The historic MCC team will reconvene June 14 at The Fricano Place in Muskegon, to be ushered into the Muskegon Area Sports Hall of Fame at the 38th annual induction ceremony.
(Photo courtesy of Muskegon Area Sports Hall of Fame)
By Tom Kendra
LocalSportsJournal.com
Some countdowns are better than others.
The countdown to a Space Shuttle launch is always packed with nervous suspense, while the annual New Year’s Eve countdown (with the exception of 1999) is the definition of “meh.”
I would rate “The Final Countdown” by Europe high on the nails-on-the-chalkboard list of 1980s songs, but I digress.
One of the most memorable countdowns in local sports history occurred in 2010 on a scorching hot and dusty softball field in Normal, Ill. for an event that was anything but normal - Muskegon
Community College winning the National Junior College Athletic Association Division II national championship, the first women’s team natty in school history.
“Looking back now, it was incredible what we accomplished,” said Matt Houseman, who was in his fifth year as the Jayhawks’ head coach that spring. “No way were we the most talented team that year, but those girls were tough and gritty.
“They got to the point that they didn’t think anybody could beat them.”
The Jayhawks finished 59-9 and won every tournament they could that spring - the Western Conference, the ensuing Michigan Community College Athletic Association state tournament, the NJCAA Region XII title in Battle Creek and then the 16-team national tourney, which was played almost 300 miles away in the middle of Illinois.
That historic MCC team will reconvene on June 14 at The Fricano Place in Muskegon, when it will be ushered into the Muskegon Area Sports Hall of Fame at the hall’s 38th annual induction ceremony.
The Jayhawk greats will be joined by Justin Abdelkader, Bob Heethius and Frank Lewandoski as the “Class of 2025.”
Al Nichols will be honored with the Gene Young Distinguished Service Award, while two local standouts will receive the Dick Hedges Male Student-Athlete award and the Gary Ostrom Female Student-Athlete award.
Houseman can’t wait to get the crew back together, because he knows the funny stories and classic memories will be flowing all night long.
The aforementioned countdown began in the fourth inning of the national championship game against
Kankakee Community College (Ill.), as the dugout and the team’s fans started counting down the remaining outs needed to secure the championship. But the seeds of that title were planted 5 years earlier when Houseman took over a down-and-out program.
Houseman brought in a “why not us?” mindset, letting everyone know his goal was to win a national championship, a comment which almost caused longtime assistant coach Colleen Morse to fall out of her chair.
The Jayhawks improved rapidly over the ensuing years, in large part, due to their mental toughness. Star pitcher Ashley White was reading Ken Ravizza’s classic book “Heads-Up Baseball” during the postseason run and the team benefitted from the teachings of mental performance coach Brian Cain.
“Every player, every team makes mistakes, but we didn’t make one mistake after another,” said Houseman, now the head coach of the North Muskegon softball program.
MCC also showed amazing resilience. In the regional tournament, the Jayhawks were beaten badly by Owens CC, then bounced back to beat them in the finals. At nationals, they lost 9-1 to Kankakee in the first title game, then shook it off and won 2-0 in the final game of the double-elimination tournament.
It was the fourth team national championship for Muskegon Community College since the school’s inception in 1926, and the first since the back-to-back cross country national crowns in 1963 and 1964 (those teams were inducted into the MASHF in 2019).
The 2010 team was almost entirely local, starting with sophomores Megan Decker and Ashley Pickel of Mona Shores, Nicole Suchy and Abby Collinge of Reeths-Puffer, Whitney Stratton (Fruitport), Alicia Selvig (Kent City) and Katlyn Sterling (Montague).
Local freshmen on the roster were Olivia Morey and Kaia Swain of Reeths-Puffer, Tiffany Holmes and Briana Brackett (Spring Lake), Chelsea Kurnat (Kent City), Kelsey Bandstra (Wyoming Rogers) and Keisha Lytle (Coleman).
But it was two key recruits from outside of the Muskegon area that elevated the team from very good to great.
The first was sophomore outfielder Ashley Melchert from Mason County Central, who had a season for the ages with 21 home runs, 85 RBI and a .455 batting average.
Her equal on the mound was White, a sophomore from Lansing Everett, who ended up being the team’s workhorse (especially in the postseason) and finished with a 36-6 record, a 1.038 ERA and 367 strikeouts to just 60 walks.
The coaching staff featured Houseman and his sidekick Morse, along with Ryan Schalk, Brandon Bard and former Jayhawk player Felicia Smith.
Houseman remembers that shortly after taking the MCC coaching job, a fellow area high school coach questioned him about coaching at the juco level, asking: “Why would you want to coach a bunch of misfits and wanna-be’s?”
Naturally, Houseman turned that into a rallying cry for his players, who are now in their mid-30s and have gone on to become mothers and coaches and doctors and lawyers and such.
To be fair, at that awkward juncture of life where the comforts of high school give way to the uncertainties of college and the “real world,” many of those Jayhawks probably felt like misfits or wanna-be’s.
But such is the magic of sports, where a committed team with strong leadership can become greater than the sum of its parts. Collectively, the 2010 Jayhawks became something far greater: National Champions.
And now, 15 years later, Hall of Famers.
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