Coaches Hehs, Ritz Honored by NFHS
January 12, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Two championship-winning Michigan high school coaches were honored Monday by the National Federation of State High School Associations Coaches Association.
Bloomfield Hills Academy of the Sacred Heart girls tennis coach Judy Hehs and Wayland softball coach Cheri Ritz were recognized as National Coaches of the Year in their respective sports after both led their teams to MHSAA championships during the 2014-15 school year.
The following brief bios on Michigan’s winners include excerpts from coaching philosophies they were asked to submit after being identified as candidates:
Judy Hehs has coached girls tennis at Bloomfield Hills Academy of the Sacred Heart since fall 1996 and served as co-coach of three MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 4 championship teams over the last four seasons, including last spring. She also coached the school's varsity girls basketball team from 1988-95 and two sports at Detroit Country Day – field hockey in fall 1987 and then junior varsity boys tennis (while also serving as the varsity assistant) from spring 1988-2000. Hehs was inducted in 2015 into the Michigan High School Tennis Coaches Association Hall of Fame and her girls tennis teams have a record of 141-16-14. She also serves as Sacred Heart’s associate head of school and director of the upper school.
“Why do I coach? I coach to give back to the profession of coaching and to the sport of tennis. Tennis has been a large part of my life since I was young. I coach because I can make a difference in the lives of the young women whom I coach – I can help build character and teach resilience, I can bear witness to their individual and team success and I can be present during those moments when hard lessons are learned. I coach for selfish reasons – I love spending afternoons and weekends with young people. In my classroom, the tennis court, the challenge isn’t making great tennis players. It is about building great people. … There is no better place than a tennis court to teach real life lessons – lessons about work ethic, teamwork, problem solving, independence and the moment when efforts turn into believing and believing turns into accomplishments.”
Cheri Ritz has coached the Wayland softball team to two MHSAA Division 2 championships, in 2006 and again last spring. She began her varsity softball coaching career at Middleville Thornapple Kellogg from 1991-94 and has led Wayland since 1995. She ranks 12th in MHSAA history for softball coaching victories with a career record of 818-207. Ritz also teaches in the Wayland Union district.
“Patience, passion, dedication, virtue, teamwork and love are present daily. I will open the minds and hearts of my athletes, and they will treat people the right way. I will enhance their soul by having them grow righteous values from within. We will instill that maximum effort is simply a way of life. … Our goal will be to be as competitive as possible every year. We will compete every year with high expectations of our players, on and off the field. We will control what we can control, such as effort, attitude and the way that we treat our teammates. We will pay close attention to details. We will work on the basic fundamentals every day in practice. Everything matters, from the way we treat custodians and bus drivers to the way we clean our opponent's dugout after a game to the way we warm up before the game. We will win with class in everything that we do!
The NFHS has been recognizing coaches through an awards program since 1982. Winners of NFHS awards must be active coaches during the year for which they receive their award.
Bluhm Continues Building on Trenton Tradition in 5th Decade as Coach
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
December 22, 2022
TRENTON – What Tom Bluhm likes about wrestling also happens to correlate perfectly into what his program at Trenton has been about as of late.
“It’s one-on-one,” Bluhm said. “You can’t hide and you can’t make excuses. That’s what I’ve always liked about it.”
Excuses aren’t in the vocabulary of the Trenton program that’s been presided by Bluhm for going on 46 seasons.
Last season, the Trojans went 22-9, solid on the surface but incredible when considering Trenton had only 14 wrestlers on the team and forfeited just one weight class.
Again, Bluhm and his group weren’t interested in excuses. They just forged ahead with what they had.
“There’s no planning for it,” he said. “It’s just something that happens. It makes it tough to run practices. It’s not like you have a room of 30 or 40 guys where you can group them into three based on weight and get after it.”
Numbers haven’t traditionally been a problem for Trenton under Bluhm, who said his 1978 team had 100 wrestlers competing for spots on varsity and 50 freshmen.
In recent years, the lack of a program at the middle school level has negated opportunities to develop a feeder system, so Bluhm just hopes for the best when tryouts come around in November.
Bluhm said it’s become an increasing scenario where athletes come out for the wrestling team who have never before wrestled in their lives.
Bluhm said one example was a sophomore who came out for the team last year, quickly learned the sport and ended up winning 36 matches.
“His mother supposedly called the AD last year saying he needed something to do because he was driving her crazy,” Bluhm said. “So he came out for wrestling.”
Nolan Diroff, a senior who primarily wrestles in the 189-pound weight class, but has also wrestled at higher weights, said the limited number of wrestlers on the team rarely comes up as a topic.
“I can’t really say that anybody has complained about not having a lot of people,” he said. “Nobody on the team complains when they get moved around in the lineup. We wrestle where Coach needs us to wrestle. We do whatever he says to try and win matches.”
Diroff said in a strange way, having a limited roster has made who is on the team better wrestlers because it has forced them to be versatile athletes who can compete at multiple weights.
“He’s kind of built us up to realize that and wrestle wherever he needs us,” he said. “He tries to get us as many matches as possible. It makes us better wrestlers and makes the team better.”
This year, there is a slight increase in the numbers.
Bluhm said there are 17 out for the team, including the first girl wrestler during his tenure.
“She fits right in,” Bluhm said. “She gets in there and does everything the boys do.”
Bluhm entered this season fourth on the MHSAA all-time coaching wins list for wrestling, carrying an 812-416-2 record with five seasons at Taylor Center before taking over at Trenton beginning with that 1977-78 winter.
Despite the struggles with numbers, Bluhm still very much gets a lot out of coaching after more than five decades.
He drives a little less than an hour to Trenton and back every day from his home in Northville, and said he’s stayed at Trenton out of his love and respect not only for the kids, but their parents.
“He tells a bunch of other stuff and random stories,” Diroff said. “Never ones that you really roll your eyes at. They are always enjoyable and shows you how long he’s been around.”
And when Trenton wrestles this season, the Trojans will do what they always do: Fight on with no excuses.
“I enjoy coaching,” Bluhm said. “I’ve always said show me some rules, and I’ll play.”
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Trenton wrestling coach Tom Bluhm coaches Connor Charping during the 2016 Individual Finals. (Middle) Bluhm and current wrestler Nolan Diroff stand in front of the program's record board. (Top photo by High School Sports Scene; middle photo courtesy of Nolan Diroff.)