Richmond: 'Nothing Compares to This'
February 28, 2015
By Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half
BATTLE CREEK – With the MHSAA Division 3 wrestling championship at stake, Richmond senior Connor Behem had his Dundee opponent on his back Saturday afternoon at Kellogg Arena.
It was the first minute of their match, and the Dundee wrestler frantically was trying to raise his hand, as if he were reaching for a championship but in reality simply trying to avoid a pin. Behem, meanwhile, was using his wrestling repertoire as he tried to pin his opponent’s shoulders to the mat.
“Time was going by really slowly,” Behem said. “It felt like an hour when he was on his back, but I knew it was only a few seconds.”
Finally, 67 seconds into the match, Behem got the pin, not only ending an incredible comeback that netted Richmond the MHSAA championship but writing a script that Hollywood would have a tough time turning down.
Richmond edged Dundee 27-25 for its seventh Finals championship and fourth in the past six years.
Richmond faced Dundee in the Final for the third year in a row, and Dundee, the two-time defending champion, had a comfortable 25-12 lead with three matches left.
“I thought it was slipping away,” Richmond coach Brandon Day said. “For them to come out and do what they did, I’m so proud of them.”
After a decision by Adam Boyd and a pin by Roy Costello, Richmond pulled within 25-21 going into the final match at 112 pounds. Richmond needed a pin by Behem to win the championship, and when he pinned Wallace, the Richmond bench and crowd erupted with joy.
“I kind of broke down emotionally,” Behem said. “It felt so good, words can’t even describe it.”
Behem’s knee locked up in the morning practice, and Roberts did not use him in the 32-19 victory over Remus Chippewa Hills in the Semifinal match.
“His ACL and meniscus are completely torn,” Day said. “He has practiced one day in the last three weeks. We were lucky enough to be able to sit him in the semis. ... Sacrifice won this for us, no doubt.”
Behem played off the injury, as his euphoria likely dampened any pain he might have been feeling.
“My knee is a little bummed, but it’s all right,” he said.
Boyd began the big comeback with a 3-0 victory over Gabe Heiserman at 285. Although a pin would have been huge, Richmond needed at least a decision to stay alive in the match.
“Everyone was telling me I had to get six, and it kind of got in my head a little bit,” Boyd said. “I kind of got away and started talking to our coach and Devin Skatzka, and they calmed me back down and said just get the win, and I got the win.”
Next up was Costello at 103, and he wasted little time in deciding his match with a pin in 31 seconds.
“It was like do or die. I knew I had to do it,” Costello said. “I was so happy as soon as I locked that up. Then I just told Connor good luck.
“I knew Connor was going to get that pin, but once the referee hit that mat, I was up. I was so happy I cried for joy.”
Behem took the mat with the weight of the entire wrestling program on his back and his weakened right knee. He felt it.
“I was nervous, I’m not going to lie,” he said. “I saw my teammates get it done before me, so that helped me. I saw Roy pick up the pin and Adam pick up a big win, so once I got on the mat, all my nerves went away. It felt good.
“I could not have went out my senior year any better than this. Individuals (Finals) are pretty crazy, but nothing compares to team state finals. Nothing.”
Richmond, which finished 32-5, won just six of the 14 matches in the Final but picked up nine bonus points with three pins. Skatzka, a three-time individual MHSAA champion, had the other pin in 56 seconds over Kyle Reinhart at 160 pounds.
Skatzka said the entire team was computing what it would take for the Blue Devils to erase the late 13-point deficit.
“We all were counting it up in our head,” Skatzka said. “We knew we had our matches at 103 and 112, and we were kind of counting on pins from them, and it happened just how we counted on them.
“I can’t even describe what it felt like. It was the most exciting thing I’ve ever been through. I’ve won three state titles in my life and the team state title my freshman year. Nothing has been more exciting than this. Nothing compares to this.”
Richmond’s other victories came on decisions by Aaron Kilburn at 125 and Austin Pawlak at 152.
Dundee, which has been in the MHSAA Finals in eight of the past nine years, ended its season at 25-6. Of their eight wins in the Final, only one registered more than the three points. Sophomore Sean Sterling scored a 22-9 major decision at 145 pounds.
The seven other victories picked up by Dundee were by Drew Scholl (119), Drew Mandell (130), Kenny Reinhart (135), Zach Blevins (140), Donny Mandell (171), Brandon Whitman (189) and Tye Thompson (215).
“It was a good dual,” Dundee coach Tim Roberts said. “We end up having great duals every year. They have a great team and do a great job over there, and they have a great coach, obviously.
“They did a super job, I have to give them credit.”
Six Dundee wrestlers finished 3-0 over the weekend: Donny Mandell, Reinhart, Blevins, Sterling, Whitman and Thompson. Skatzka and Costello were the only Richmond wrestlers to go 3-0 for the weekend.
“I am so proud of the effort from everybody from top to bottom,” Day said. “We gave up bonus points one match, and we had three falls.
“That’s how you win state titles.”
PHOTO: Richmond poses with its MHSAA Division 3 championship trophy Saturday at Kellogg Arena. (Click to see more at HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
Brothers' Success Just Start for Beaverton
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
November 28, 2018
In a movie, this season and the future of the Beaverton wrestling program would be the epilogue, explained to us with words on the screen while triumphant music played.
When Eric and Kyle Cassiday won Division 4 individual MHSAA championships in back-to-back matches last season with their father Bryan – who had started the program four years earlier – coaching matside, the script could have been completed.
“It’s one of the top five moments of my entire life,” said Kyle Cassiday, now a senior at Beaverton. “(After my match) all I could focus on was Eric – he went through so much with injuries, so to see him win it was amazing.”
But while the Cassidays are certainly at the heart of the program, creating this program wasn’t just about them. And there are plenty more memories to be made.
“I wanted to provide an opportunity for the kids who had been through the youth program, and those that wanted to join, to at least experience what I experienced in high school wrestling,” Bryan Cassiday said. “We were all brothers, and I wanted them to get to be able to do that. We had a lot of help (from outside the program). We’ve had a lot of people helping to influence a lot of different kids. It’s been a wonderful experience.”
Bryan Cassiday is a Gladwin graduate who coached the youth program there. That included his sons Eric, Kyle and Jacob, who started when they were elementary and preschool age. Bryan continued to coach when the family moved to Beaverton, but there appeared to be a cap on how much time they could be involved with the sport and attend their new school, as Beaverton didn’t have a wrestling program.
When Eric was about to enter high school, the Cassidays started looking at options to transfer, going as far as having a family vote at the dinner table. Kyle voted for Beaverton. Little did he or his family know that was about to become an option.
“Some of the football coaches came to me and said, ‘What would it take to start a program?’” Bryan Cassiday said. “We put together some numbers on what it would cost, did some fundraising, and started one.”
For the kids, it was a relief.
“I was so happy,” Kyle said. “I didn’t want to leave my friends. They deserved to wrestle as much as we did. It was more than just for me.”
That first season, Beaverton had 12 or 13 wrestlers, Bryan Cassiday said, including a solid core of youth wrestlers who were finally able to stay at their home school, like Eric.
By Year 3 of the program, the three boys all were part of it, with Jacob as a freshman, Kyle a sophomore and Eric a junior.
Wrestling was and is a way of life for the Cassidays, who have a mat in the garage to train – or settle a dispute, even if that was rare and mostly in the past.
“It doesn’t matter what season it is, we’re always looking forward to wrestling,” said Jacob Cassiday, who was a Finals qualifier at 152 pounds a year ago. “We don’t wrestle much in the house. We broke a couple light fixtures, then that stopped.”
For Jacob, growing up as the youngest of four children (they have an older sister, Brooke, who is 21), allowed him to learn quite a bit.
“I’ve always been the smaller one, and I’ve always had to work hard,” he said. “I never had it easy, and they never did either. I was a little pudgy, and they helped me get into shape, then helped me with getting through wrestling. They taught me how to work hard. My oldest brother Eric had probably the best motivation I’ve ever seen. He was always in the weight room or on the mat or on the football field. There was no offseason. And, of course, they taught me how to be humble, because there’s always someone out there who’s better.”
The older brothers got to see each other plenty in practice, as Kyle was at 189 pounds and Eric at 215 a year ago.
“We’re both really competitive – we love to win, it’s what we strive to do,” Kyle said. “Halfway through the year, we started to change our perspective and realized we had a chance at winning. We would point each other to different techniques. Sometimes it got pretty intense, and we’d get pretty heated.”
Brotherly tensions aren’t something Dad worries much about spilling over, though.
“Really very rarely did they ever have problems,” Bryan said. “There was a point in the season when I was trying to get everybody on edge a little bit, and there were a couple times I had to separate them, but nothing out of control; you could just tell they were wanting it. Generally speaking, to be very honest, I’ve seen siblings that argue and fight – my kids don’t do that. They hunt together, they wrestle together, they do pretty much everything together.”
They eventually won Division 4 titles together. At last winter’s Finals at Ford Field, Kyle defeated TJ Rizor of Leroy Pine River 8-1 in the 189-pound final, while Eric followed with a 4-0 win against Chase Gibson of Bronson at 215.
“There will never be a way, honestly, to describe what happened,” Bryan said. “I couldn’t talk. I was having a hard time coping with it, to be honest with you. It’s hard to become a state champion. It was the culmination of the years and years of hard work and the passion they put into it. They continued to work, and they got paid in the end.”
Kyle said his championship wouldn’t have meant nearly as much had his brother not won. It’s something they’ll be able to talk about when they’re 40, he said.
But there’s more work to do for all of the Cassidays and the program as a whole. Eric, who is now a freshman at Saginaw Valley State University, comes back home to help his dad coach. Kyle is looking to repeat as a Finals champ, and Jacob wants to take the next step at Ford Field and make his way onto the podium.
The program itself has more building to do, but it does have a solid core heading into this year as Cameron Austin and Jack Owens (fifth last season at 171) join the younger Cassidays as returning Finals qualifiers. For now, the top priority, Bryan Cassiday said, is improving every day.
In just four years, Beaverton wrestling has started to make a name for itself. Growing that name, Kyle Cassiday said, would be an even greater accomplishment that the incredible end to last season.
“I’d be more proud of building a successful program than a championship because it’s an end result,” he said. “It will be creating something for more than just me. It would be for a lot of different people.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Kyle Cassiday celebrates as he’s signaled the winner of last season’s Division 4 championship match at 189 pounds. (Middle) Eric and Kyle Cassiday share an embrace after Eric followed up with the win at 215 at Ford Field. (Click to see more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)