'Stang Nation' Continues Tradition of Support
February 10, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
MUNISING – Some of Izzy Nebel’s fondest memories took root during junior high, while watching Munising games, hearing the older kids yell and feeling a little overwhelmed by the booming of their voices.
Now?
“Everyone that I stand around, we just look at each other and scream. We’re so excited,” Nebel said. “It’s just so fun. That’s all I can really say about it.”
But they’re actually saying a lot more.
Nebel and her classmates in “Stang Nation” – one of five finalists for this year’s MHSAA Battle of the Fans recognizing the state’s top high school student cheering section – are carrying on a tradition of support going back generations and stretching far outside her small town’s border.
The Class D school, on the shore of Lake Superior overlooking the Pictured Rocks, is home to only 200 high schoolers. But it’s the center of pride for their community, and as the first BOTF finalist from the Upper Peninsula, something of an ambassador as well.
Munising was the fourth stop on this year’s BOTF finalists tour, which also has included visits to Yale, Muskegon Western Michigan Christian and Traverse City West and will finish with a trip to Charlotte on Friday. The public may vote for its favorite on the MHSAA’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram sites beginning Feb. 16, with the MHSAA Student Advisory Council taking that vote into consideration when selecting the champion – which will be named Feb. 19 on Second Half.
This was Stang Nation’s second time applying for Battle of the Fans. The idea was sparked by annual trips downstate for the MHSAA Boys Basketball Finals – 10 families make the annual trek together – and watching Battle of the Fans videos shown on the Breslin Center scoreboard before tip-offs and during breaks in play.
It was nurtured during the fall of 2014, when Munising’s football team made the MHSAA Finals for the first time since 1980 and traveled to Ford Field for the Division 8 championship game. Stang Nation took hold as the official name of the longtime section.
Enthusiasm was stoked again when leaders attended the MHSAA’s Sportsmanship Summit in November in Marquette. That led to the section having theme nights for the first time, and the love isn’t just reserved for the boys basketball team as in other communities – Stang Nation’s “Beach Night” was for a girls hoops game and groups of fans attended most home volleyball games and traveled some too, although many of Munising’s opponents are located an hour’s drive or farther away.
But the filling of a section of bleachers under a “Sixth Man” sign in the school’s gym is only part of the cozy homecourt advantage. The sports teams select “super fans” and players present them with T-shirts. Nebel’s uncle is among many of the recognizable faces from over the years, as he’s always in the crowd wearing a foam orange cowboy hat from the football championship game trip 35 years ago. “Those are the kind of people we have here,” she said.
And then, there are the parades.
Munising has had a nice run of success the last few years. In 2012, the boys basketball team won its first District title since 1957. The 2014 football run included a first District title since 1980 and three straight road games before the trip to Detroit. This fall, the girls tennis team won its first MHSAA Finals championship.
That basketball triumph led to a welcoming parade of police cars and fire engines when the team returned to town from Superior Central. And that’s become something of the norm for any win at the District level or higher. Parades through town welcomed the football team back from its playoff wins in 2014 and ended in the school’s gym, where fans gathered to continue celebrating. The girls tennis team got theirs, with a fan hitting tennis balls over the bus into the woods beyond as it drove by and families standing in their yards to welcome the newly-crowned champs.
But the support doesn’t stop there. When Munising’s football team returned from Ford Field two seasons ago, it stopped at the entrance to town – and only continued on once Ishpeming’s football team, which had won the Division 7 championship, joined it in the parade as well as the Hematites made their way back home.
“We’re really supportive of everyone around us,” junior Marissa Immel said. “This fall, our girls volleyball team lost at Regionals to (Crystal Falls) Forest Park. Some of our teammates made a sign for them and went to their Quarterfinal game, and after we gave them the sign to bring to the Finals. They were super appreciative of it.”
It’s an attitude that goes beyond sports. The school sponsored a fundraiser for cancer research at its football Homecoming and raised $4,200 – which would equate to roughly $21 per high school student. It’s not unusual that when someone in the community is struggling with a sickness or other hard times, the town and surrounding communities rally to help without a second thought. One of Nebel’s aunts lost her house in a fire three years ago and received an outpouring of assistance from Munising but also from as far away at Marquette.
Munising’s smaller student population allows for a little bit different student section setup than at larger schools, where a group of students usually take the reins. Whereas other BOTF finalists have had their leadership willed down or selected by administrators, Stang Nation unofficially follows leaders who have taken charge in other groups at the school – Nebel, Immel, junior Jared Immel (her cousin), junior Rachel Cooper and senior Ian McInnis all are in some combination of student council, National Honor Society and Key Club, and four play multiple sports.
Everyone knows everyone, and anyone is free to kick off a cheer or provide input. The building actually houses sixth, seventh and eighth graders as well, and the high school leaders work to get those younger students involved. Also, a peer-to-peer mentoring program connects high schoolers with elementary students, providing another avenue for inclusion and passing on the good word.
Nebel and her classmates are building plenty of memories in Stang Nation again, most of them including leaving games exhausted, barely able to speak, with sore feet from jumping around in the bleachers.
But they’ll also remember becoming the first Upper Peninsula school to represent in Battle of the Fans – and the opportunity to show the enthusiasm that has lived in Munising long before this winter while passing it on to younger fans above them in the stands.
“I hope we’ve opened people eyes to this, because it’s so fun to participate in,” Nebel said. “It’s just fun knowing that people are going to see what you’re putting into it. I hope other people see that and think, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s a really cool idea,’ and they do it too. Because I want everyone to experience what we’re experiencing.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Munising fans cheer during Friday's boys basketball game against Eben Junction Superior Central. (Middle) Stang Nation fills a corner of bleachers at the school's gym. (Below) Students celebrate another Homecoming victory. (Photos by Kristen Elizabeth Photography.)
25 Years Later, Scholar Athletes Shine On
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
October 3, 2013
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Jennifer Bissell and Scott Kieser had ideas how their futures might unfold when they stepped onto the Pontiac Silverdome turf to accept the inaugural Michigan High School Athletic Association Scholar-Athlete awards on Nov. 25, 1989.
Bissell’s bio in the MHSAA Football Finals program mentioned the Vestaburg senior planned to attend Grand Valley State University and study broadcasting and public relations. Kieser, a senior at Unionville-Sebewaing, was set to attend Michigan Tech University and major in secondary education.
Inevitably when high school students are deciding on careers, some of those plans changed.
Kieser’s didn’t much; he did attend Michigan Tech, and after considering engineering during his first year stuck with education and is now a teacher and coach at Bay City Western High School. Bissell – now Dr. Jennifer Forrest – ended up with destinations different, nearby and then afar. She attended Central Michigan University on her way to becoming an orthopedic surgeon in Durango, Colo.
But the impact of high school sports – and what it meant to be named the MHSAA’s first Scholar Athletes – is not lost on either nearly a quarter century later.
“I vaguely remember ... watching the game from the booth, going out onto the field and the announcement,” Forrest recalled this week. “(But) I was very honored to get that award. It looked at both how well you did in school and participation in sports.”
“To walk on the field, shake Mr. (Jack) Roberts’ hand, see the award, it was a great honor,” Kieser said. “I was very lucky to have a lot of coaches in high school that inspired me and made me enjoy the learning in the classroom and all of the great life lessons I learned on the field, the basketball court and those arenas.”
The MHSAA has been fortunate as well to have Farm Bureau Insurance as its sponsor for all 24 years of the Scholar-Athlete Award. The program has evolved substantially from 1989-90 – when two students were recognized during the fall, winter and spring seasons – to this winter’s 25th celebration, during which Farm Bureau will award $1,000 scholarships to 32 student athletes based on their achievements both academic and athletic.
Each month building up to March's presentation, Second Half will catch up with some of the hundreds who have earned Scholar-Athlete Awards.
Now both 40 years old, the first winners certainly fit the bill. Forrest was a three-sport athlete participating in cross country, volleyball and softball and was president of Vestaburg’s student council. Kieser was co-captain of USA’s football and basketball teams, vice-president of his school’s student council and a member of the Tuscola County Leadership Forum.
And they’ve made good on the promise they showed and the awards they received as their futures lay ahead of them that Thanksgiving weekend.
Lists of exceptional accomplishments
The record board at Vestaburg High School still lists “J. Bissell” for fastest 5K time – at least one sign that Forrest’s legacy lives on in her little hometown.
One of her two older siblings still live there, her sister-in-law is a teacher at the high school and her niece Jaycee cracks up when people occasionally think the name on the leaderboard is hers.
During her days walking those same school halls, Forrest never pictured herself in an operating room. In fact, she never wanted to picture the possibility.
Forrest babysat for a doctor while in high school and decided she wanted no part of the doctor lifestyle with its unpredictable schedule and 80-hour work weeks. But she was interested in physical therapy, and despite her early leanings toward studying communications settled on CMU and its sports medicine program.
She spent three hours in the CMU training room most afternoons her freshman year, helping with the gymnastics and track and field teams among others. As a sophomore she worked in a physical therapy office, which she found to be a little monotonous – and so she started considering that occupation she figured was out of the question only a few years before.
Forrest did end up in medical school, at Wayne State University, but figured she’d become an emergency room doctor and definitely never a surgeon. And then she changed her mind on that one too – Forrest ended up going into orthopedic surgery, did a residency at University of California-Irvine, married another doctor from northern California and eventually ended up in Durango – a destination that seems meant to be for a family that loves biking and snow sports.
Each Memorial weekend Forrest races in the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, which pits competitors against a steam engine traveling 50 miles (and climbing 5,500 feet) from Durango to Silverton.
“Partly because of my background in sports, I gravitated toward sports-related injuries,” Forrest said. “I enjoyed being in sports in high school, and I’m still a road cyclist, still into sports myself.”
Forrest’s bio now on the Animas Orthopedic Associates website lists her as practicing general orthopedics with special interests in arthritis management, joint replacement surgery, hand surgery, pediatric orthopedics and orthopedics trauma.
She and her husband have three daughters ages 6-9 who also are active athletically, and they make the trip back to Michigan at least once every few summers.
While her continued appearance on the Vestaburg record book surprised Forrest at first, her name also appears on another impressive list – among the CMU Admissions Office’s “notable CMU alumni” alongside CBS sportscaster Dick Enberg, various NFL and NBA players and the author of “Marley & Me.”
“I don’t think of myself as that,” Forrest said.
“I really liked science and medicine, and in the long run it all worked out fine.”
Back to school to make a difference
Kieser remembers being in sixth and seventh grade and dreaming of being on the varsity football and basketball teams. When he got his chance, he understood the importance of setting the right example for the younger hopefuls looking up to him.
He continued to do the same at Michigan Tech and has made guiding young athletes and students his life’s work at Bay City Western.
Kieser was the starting quarterback at Michigan Tech in 1993 and 1995 (missing 1994 with a broken foot) and was ranked among the top 50 nationally in Division 2 for total offense per game and passing efficiency. He decided to go out for the basketball team as a junior and started as a senior while earning the team’s scholastic achievement award with a 3.65 grade-point average while studying mathematics.
He also received both teams’ sportsmanship award, and was recognized by Burger King during his senior year as a Burger King National Scholar Athlete Award winner (the announcement appeared during the broadcast of the University of Michigan/Notre Dame game that fall). Tech’s football program received $25,000 for that accomplishment, and a scholarship in Kieser’s name is given to this day to an incoming freshman football player.
“Now that I reflect on it, that honor I won in high school really motivated me to continue that through college,” he said.
And beyond. Kieser teaches calculus and geometry at Bay City Western and is the junior varsity football coach. He hired in at the school right out of college in 1996 both as a teacher and the boys basketball varsity coach, a post he manned for seven seasons. All told, he’s coached some sport – track and field, soccer, baseball, football, basketball – at the high school, middle school or youth levels every year since he graduated at Tech.
He did consider engineering and the heftier paycheck that likely would’ve followed. But, “as I got a little bit older, I realized ... you’re not working for money (as a teacher). You’re working to help kids become the best they can be. Playing sports in college helped me mature, and I wanted to help as many other kids as possible reach their potential.”
He tries to teach his players to have pride in doing things the right away, respecting their opponents and the officials even despite the heated situations that arise in every game – the lessons he learned growing up across Saginaw Bay.
“I feel like the luckiest person in the world teaching and coaching and being involved I athletics,” Kieser said, “trying to encourage more kids to get involved, go out for a sport, do the best they can in the classroom, being the best they can be.”
PHOTO: MHSAA Executive Director Jack Roberts (far left) presents Scott Kieser with his Scholar-Athlete Award in 1989 at the Pontiac Silverdome, while Jennifer Bissell receives hers from Larry Thomas, the then-executive vice president of Farm Bureau Insurance.