Tuscola County Sports

I bleed red and white. Because I am a glutton for punishment, this Friday night I am going to play in the Millington-Vassar alumni football game. I committed to this thing awhile ago, and I was going to change my mind, until I spoke with Jason Germain the other day, and he just convinced to go through with it. I haven't strapped on the pads since my senior year at Millington all the way back in the fall of 1991. I guess there are a few reasons why I want to play: 1. The game is in Vassar. I never had the chance back in my playing days to play at Vassar. I played against the Vulcans for three straight years (they didn't have a freshman team back then), but every year it was in Millington. Because of scheduling, wherever you play as a JV is where the game is played when you are a junior. And my senior year, the Tri-Valley East was formed, so the game was put in Millington again. The chance to play in Vassar sounds like fun. 2. The players . I heard some Millington greats f...

It's been awhile since I've been on here. I've been busy lately...the kids have kept my hands full and work has kept me pretty busy. With not much going on around the area lately, there hasn't been much to talk about around here. There are some new happenings lately, though, and with the beginning of football season a little more than a month away, let's start with that. Talkin' football...alumni games. This year, there are as many as four alumni football games in and around the Tuscola County area. Sandusky and Cros-Lex kick off the fun on Saturday, July 21, with the second annual meeting of these teams to take place at Pioneer Field in Croswell. After two straight years of shutting out Mayville (13-0 in 2005, 47-0 in 2006), Kingston will now play host to the alumni of Peck on the night of July 27, with kickoff scheduled for 8 pm. Millington and Vassar will play the second edition of their game on Friday, August 3, kickoff at 7 pm. That game will be played a...

Here's a schedule for this weekend's baseball and softball finals, and I'll even take a stab at guessing who the winners might be. BASEBALL Semifinals - Friday, June 15 Division 1 - Brighton (27-8-1) vs. Lake Orion (29-5), Morrison Field - 3 p.m. Division 1 - Grandville (30-7) vs. Farmington (27-8), C.O. Brown - 2 p.m. Finals picks: Brighton 6, Grandville 3 Division 2 - Mt. Pleasant (37-1) vs. St Clair Shores Lake Shore (31-4), Nichols Field - 4 p.m. Division 2 - Orchard Lake St. Mary's (27-11) vs. Marshall (20-11), C.O. Brown - 5 p.m. Finals picks: Mt. Pleasant 8, Orchard Lake St. Mary's 2 Division 3 - Hillsdale (21-20) vs. Kalamazoo Christian (27-10), C.O. Brown - 11 a.m. Division 3 - Sagniaw Nouvel (30-10-1) vs. Beaverton (21-9), Nichols Field - 10 a.m. Finals picks: Kalamazoo Christian 10, Nouvel 7 Division 4 - Reading (21-8) vs. Rudyard (19-7), Morrison Field - 12 p.m. Division 4 - Allen Park Inter-City Baptist (19-7) vs. Climax-Scotts (29-4), Nichols Field -...

Here's a closer look at this weekend's sports playoffs: Division 2 baseball Region 14 at Dewitt - North Branch (16-20) vs. Fowlerville (29-6-1); Mt. Morris (33-6) vs. Lake Odessa Lakewood (24-17) The Broncos improbable run to a district championship is not surprising. NB has a big-time player in senior Matt Jacobson, who hit .481 during the regular season, striking out just five times in 96 plate appearances. Jacobson also led his team in wins with an ERA of 1.92 and 84 K's in 76 innings. Unfortunately, Jacobson and the Broncos have to face a tough Fowlerville team. Picks: Fowlerville 9, North Branch 4 Mt. Morris 6, LO Lakewood 2 Finals: Mt. Morris 4, Fowlerville 2 Division 3 baseball Region 24 at Bad Axe - Mayville vs. Almont; Unionville Sebewaing vs. Madison Heights Bishop Foley (22-12) The Wildcats might be the sleeper pick here, even though they won the GTE with a 12-0 conference record. The Cats Justin Lugowski was 6-0 on the regular season and coach Aaro...

Tri-Valley Turnover. At the present moment, it looks as though the Tri-Valley East conference will have a total of four new head coaches come this fall. In Vassar , 10-year head coach Vince Leveille has moved on (check story on previous blog) and his replacement at the top spot is his defensive co-ordinator from a year ago, Jason Kiss. Kiss is a Nouvel graduate who played collegiately at SVSU. He previously held the same defensive co-ordinator position for five years at Nouvel before being hired for the same position and as boy's track coach before the 2006-07 school year at Vassar. Kiss seems like a good coach, although he has no previous head coaching experience at the varsity level. Vassar administration is reportedly banking a lot on Kiss due to his background as both a player and a coach at Nouvel. I hope he's successful, but I also hope he realizes that he's in for a lot of work. Vassar has not had a competitive program for a lot of years; there were times in the ea...

Rocket power. This Thursday, the Reese Rockets baseball team is playing Bay City John Glenn at the Dow Diamond in Midland, which is the home of the Great Lakes Loons. John Glenn is playing a doubleheader, facing Reese at 5:30 and then Birch Run at 7:00. I'm going to be covering the game for the Advertiser and I'm really looking forward to this. I haven't been to the stadium yet, but from what I've heard from those who have been, the initial reports are all good. I've yet to hear one bad word about the field or the stadium; everyone says that the views of the field are great, the seats are comfortable and the scoreboard is huge! It is a great opportunity for these kids to be the first high school teams to play on the new field...and it apparently wasn't cheap. The cost to rent the field for play was $2,000, with John Glenn having to cough up half and Reese and Birch Run splitting the rest. The Rockets are not off to the best start, but this might be just the k...

Tuscola County Invite crowns two. Vassar easily repeated as the champs of the Tuscola County Invitational on Saturday. In three games, the Vulcans scored a total of 35 runs; they defeated Millington in the opener 14-0, handed USA a 10-6 defeat and continued to pour it on in finals, winning by a score of 11-5 over Mayville. There was a lot of good baseball over the whole day, but the hitting from the Vassar squad may have been the most impressive thing. Not only was their hitting solid, but their pitching was tough as well. Against Millington, Vassar's Kyle Lemcke walked the leadoff hitter and then responded by retiring the next fifteen hitters, holding on to the no-hitter. Lemcke pitched the final two+ innings vs USA and the seventh vs Mayville; in all, he threw 10 and 2/3 innings with no runs allowed on Saturday. The Vulcans looked good in the field, making all the plays they needed to make against Mayville, and the hitting kept firing on all cylinders throughout the game, as t...

Leveille moving on. Initial news reports surfaced last week that Vassar football coach Vince Leveille has accepted a new job to be an assistant at SVSU and will thus be leaving the Vulcans sidelines after ten years. Hopefully, I will have more on this story in this weekends Advertiser. Over the last two years, I have had many dealings with Leveille while covering Vassar football, and I don't believe there's a nicer man in this area. He was always polite and well spoken in interviews, even after a tough loss, which is something that every sports writer appreciates. Leveille came into a tough situation at Vassar and has done a pretty decent job with a traditionally unstable program. Leveille took over a team ten years ago that was coming off of back-to-back winless seasons, and took them into the 2003 playoffs with an 8-1 record and one TVE title in the same year (co-champs with Caro). He will stay on as assistant vice principal at the high school while he ventures into new ter...

WHY? I was going to post about something earlier this week, but the tragedy at Virginia Tech on Monday had kind of put things in perspective for me over the last couple of days. At times like this, sports just don't seem all that important. First off, I want to offer my condolances for all the victim's families. As this thing plays out, and numerous media sources try to make sense out of a senseless act, the one thing that always seems to be forgotten are the victims. 32 innocent people were killed on Monday in what has become the deadliest school shooting in American history...and the media outlets are doing nothing over the last two days but broadcasting pictures and film of the coward responsible for this act. So he sent a so-called 'manifesto' to NBC the day of the massacre, so what? Do we really need to see this? NBC felt the need to broadcast what he sent, and then share the pics with every other media outlet in the country. Is there really a need for the gener...

Was it right? I was going to write about the Don Imus controversy and then I came across this gem written by Jason Whitlock. After realizing that I was only trying to hit a home run, Whitlock's grand slam made me put aside my article and I wanted to share what he wrote right here. COMMENTARY Imus isn’t the real bad guy Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture. By JASON WHITLOCK - Columnist Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem. You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality. You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor. Thank you, Don Imus. You extended...

Vassar leaving TVE. After almost two years of rumors, the Vassar school board of education voted on Monday night to accept an initial offer from the Greater Thumb West conference to join the league beginning in the 2008-09 season. Now, Vassar just has to wait for the governing board of the GTC to approve the move, which is pretty much a given. This is a good move for the Vulcans. Early projections have Vassar's enrollment falling to somewhere around 450 students within the next two years, which will drop the Vulcans to Class C. Cass City recently fell to Class C as well, meaning that every team in the GTC, with the exception of Bay City All Saints (D), will be a C school. Just for the the sake of competition, this is a good move. It has become clear that with the growing enrollment at some of the other TVE schools (i.e. North Branch, Bridgeport), the ability for Vassar to compete has become extremely difficult. It's a numbers issue....every school has a few good players, but ...

How long did I sleep? I awoke this morning to a ground covered in snow and flakes the size of a childs hand falling from the sky, which caused me to ask my wife this morning, "Exactly how long did I sleep?" Feeling a little like Rip Van Winkle, I tried to shake off the doldrums of slumber, made my way to the kitchen and glanced at the calender to remind myself that it is almost Easter. Ofcourse, this is Michigan, so the 180 degree change in the recent weather should not surprise me; I believe the old saying states that if you don't like the weather here, just wait five minutes and it will change. I hear on Tuesday that it will be 60...not exactly five minutes from now but the sudden change sounds about right. GO TIGERS!! If the first two games of the 2007 season for the Tigers tell us anything, it's that we are in for a great ride. Trailing by three on Monday, the Tigers fought back and tied the game at 3-3 before losing to Toronto in 10 innings, 5-3. Yesterday, t...

From the Saginaw News Sports seasons: Time to move on Wednesday, April 04, 2007 SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS, coaches and some sports writers were lamenting the end to a decade-old lawsuit this week that will upend Michigan's high school sports seasons and eliminate discrimination against girl athletes. With the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to hear an appeal this week, it is time for the Michigan High School Athletic Association and the other captains of high school sports to quit fighting and work out the logistics of moving girls basketball to the winter from fall and volleyball to fall from winter. Golf, soccer and tennis schedules for boys and girls also will change. The state athletic association has played a full-court press since 2001, when U.S. District Court Judge Richard Enslen ruled that Michigan's sports scheduling discriminated against girls. In every other state, girls play volleyball in the fall. Michigan is one of only two states -- Hawaii is the other -- that plays gir...

It's about time. This is from the AP.... MHSAA Denied Certiorari By U.S. Supreme Court In Sports Seasons Litigation The United States Supreme Court today denied a certiorari request by the Michigan High School Athletic Association in its Sports Seasons Litigation. As a result of the Supreme Court’s decision, the previous changes in seasons ordered by lower courts will occur beginning with the 2007-08 school year: girls basketball will move from Fall to Winter; girls volleyball will move from Winter to Fall; boys golf and girls tennis in the Lower Peninsula will move from Fall to Spring; girls golf and boys tennis in the Lower Peninsula will move from Spring to Fall; and the MHSAA will offer Upper Peninsula post-season tournaments in soccer for girls in the Fall and boys in the Spring. The MHSAA issued the following statement after the announcement: “The MHSAA is disappointed that the Supreme Court has decided against reviewing this case. Now is the time for our schools to step up ...

Kingston trips on way to finals. The Cardinals season was ended last night, when they lost to Parkway Christian in the State Quarterfinals, 60-55. After 24 straight wins, the only loss of the season for the Cards is the one game thay they will all remember for the rest of their lives. I wasn't there (I was in the office putting the paper together) but I listened to the game on the radio and I spoke to Jon, who called the game on 92.1. The general consensus about the game appears to be this...Parkway was too quick for the Cards and Kingston committed around 22-24 turnovers in the game, which is uncharacteristic for the Cardinals. But, with that being said, Kingston's stats were built against the slower players they faced in the NCTL, so we really had no idea what their ballhandlers were capable of doing until last night. Truth be told, the Cardinals went up against their first quality opponent of the year last night, a team that was probably similar in talent to the Cards, and...

Kingston wins Regional title. Yes, it's true...I don't know everything. After I boldly predicted that Kingston would not make it out of the Regionals, the Cardinals went and proved me wrong last Thursday with a 57-53 win over Fowler. The Cardinals and coach Mike Rea made a point and came away with the school's first Regional title since 1998, so congratulations to every kid on the team and to all the Kingston fans who kept their cool and resisted the temptation to punch me in the face. Now for the problems.... On my way out and in the following few days, I spoke to numerous people who were either there or listened to the game on the radio and one common concern was present in everyone's comments: that Kingston is now 24-0 and they have still not played their best game. Is it good that they have ran through this many games without peaking? It could be, since they do have to win at three more games to win the State title, and the fact that they have not peaked could wo...

Time to man up . Tonight is the night when we see what the Kingston boys basketball team is made of. The Cardinals play Fowler tonight at 7 pm at Saginaw Heritage for the Class D Regional title. Apparently Fowler has been known as the "Cardinal Killer" for the last few years, but by the looks of their record, it would appear that the Fowler team is not as strong as they have been over the last few years. That doesn't mean that the Cards will not have their work cut out for them--any team still alive at this point is obviously a quality team. Kingston is going to have to play their best game of the season to get this one done. They need to play a lot better than they did the other night when they barely broke a sweat in eliminating Owen-Gage from the playoffs. From the sounds of his post game comments, coach Mike Rea was not pleased with his teams shooting performance in the game against the Bulldogs. They shot poorly from the free throw line, but they ran out to a 20-...

Yes it's been a while since I wrote anything on here, but we've been busy at work with all the winter sports in the playoffs and other things. Here's some thoughts on what's happening. It must be the water. We had the All-Thumb meeting yesterday and the basketball team voting was interesting. It has nice balance and it goes to press on March 28. There are some surprises, at least I think so. I think our player of the year choice is a little confusing, but with no clear cut choice for POTY, I guess it was anyone's award to get. The problem was, that once the vote got to me, the POTY who was chosen already had secured four of the six votes that were present, so nominating a player at that point seemed like a waste of time. Speaking of awards. We released the TCA all-area dream teams this week, and we have gotten nothing but flack from area coaches. We put them together a little early because I have organized a dream team picture at Caro high school for both ...

Here we are...another week down and we inch closer to the end of the winter sports season. I for one am looking forward to it. It's the most wonderful time of the year . Pitchers and catchers reported for the Tigers last Thursday and I believe that the rest of the supporting cast join them tomorrow. It doesn't seem like that long ago that the Tigers were generating buzz by making the World Series last fall, but since it has been extremely cold since then, all the days kind of blend in together, so a week really only feels like a day or two when its cold (if that makes any sense). But with the Tigers reporting to Lakeland, it just means that spring is right around the corner and with it, warmer temperatures and bright blue skies and the return of the sun. It also means that softball is almost here. Kingston--paper champions . I don't care what anyone says...Kingston's basketball team will not make it out of the regionals. They waste their whole season playing what b...

Why would they do that? Another story to file under the heading "What the hell were they thinking..." Apparently last Friday night, three Akron-Fairgrove varsity basketball players and one junior varsity player were caught drinking an unspecified alcoholic substance in the back of the school bus while the team was traveling to Kingston for a game. That's right...they were drinking on the bus...while going to a basketball game. Reports that surfaced today stated that the players snuck the alcohol onto the bus in Gatorade bottles, and then began to pass the substance around while the team was on the road. The team bus driver is the town sherriff, and I don't know yet if he smelled the booze or if someone else turned the young men in, but they were busted, given a breathalyzer when the bus stopped in Kingston, and then all hell broke loose. Nine playes from the varsity squad were held out of the game. Two players from the JV were brought up so the team would not have to...