This Week's Tennis Results

Ahh, so NOW we get into the meat of what this blog was made for: putting stuff here that won't fit in the paper.

Well, thanks to a spate of scheduled events as well as rescheduled make-up dates occurring this week, we simply didn't have room to put this week's tennis events into the paper. So I am putting them here, for the readers intrepid enough to find it. Enjoy!!

Rockets roll past Fruitport

FRUITPORT — Reeths-Puffer was impressive Thursday in dispatching nonconference foe Fruitport, 7-1.

Reeths-Puffer took wins in every flight except for first singles at the dual.

Collecting those wins for the Rockets in the singles flights were Anika Sasinski at second singles, who defeated Liz Taylor 6-4, 6-4; Erin Crummel at third singles, who dominated Ashleigh Visscher 6-1, 6-0; and Gwen Swanson at fourth singles, who routed Bailey Umstead 6-1, 6-0.

R-P also took wins in the four doubles flights. At first doubles, Rachel DeMuro and Jessy Dick defeated Claire McWilliams and MacKenzie Portenga, 6-1, 7-5. Second doubles saw Sierra Boyd and Audrey Fox defeat Kayla Kowitz and Amanda Thornton 6-0, 6-0. Lindsey Meyers and Courtney Primm won at third singles over Julia Newmyer and Meghan Newmyer, 6-1, 6-2. And at fourth singles, Kelsey Crampton and Brooke Vanderstelt beat Madison Hurtubise and Brooke Wilde 6-1, 6-0.

Reeths-Puffer improved to 2-1 this season with the win.

Whitehall shuts out Grant

WHITEHALL — Whitehall posted a dominant performance Wednesday against Grant, winning five matches in straight sets en route to an 8-0 win over the Tigers.

Julia Rogers had the most overwhelming performance, blanking Grant’s Alicia Jaimes at third singles, 6-0, 6-0. Hannah Potter domianted Gabby Honisberger at first singles with a 6-0, 6-2 performance, and Katelyn Jelinek defeated Salena Ledezma at second singles, 6-1, 6-3.

In the doubles flights, Carlie Bishop and Jamie Westrate rolled to a first doubles victory, 6-2, 6-2 over McKinlay Lawyer and Hannah DeWindt, and Elise Shaffer and Taylor Boyd won 6-0, 6-1 at second doubles over Makayla Duflo and Tiffany Riveria.

The Vikings dropped the first set at fourth singles and third and fourth doubles but rebounded to win the final two sets of all three of those matches.

Whitehall moved to 2-2 on the season with the win. The Vikings competed at the Hamilton Invitational Saturday after the Beacon went to press.

R-P loses to Zeeland East

ZEELAND — Reeths-Puffer’s girls tennis team dropped a 6-2 decision on the road Wednesday at Zeeland East.

The Rockets dropped to 1-1 this season with the loss.

Vikes fall at Spring Lake

SPRING LAKE — Whitehall dropped a 7-1 decision Monday against Spring Lake, with all eight matches ending in straight sets.

Several Vikings made their matches close but were unable to make a dent against the powerful Lakers’ squad. Katelyn Jelinek, though, came up with a win at second singles, topping Roxanne Stroebel 6-3, 6-1.

The best Whitehall performance in defeat came from the fourth doubles team of Emily Christensen and Ashley Dore, who fell 7-6, 6-3 to Rachel Briegel and Megan Oostindie.

All four Vikings’ doubles teams put forth solid efforts, including Taylor Boyd and Elise Shaffer at second doubles, who went down 7-5, 6-2 to Jori Henderson and Stephanie Sabo. Whitehall took five games each in two-set losses at first and third doubles as well.

Rockets blank Muskegon Catholic in opener

MUSKEGON — Reeths-Puffer finally opened its tennis season Monday with a dominant showing against Muskegon Catholic, blanking the visiting Crusaders, 8-0.

Seven of the Rockets’ eight wins came in straight sets as they controlled all aspects of the match.

The Rockets’ singles players all earned two-set victories. Angela Clarke rolled by Maddie Sessleman at first singles, 6-1, 6-4; Anika Sasinski defeated McKenzie Doriot at second singles, 6-1, 6-1; Erin Crummel dominated Rose Maniates at third singles, 6-0, 6-1; and Gwen Swanson beat Hannah O’Toole at fourth singles, 6-1, 6-1.

The duo of Jessy Dick and Rachel DeMuro had the toughest time of any Rockets’ players at first doubles, as they were forced to battle away a spirited challenge from Stephanie DeVoursney and Rosie Jacobson. The Rockets’ pair managed to pull it off, though, winning the match 7-6, 6-7, 6-2.

Audrey Fox and Sierra Boyd defeated Anna Garzelloni and Kaley Knop at second doubles, 6-0, 6-3, and Brooke Vanderstelt and Kelsey Crampton routed Jessica Serene and Haley Wiewiora at fourth doubles, 6-0, 6-1. The Rockets’ third doubles team of Lindsey Meyers and Renee Hosler won by forfeit.

Whitehall falls to Calvin Christian

NORTON SHORES — Whitehall’s home tournament was canceled last Saturday, but on short notice the Vikings arranged a dual meet at Norton Pines Athletic Club against Calvin Christian.

Whitehall dropped a tight match to the Lady Squires, 5-3.

Rainouts Causing Headaches in Oceana Co. Sports

It’s a virtually unprecedented spring in Oceana County sports. Baseball and softball fields sit unused due to lousy weather. Long-jump pits are full of water. It’s mid-April, and with the exceptions of Pentwater and Hart, no county team has played a baseball or softball game, and no county team has had a track meet. The Oceana County baseball and softball tournament, scheduled for Saturday, was the most recent victim, with rain keeping the Hesperia fields from being suitable to host the event.

“It’s definitely been an unusual spring,” Shelby athletic director Chuck Persenaire said. “I’ve been coaching at Shelby for 25 years. I haven’t seen a spring like this. We went from last year, where basically we got on the fields right away, to this year, we’re taking fly balls in the parking lot. Track hasn’t been outside, really at all.”

Even the events schools have been able to get in have been affected by weather. Pentwater’s season-opening soccer game was played on brown grass that had only recently gotten out from under snow, and the baseball doubleheader against Hart on the same day saw piles of snow sitting just beyond each baseline fence.

Shelby managed to play a soccer game Thursday afternoon against Newaygo, a 2-1 loss, but “it was miserable,” Persenaire said. “Rain was coming down sideways. Anytime the ball was going in the air it was going sideways and carrying out of bounds. It was not well-attended. We had a faithful fan show up and put up a pop-up deer blind and watched the game.”

While soccer games have somewhat been spared from the spate of weather-induced cancellations this month — several of them have been washed out, but at least a few have been played — the other spring sports have seen their schedules get shredded. Not only have baseball and softball games and track meets been canceled or postponed, for the most part the teams haven’t even been able to practice outside. Hurdlers have had to train in a hallway with makeshift starting blocks while baseball players have to settle for taking indoor batting practice.

Even when the weather clears up and allows games to be played, Persenaire expects the inability to practice in the usual way to affect the level of play when the seasons get rolling, saying times will likely be higher in the running events and the jumping events will produce lower-than-usual results.

“If you can’t get outside to do that, there’s no way you will be in the correct form,” Persenaire said. “That’s all stuff you work on at practice. You can’t simulate what’s going to happen on a track in a hallway. Until you have someone on a mound throwing at you, you can’t simulate that in a gym with a roof.”

Golf is also an issue, Persenaire added, as the school teams have to work around the available schedule of their home courses. Persenaire said that Shelby’s home course, Oceana Golf Club, has been very good to the Tigers, but some courses may not permit golfers to play due to poor conditions.

While the athletes struggle to get into game shape practicing indoors, area athletic directors are running into trouble rescheduling all the canceled contests.

While nonconference games are not a huge problem to lose, several conference events have fallen by the wayside, and it’s vital to the leagues to get those games in so a conference champion can be crowned and all-league teams can be determined.

“The one track meet we had to reschedule, we have a date in our calendar for a rain date for that, but do you use it on the first conference meet of the year?” Persenaire said. “It worked out where Whitehall, Mason Co. and I had a date later in the season (Apr. 24) where we were all open.”

In sports like baseball, softball and soccer, where make-up dates are less readily available and can be more complicated to schedule, more drastic steps may be necessary to get all the necessary conference games on the slate.

“There is a possibility we can play on some Saturdays, those kind of things,” Persenaire said. “Some non-conference stuff will have to get canceled and league stuff put into those spots if this keeps happening. (Hesperia A.D.) Mike (Fosburg) was having this same discussion.

“Everyone’s going to look at every open date they have. With baseball you have to take arms into consideration, because pitchers can only throw so many innings in a week.”

Another factor that affects some schools is that some athletes in the county play multiple sports in the spring. While Shelby’s athletic policy doesn’t allow for dual-sport same-season athletes and neither Hart nor Hesperia have any such students, Pentwater and Walkerville have several athletes that play multiple spring sports, which creates further complications. Falcons’ athletic director Dan Nugent said that with just 13 soccer players on his team roster, with several of those also playing softball or running track, any make-up date needs to line up with the other sports in order for the Falcons to have a full roster.

So much of the spring sports schedule has been wiped out that quiet talk has begun among fans on whether state playoff events might be pushed back to allow for those events to be made up. However, since the rainouts haven’t affected everyone in the state, such a move seems unlikely.

“Whether the MHSAA moves stuff back, I doubt it,” Persenaire said. “It’s hard for them to move it because of the places that are hosting these events. For the state meets, for golf and track, are already scheduled. It would be difficult from that standpoint for them to move.”

Even as bad as it’s been weather-wise in terms of sporting events in Oceana County, things could be worse.

“I’m glad I’m not up north talking to people in the Petoskey area,” Persenaire said. “They got three to four inches of snow (last week) on top of the foot they still had on the ground. If we get some wind and dry that (rain) up, we’re good to go.”

Postwinter Blahs

I haven't posted in two weeks. Apart from Shelby's basketball teams being eliminated in 24 hours, there hasn't been a lot to talk about.

Yep, we're in the postwinter blahs.

In West Michigan, the "post" feels superfluous this year, as the weather has stubbornly refused to cooperate with the fact that it's supposed to be spring. There's still snow on the ground, and highs are supposed to dip back into the high 30s next week, when games are supposed to be played.

Of course, games should have been being played for the last week and that hasn't stopped Mother Nature. Our first area game was slated to be Shelby/Pentwater girls soccer on Mar. 21, but that was snowed out. The Shelby game this last Tuesday was knocked out too and so were all the Whitehall, Montague and Reeths-Puffer baseball that should have happened this week. It's a stark contrast, I'm told, to the weather we had here last year, which figures since I wasn't here to enjoy it.

Hart and Pentwater are supposed to play baseball, softball and soccer next Tuesday, but I assume those games won't happen either. I know I would be in no mood to play baseball if I were a high-school kid on a day where the high started with a 3.

The good news for our readers is that the cupboard hasn't been bare. I've been able to have a couple of solid feature story topics, between the superhuman Zeerip family at Hesperia (three state-champion wrestlers and a girls' basketball star, who are also three valedictorians and one in the making), Shelby's Emily Tjapkes, now a volleyball player at UM-Dearborn, and a profile of former Whitehaller Chip Will, now the coach of the defending NJCAA volleyball champions at Grand Rapids Community College. And this week in the White Lake Beacon, we blow out spring preview coverage with baseball, softball and boys golf. Next week, I'm aiming to preview track, girls soccer and girls tennis.

It's not the same, though, as recapping actual games, which I hope to start doing next week. All three Beacon-area teams are off for spring break, though, so we'll be dry at least until Apr. 9, a frustrating delay. It's exhausting working the long hours and making the drives to shoot games, but I strangely enjoy it much more than your more or less generic 40-hour work week where I'm home every night. I'm clearly insane.

A few random notes:

- I'm working on the OHJ free-throw champion feature we generally do towards the end of basketball season, though it wasn't done last year due to Shelby's state semifinal run and the fact that the OHJ was shorthanded that March. I'm only waiting on one coach's free-throw stats and we'll hopefully have that in next week's issue.

- Shelby's Sydney Czurak was named Class C all-state a couple of weeks ago in girls basketball, the only player from the entire region to receive the honor (everyone else came from the greater Detroit area or from the north). Pretty wild, and deserved as she was the prime reason the Lady Tigers managed to get as far as they did.

- Walkerville won't field a varsity softball team this year and Pentwater will, reversing last year's circumstances. I can't imagine attending a Class D school where there are so few students you're in danger of not having a varsity team in a given year. Pentwater A.D. Dan Nugent told me this week that every student in the school is playing at least one sport this year, which is really an impressive feat, actually. Of course, he also mentioned that it creates a scheduling nightmare for make-up dates, specifically for his girls soccer team, which only has 13 members, several of whom also run track or play softball - which means any make-up date for that sport has to be an open date for the other two as well. Oy.

- The OHJ Spring Sports Scene preview section will run in next Thursday's issue, the first one written entirely by me. Shred it accordingly. Meanwhile, the Beacon Spring Sports Salute, where we run team photos of all area teams, won't be for a couple of weeks yet because Whitehall's spring photos aren't until the week after next.

Shelby's At It Again

High-flying Shelby point guard Jason Beckman (left) is
just one of many Tigers peaking at the right time
 as they look to make another run at the state title.
(Photo by Andy Roberts)

What a ridiculous year for the Shelby athletics program.

The Tigers' football team advanced to the Division 6 state semifinals last fall, their first berth ever in that game. Only the juggernaut from Ithaca kept the Tigers from Ford Field.

The Shelby girls' basketball team heads into tonight's game with Houghton with a shot at advancing to the state semifinals for the first time since third-year coach Sarah Wolting was a member of the team, in 1997.

And now the Tigers' boys, who advanced to the semifinals last year, are at it again.

Shelby, which replaced all 5 starters from the team that fell to Traverse City St. Francis in the semifinal game last March, is on its way to the regional title game after blitzing Pine River last night, 79-57, at Traverse City West High School. The Tigers draw Glen Lake in Wednesday's title game, and if they win that one, it'll be (most likely) third-ranked Negaunee coming out of the Upper Peninsula for next Tuesday's quarterfinal game at Gaylord.

What impressed me most about the Tigers Monday night was their composure. Pine River got into the double bonus in the first quarter, putting Shelby behind the eight-ball. But the Tigers weren't rattled. They simply buckled down defensively, turned to their deep bench and took control of the game. After the game was tied at 20 after a quarter, the Tigers pretty much dominated the rest of the way.

I suppose it shouldn't be surprising anymore. Coach Rick Zoulek, in his 28th season, has a clear knack for getting the most out of his players. The Tigers finished just third in the West Michigan Conference this year, but defeated WMC champion Montague, a team with significantly more talent, in this writer's humble opinion, rather easily in the district tournament, 83-71. It's a horrible, horrible sportswriter cliche, but in Shelby's case it's true: They just know how to win.

They win with terrific depth. Shelby has a slew of guys capable of knocking down the three-point shot — Jason Beckman, Spencer Peters, Devin Mussell, Shane Kajtazi, just to name a few — and at least one of them consistently comes out hot in the early stages of the game. Monday night, it was Mussell scoring 11 points in the first quarter, with three triples. Those points kept Shelby in the game when they were otherwise being outplayed by the bigger Bucks.

Despite the size disadvantage, though, Andrew Beckman, the Tigers' top big guy and Jason's cousin, outplayed Pine River's Lincoln Erickson, a monster of a dude. The last three quarters, it wasn't even close — Beckman handled Erickson, on both sides of the ball. Beckman scored 16 points, a team-high, while Erickson had just 10, most of them in the first quarter. Beckman's not the biggest or strongest — he pretty much looks like a taller version of his spindly cousin pictured above — but he's quick, has a soft shooting touch, and is tough as nails.

But it all starts with Zoulek. The man can coach.

"We’re not the type of team that any one player can do it all," Zoulek said after Monday's game. "We have a lot of scrappy guys. We’ve got to have it from everybody."

I don't know how he does it, but he's assembled a team where anyone can dominate on any given night. Jason Beckman had 26 points in the Tigers' semifinal upset of Montague. 14 different players (14!!!) scored in Shelby's easy district title win over Hart. Monday it was Andrew Beckman with 16. Wednesday night, it could be Peters, Mussell, a Beckman again...who knows?

This Shelby squad was supposed to be a year away. The only players who have played big minutes all season that will graduate are Peters and Kajtazi, so the Tigers will have four starters back in '13-'14. It could be a special season.

Of course, for these Shelby players, this one doesn't look so bad either.

Here Comes Shelby Girls' Basketball

Shelby's Sydney Czurak has the Tigers poised
to return to the Breslin Center. (Photo by Andy Roberts)

The Shelby Tigers' girls basketball team was somewhat lightly regarded headed into the postseason this year. They weren't ranked in the state AP poll after splitting the West Michigan Conference title with Oakridge and came into the regionals as heavy underdog to #5 Pine River in the semis. The Bucks had only lost once going into the tournament, and Shelby had had to edge out Holton before winning a Montague district that was pretty light on top-notch talent.

However, Shelby is showing that when your best player is an athletic girl who's also taller than everybody, the sky is the limit.

That title belongs to Sydney Czurak, a 6'1" senior forward and all-state candidate headed to D-II Wayne State University this fall to play basketball and, I believe, volleyball. She will major in double-doubles at the school.

Ok, that last part was a wisecrack, but she might as well take it to heart because points and rebounds — and lots of them — are what she provides to the Tigers, who upset Pine River 58-56 on Tuesday and clobbered #7 Traverse City St. Francis 55-35 last night. They move on to the state quarterfinals in Petoskey, where they'll have a date with Houghton, also ranked #7. The Gremlins came out of the Marquette/Inconveniently Located Upper Peninsula Schools regional by smearing Ishpeming.

Czurak had 17 points and 18 boards, not to mention four blocked shots and four assists, in a virtuoso performance against the Gladiators Friday night. Fellow senior Abby Rodriguez, a brilliantly efficient point guard, had 17 points and seven assists.

The Tigers are coached by Sarah Wolting, daughter of longtime boys' coach Rick Zoulek. (Zoulek also coached the girls until the state of Michigan did the sensible thing and stopped playing girls' basketball in the fall.) Like her dad, Wolting looks to have built a consistent program that almost always exceeds their talent level on the court. It remains to be seen what the future holds for Shelby after winning their first district title since '04 this year, but that's not a concern of the Tigers' right now. Their concern is returning to the Breslin Center for the final four.

"It's been 15 years since I went to the semis as a player at Shelby. We’re striving to get back to Breslin." - Wolting

Shelby is a strong, confident bunch that just might do it. Wolting marveled at how loose her team was heading into Thursday's regional final contest. The Tigers didn't look it in the first quarter, when the score was 2-2 through six minutes, but they completely took over the remainder of the game. There's little that can be said to sugarcoat it — Shelby made St. Francis look very, very bad at times. Czurak was simply larger and better than everyone else on the court. The Tigers dispatched St. Francis as if they were a low-level WMC opponent and not a top-10 ranked regional finalist.

Wolting sounded like she knew going in that her team was going to control the Gladiators too, saying, "I didn’t necessarily think we’d win by 20, but I felt very confident after Tuesday. I knew my girls were ready to play."

I don't know much of anything about Houghton, Shelby's next opponent — the U.P. is a mysterious land of wonderment to me, something that perhaps wouldn't be the case if I hadn't had to miss Shelby football's quarterfinal game at Negaunee last November because of a wedding — but their competition this year was entirely U.P. teams, and the level of play up there, by all accounts, is not nearly as high as in the West Michigan region. Houghton has only 2 losses, but they were to L'Anse and Marquette, defeats that the Gremlins avenged but still don't look good. I'd expect Shelby to beat Houghton and go to the Breslin Center for the semifinals, where either Delton Kellogg or Saginaw Nouvel Catholic, both very formidable opponents, would be waiting.

If so, the Tigers will have put two sports teams into the state semis this year along with the boys' basketball run that is to be determined. Heck of a year for Shelby's athletic program.

Whitehall Wrestling Goes Out in Style

Whitehall's Steven Sika was one of three Vikings to
win individual state titles last weekend. (Photo by Marta Sandee)

Sorry for the late post, but holy mother of chicken soup has this last week been busy. The following list of cities represents an actually conceivable travel schedule for me on consecutive non-Sundays from Mar. 2-13: Muskegon (hockey regionals), Holton (pre-district boys b-ball), McBain (regional girls b-ball), Holton again (district semis), McBain again (regional finals), Holton or Muskegon again (district finals), Plymouth (if Reeths-Puffer advances to the state hockey finals), Traverse City (boys' regional semifinals), Petoskey (girls' state quarterfinals, should Shelby get there), Traverse City (boys' regional finals, if the Holton district winner gets there).

Anyway...

The team finals didn't go the way Whitehall wanted them to, but it's hard to imagine a better individual finals for the Vikings than the ones they enjoyed last weekend.

Three Whitehall wrestlers won state titles last weekend, led by the two Sika twins, Steve and Joe, at 160 and 171, respectively. Neither of the final matches were particularly close.

Steve won by technical fall over Caro's Skylar Ley, basically toying with him the entire time. If you wouldn't have known better you would've thought Sika outweighed him by 20 pounds. It was ridiculous to watch him make mincemeat of a state finalist. Todd Olson of Dundee had pushed Sika to the limit in the semis, with a 7-6 decision advancing Sika on to the finals. My favorite moment of the finals had to be Ley semi-taunting Sika late in the match by urging Sika to come at him, while the MHSAA.TV broadcasters incredulously wondered why Ley was poking a bear that was destroying him so thoroughly.

Joe followed with a tighter match, but he too was handily in control throughout against Caro's Trevor Jaster, winning by a 4-1 decision. Joe didn't watch his brother's match, according to the MHSAA's Second Half coverage, due to a superstition he has in which he believes he loses if he watches his brother lose. After hearing that Steve had won, Joe went out and won, too.

A cool moment after those two matches was when Vikings' coach Cliff Sandee jumped into both the boys' arms after their victories. It was clear when I talked to Sandee after his team's loss to eventual runner-up Richmond at the Division 3 team semifinals last week that he has a very close relationship with the Sikas, who both also played for him on the football team the last two seasons. I can only imagine the emotions running through all three after the matches, the Sikas' last at Whitehall before they graduate this spring. Sandee has made mention several times during the postseason that the Sikas are even better kids than they are athletes.

Whitehall's Zack Cooper also rolled to a state title at 125, where he's been ranked #1 for most of the year. He was never really in any danger of losing — his closest decision was by 7 points, his 7-0 win in the finals. Cooper's only loss this year came in the state semifinals against Richmond, a truly stunning defeat that seemed to turn the tide of that match in favor of the Blue Devils, though Sandee was quick to point out after that one that two other highly-rated wrestlers on the team, Logan Morningstar and Reiley Brown, also were surprisingly pinned too. That just wasn't Whitehall's day.

However, thanks to Cooper and the Sikas, Saturday was.

Andy Roberts

Notes from Hesperia Wrestling State Finals

The nice thing about working at two weeklies is that there are only two publish days. This is usually a good thing because it means I don't have to write a postgame wrap story under pressure of deadlines except for a couple of days a week (unless I'm sending it up to the Ludington Daily News). In this case it means I only have two days during which we have a dead period while awaiting the results of our pages being proofread — some dead time I'll use to go a little more in-depth on Hesperia's state wrestling tournament run.

Hesperia was at the finals Saturday at Battle Creek (Whitehall was, too), which means I was there. It made for a 14-hour day from departure (7:15 a.m. after a deadline night for a 2-hour drive...brutal) to return (9 p.m. after having to carefully navigate a snowy route home). Why I know I am in the right profession - there's no other thing I could enjoy doing for 14 hours with the expectation of being paid for it.

It helped that the last two matches (I'll get to Whitehall later in the week) were pretty exciting. Full disclosure: I wasn't crazy about high school wrestling prior to this season. But watching it at Kellogg Arena Saturday, in a wacky environment of fans cheering, made it fun.

Hesperia's win over New Lothrop in the semifinals was as exciting as a wrestling match gets. Going into the 14th and last bout, the score was tied at 26.

(For those of you who may not know, each wrestling match is worth 3-6 points to the team. You get 3 for winning by 1-7 points [a decision], 4 for winning by 8-14 points [a major decision], 5 if you go up by 15 at any point [technical fall], or 6 if you pin the opponent, the opponent gets injured and can't continue, or the other team doesn't have an opponent at your weight.)

David Jacobs was the last to go, at 130 pounds. All he had to do was beat Gabe Bennett for New Lothrop, ranked #7 in the state at 125 (and wrestling up a weight, obviously). No pressure.

This was the scene as time ran out on the final
match of the semis last Saturday and Hesperia earned a trip to
the finals. Coach Doug Baird is the gentleman at center and
assistant Craig Zeerip has his arms raised. (Photo by Kim Smith)

The two battled to a near-stalemate through the first 5:20 or so of the six-minute match. With the score tied at 6-6, Jacobs finally executed a takedown of Bennett and managed to stave off Bennett's efforts to get the two points back as the Panthers' coaches, wrestlers and fans went insane.

Alas, Hesperia drew four-time defending state champ Hudson in the state finals. You can check out the full story of that one in this week's Oceana Herald-Journal, but the gist of it is Hesperia let two matches get away in the final minute (6-point swings on each) and lost by 8. Ouch.

Still, it was a great year for the Panthers, who lost in district finals in 2012 after Shelby somehow became a Division 4 school for a year (they were back in D-3 this year and lost to Whitehall in the district finals). Only two seniors started for Hesperia over the weekend, so they'll be locked and loaded — and judging by their demeanor afterwards, they know it.

"We’re going to bring a lot of experience back. Hopefully we come out on top next year." — Coach Doug Baird

Baird said something else interesting that I didn't have room for in the recap story — his assistant, Craig Zeerip, who's been there almost 20 years (longer than Baird, I believe), may be leaving. I'm not sure why (I'm going to ask him later this week when I get in touch with him for a feature we're going to do on his Univ. of Michigan-wrestler sons, though I suspect I may know the answer), but he would be a big loss to that team.

On a side note, Hesperia didn't have even close to the most brutal loss at the state finals. That dubious honor goes to Davison, who dropped the Division 1 final to Detroit Catholic when the Cardinals' final wrestler, Derek Humphrey, with his team up by three and himself up 9-2 in the final match, somehow got pinned by Evan Toth, and the Shamrocks almost literally stole the championship. It was an incredible scene to witness — the Detroit Catholic crowd losing its collective mind as the pin became closer and closer to reality, followed by Humphrey bursting into tears right there on the mat as he immediately realized he'd just lost the title. Above all else, that's what I'll take from Saturday's action.

I'll have some extra notes from Whitehall's semifinal loss to Richmond later in the week, folks. Let me know how I'm doing in the comments!

Andy Roberts