The Hastings Banner — Thursday, January 6, 2022 — Page 11Allegan hands DK ladies
their sixth straight defeat
Brett Bremer
Sports Editor
The year flipped, but the Delton Kellogg
girls’ fortunes didn’t.
The Panthers fell to 1-6 on the season
with a 44-14 loss to the visiting Allegan
varsity girls’ basketball team Tuesday at
Delton Kellogg High school.
“We still just struggle putting the ball in
the basket consistently,” Delton Kellogg
head coach Mike Mohn said. “We are put-
ting ourselves in decent positions to score,
but end up shooting less than 20 percent
from the floor.
“I thought that we made some strides ingetting ourselves into our offensive sets a
bit better last night and got ourselves to the
foul line 32 times. Unfortunately, we only
made ten of them.”
The DK head coach was pleased with
the way his girls did a better job of taking
care of the basketball, especially in the first
half.
Jordan Lyons had four points for Delton
and Mya Brickley finished with three.
DK will be home again on Friday to take
on 0-7 Fennville in the first varsity double-
header of the season. The DK girls will tip
off at 6 p.m., followed by the boys around
7:30 p.m.Ionia downs Saxon guys
in first ballgame of 2022
The hustle plays were there for the Saxons,
but they still couldn’t keep pace with the
Bulldogs Tuesday night.
Ionia’s varsity boys’ basketball team
improved to 5-1 overall this season with a
56-36 win over the Hastings boys in a
non-conference ballgame.
Hastings head coach Rich Long said his
Saxons fought hard all evening – diving for
loose balls and taking charges.
Layton Eastman had a team-high 14 points
for the Saxons. Owen Carroll chipped in
eight points.Ionia got 13 points from Lance Atkinson.
Lane Thomas, Trevor Tooker and Clay
Currigan had eight points each for the
Bulldogs.
Hastings is 1-5 overall this season. The
Saxons will shoot for their first Interstate-
Athletic Conference win of the season when
they play host to Lumen Christi Friday. The
Titans are also 1-5 overall this season and 0-
in conference play.
The Saxons will be at Harper Creek
Tuesday, Jan. 11.Bulldog advantage on boards
allows them to beat Saxons
Brett Bremer
Sports Editor
The Saxons got a bit of a boost from
Madison Pettengill’s first start of the season
Tuesday night, but even her added presence
in the paint wasn’t enough for the Hastings
varsity girls’ basketball team to overcome
difficulties against the bigger Ionia Bulldogs.
Ionia scored a 44-35 non-conference win
over the Saxons at Hastings High School,
dropping the Saxons’ record to 5-3 on the
season overall. Ionia moves to 4-3 with the
win.
“We did not match their physicality on the
boards in the first 12 minutes, which in all
honesty was the biggest difference in the
game,” Hastings head coach Chase Youngs
said.
The Saxons were within three points mid-
way through the fourth quarter, but couldn’t
overcome the Bulldogs.
Brynn Reams had a game-high 20 points to
lead the Bulldogs and 15 rebounds. Coach
Youngs figured 16 of Reams’ points came
from within six feet of the basket.
Coach Youngs was happy with a big block
by Pettengill and some strong rebounding in
the second half. He added that his girls all
contributed a great physical effort throughout
the game. He was pleased with how Bailey
Lewis and Macy Winegar handled in-your-
face pressure; great contributions off the
bench from Carly Warner, Chelsea Ertner,
Addey Nickels and Bailey Cook and solid
effort at both ends by Allison Teed. Cook and
Bri Barnes were especially strong on the
defensive end.
Picking up the defensive intensity allowed
the Saxons to get within three points a couple
times in the final three minutes.
“We play tough defense, but our size hurts
inside when we play bigger teams, and when
we don’t search and find a body to box out we
are not big enough to just get the board, and
that hurt,” Youngs said. “We would play
tough, get Ionia to take and miss a shot they
did not want, but then give up an offensiverebound and bucket. It is hard to overcome.
We shot ourselves in the foot multiple times
with this last night.”
Winegar led the Saxons in scoring with 13
points. Warner had eight points and Lewis
five. In all, seven different Saxons scored.
Hastings returns to action Friday night at
Jackson Lumen Christi looking to improve its
Interstate-8 Athletic Conference record. The
Saxons are currently 1-1 in the conference.
The Titans are 0-4 so far this winter.President Engle leads
U of M to waterski title
Brett Bremer
Sports Editor
Snow covered slopes of Jackson Hole,
Wyo. were where Hastings High School
alumnus and recent University of Michigan
graduate Zoe Engle spent her Tuesday morn-
ing.
Having graduated from the University of
Michigan a semester early in December, with
a degree in organizational studies with a
focus on leadership and management, and
environmental studies as well, Engle is taking
a breather before starting a job hunt in July.
Her downhill skiing adventure is going to
include stops in Colorado, California,
Washington and there are plans for a stopover
in Switzerland along the way.
Engle had a water skiing adventure recent-
ly too, helping the University of Michigan
Waterski team win the Division 2 National
Championship at the Syndicate Waterskis
2021 NCWSA Collegiate Water Ski National
Championships at Tri-Lakes in Zachary, La.,
near Baton Rouge, Oct. 21-23, 2021.
“It was great,” Engle said of the champion-
ship she won with the Wolverines in October.
“We have a huge banquet and there was
champagne and a huge trophy. It was excit-
ing, really a team effort and kind of the best
type of experience and memories you’d want
to make with a team.”
It was a team that was very different in the
fall of 2021 than the one she joined in the fall
of 2018 after graduating from Hastings High
School.
“When I joined we had about a four-to-one
guy to girl ratio,” Engle said. “When I was an
underclassmen, I became one of the captains
and really kind of built up the girls’ team and
changed the culture a little bit.
“Throughout the next couple years we had
a lot more girls and it ended up kind of being
a more one-to-one ratio on the team and the
culture became a lot more fun. We got a lot
more people to training camp and we focused
one some female-only practices even to kind
of boost up our girls’ team, because in water
skiing the girls can kind of make or break a
team in Division 2.”
Michigan had the top women’s group in
the competition at the D2 Nationals outscor-
ing runner-up Iowa State 4,975 to 4,645 in
the 12-team field. The Wolverine women
were first in the slalom competition, second
in the trick ski competition and third in the
ski jumping competition.’
The Michigan men were fourth overall and
the Wolverine teams combined for the overall
championship with 8,955 points. San Diego
State was the overall runner-up with 8,
points, ahead of Texas 7,845, Iowa State
7,785, Michigan State 7,435, Cal Poly San
Luis Obispo 7,365, Cincinnati 7,340,
Wisconsin La Crosse 7,120, Arkansas 6,570,
Auburn 5,540, UC Davis 2,410 and UCLA
2,110.
Engle placed tenth in the women’s overall
individual standings, two spots behind team-
mate Jordan Briney and one ahead of team-
mate Genevieve Kromm. Iowa State was the
only other team to have three women among
the top 20 overall.
Engle was ninth in the Women A Team
Slalom Results with a score of 500 points
thanks to marks of 5.50 buoys, 15 OFF 18.
at 30 miles per hour. That was good for a
score of 59.50 and 500 team points. She was
tied for 16th in the Women A Team Trick
Results with a score of 200 that earned the
Wolverines 405 points. She tied for 17th in
the Women A Team Jump Results with a
score of 39 feet that earned the team 355
points.
“I competed in all three events, slalom,
trick and jump,” Engle said. “It wasn’t my
best standings because I was actually in the
hospital most of the time. I was pretty sick
down there, but I still competed and it was
actually an after tournament where I had a
bunch of [personal bests] after the season and
was able to do really well. At Nationals, I just
did main line for the team to kind of get good
team points. I was basically leaving the hos-
pital to compete and then going back.
“I have really bad asthma. It was really hot
down there. I got a bronchitis flare up and I
had to be on a breathing treatment. I just
couldn’t really breathe that well. Thankfully,skiing is only 30 seconds of hard work and
then you’re done. When I got done with my
last slalom set I had teammates just carry me
back to the car basically.”
Creating a positive team culture was high
on the list of priorities for Engle on the stu-
dent-run team. She went from being a team
captain early in her time in Ann Arbor to
being the organization president her senior
year – the first female president in the history
of the program.
Engle was thrilled to grow the girls’ team
while she was there and create what she felt
was as better culture overall on the team. She
said more time has been spent the past few
seasons making sure everyone is included.
More time has been spent helping ‘B’ team
skiers improve with those skiers improving
the ‘A’ team in the end.
The Wolverines have made regular appear-
ances at Nationals. The Wolverines were
seventh at the D2 Nationals in 2019. Nationals
were canceled due to the Covid pandemic in- Engle skied for the Wolverines at the
2019 Nationals and was joined by another
Hastings alumnus, Scott Garber, on that
squad.
The University of Louisiana-Lafayette
water ski team won the Division 1 National
Championship in October, beating out
Alabama, Florida Southern, the University of
Louisiana-Monroe and Rollins College
among others.
The University of Michigan team is not an
official school team or even club. It is entire-
ly student run according to Engle. Division 1
teams typically have school support and offer
scholarships to bring in talented skiers and
even some professional skiers.
Engle enjoys the sport in part because it
can welcome anyone. Few of the skiers in the
organization had any competitive experience
before joining the Michigan team.
“Before my freshman year I grew up just
kind of free skiing. I had never trick skied or
ski jumped,” Engle said. “By my senior year,
I was kind of one of the better trick skiers,
jumpers and slalomers on the team. Really
kind of, with the team, got a lot better.”
She spent some time during her collegiate
summers on a slalom course on Algonquin
Lake. She’d recommend the sport to anyone.
Michigan State University, Grand Valley
State University and Western Michigan
University all have teams that compete with
the Wolverines.
“We travel all over the midwest,” Engle
said. “The first six weeks of school we have
a tournament every single weekend.
Tournaments are pretty fun.”
She said the Michigan program did take
some trips down to practice in Tennessee and
Florida during the offseason. There are plenty
of team bonding activities around campus
during the offseason, but the only real train-ing in Michigan to be done between November
and April is snow skiing.
“It is pretty similar,” Engle said of snow
skiing and water skiing. “You’re on edge the
whole time. It is pretty similar. You definitely
use different muscles. With water skiing you
use more of your upper body strength and
your core, but with snow skiing it is a lot of
your legs.”
“It is pretty fun. Everyone grows up skiing
kind of in Michigan almost, at least once or
twice or more times at friends’ or family’s,
but not a lot of people know that collegiate
skiing exists.”Hastings junior Bailey Cook (13) goes
up strong in the paint against Ionia
Bulldogs Melayna Braman (23) and Jessa
Swinehart (20) during their non-confer-
ence ballgame at Hastings High School
Tuesday. (Photo by Perry Hardin)Saxon sophomore Addie Nickels runs
the weave at the top of the key during her
team's loss to the visiting Ionia Bulldogs
Tuesday. (Photo by Perry Hardin)
Members of the University of Michigan Waterski team, including Hastings High School alumnus Zoe Engle (at right, second row
from bottom), celebrates its Division 2 National Championship at Tri-Lakes in Zachary, La., at the conclusion of the 2021 Sydicate
Collegiate Nationals Oct. 21-23.Zoe Engle (center) is joined by her parents Mike and Cathy Engle as the University
of Michigan Waterski program celebrates its Division 2 National Championship. Engle
graduated from U of M in December, a semester earlier than originally scheduled.
Zoe Engle competes in the ski jump competition for the University of Michigan.
Engle placed tenth individually in the overall scoring at the 2021 Sydicate Collegiate
Nationals helping the Wolverines to a national championship.