers will compete this weekend in the Highland/Mid Michigan Conference Tournament against Evart, Lake City, Manton, Mancelona, Roscommon, LeRoy Pine River, Kingsley, Benzie Central, McBain, Frankfort and Houghton Lake. They’ll be led by freshman Abraham Feeney (132 pounds) and sophomore Caden Sheehan (138). Feeney is leading the team in wins, and Sheehan joined the Lakers after the holiday break. They are practice partners.
“Those kids go 100 percent every day in practice, and it shows when they get into competition,” Moeggenberg pointed out. “They figured out amongst themselves what it takes to be successful already.”
Conference titles and postseason accomplishments are not yet on the Lakers’ radar. They are taking one day at a time, learning how to compete on the mat safely.
“My focus has been really trying to get our team into a position where they are safe to compete,” the first-year coach said. “When you’re talking three months of wrestling experience to this point and you are competing against kids that have maybe been wrestling 12 years, our focus has been getting our kids to compete with a little bit of confidence and in a safe manner.”
Glen Lake has a rich history of success – including MHSAA Finals titles – in sports like football, basketball, soccer, softball and track. The gym is full of banners recognizing those accomplishments.
There also is a banner recognizing Lakers with individual state wrestling titles – and Coach Moeggenberg is expecting the other sports’ successes to bode well for the restarted wrestling program.
“I think all the past successes and the current successes of our sports programs reflect heavy community support of student-athletes,” he said. “That basically makes the coach’s job easier.
“Having the support of the community and the support of the administration, ultimately it allows you to focus on what’s important – teaching student-athletes,” he continued. “It is helping us to create a good foundation for a successful program in the future.”
The measurement for success right now is simply experience and daily individual improvement.
“The kids know what this does for the community and what it has done for our family,” Moeggenberg said. “I don’t want our kids to have their mindset to be on wins and losses and conference titles and District championships.
“I want their mindset to be on progress every match,” he continued. “As we get more experience and have some of our middle school kids who are products of our youth program with some more mat time, it will start to evolve into more of a competitive-based goal.”
Tom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. 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) Glen Lake's Max Galla and his Mancelona opponent lock up Jan. 24 during the Lakers' first home meet in more than two decades. (Middle) Glen Lake coach Luke Moeggenberg instructs one of his wrestlers on the mat. (Below) Glen Lake’s Emily Alaimo takes on her Mancelona opponent. (Photos by Trudy Galla Photography.)