Champions Under Construction

GRASS LAKE, MI -- Every game starts the same.

Home or away, the Grass Lake varsity football team marches to the Joe Bechtel memorial and one-by-one, players place a hand on the commemorative wall that honors a late coach.

The Grass Lake players honor traditions and their small-town mentality, and the team showed up to the first week of practice this year determined to make a change.

Coming off a 5-5 season in 2015 - one that extended the program's playoff streak to 11 straight seasons but was a poor record by its own standards - the 17 returning seniors kept only one thing in mind: champions under construction.

"This has stuck out with me throughout my high school career and most of my middle school career," said senior captain Jacob Molitz. "Because it has turned out to be true. We have gotten progressively better every single year, more or less. Freshman year, we went 6-3; sophomore year 7-2; junior year 5-5; and now we are 8-1.

"This is what I have thought about every single year, we are champions under construction, we are not going to settle, we have to improve every single year up to our senior season... we are under construction, we are always getting better." 

The change began at Camp Warrior, the team's two-a-day practices at the beginning of the season. Head coach Randy Cole asked the team to come up with goals for the season. The team came up with three: conference champions, make the playoffs and to be Team Three.

In Grass Lake history, only the 1968 and 2011 teams went undefeated in the regular season. This year's team set the goal to be "Team Three," the third in Grass Lake history to have an undefeated season.

"I really need to compliment assistant coaches for keeping them together as far as the family aspect and team aspect goes ... and the senior leadership, having 17 leaders has been awesome," Cole said.

Relationships make the team thrive, whether it is player-to-player, coach-to-coach or player-to-coach. This team believes it exemplifies what every team should strive to be, not only in how they work together but how they care for each other as well.

For example, Jacob Tietsema was injured during the game against Michigan Center and had to be examined by the athletic trainer. Tietsema was on the bench no more than two minutes and nearly every single player went out of his way to make sure he was all right.

Senior Lucas Challender says, "We're not even a team. We're not. No joke, we are brothers." 

The relationship of this team runs deep and so does the leadership, senior captain Michael Molitz said. "Our coaches always tell us that anyone can be a leader and we all should be leaders. So that's what everybody has been doing, leading in their own way."

Even senior captain Jacob Rapp, who is out for the season, remains a strong leader on the team. Rapp, a predicted starter, broke his collarbone in a preseason scrimmage. Senior captain Jonathan Lutchka says, "He is the hardest worker on the team. He has done all he can for us this season. The coaches now even call him Coach Rapp."

Advancing through the season Grass Lake kept its "champions under construction" mentality and put itself in good position to make its preseason goals reality.

A 50-6 victory over Addison brought with it at least a share of the Cascades Conference title Oct. 7. Their dream of becoming Team Three, though, and going undefeated in the regular season ended the following week with a 24-22 loss to Michigan Center.

Still, Michael Molitz refers to the Michigan Center game as his favorite saying, "That was a challenge, that was fun. Even though we lost, I am going to remember it and it's not going to be a bad memory." Lutchka said. "I don't regret anything from that game."

The Warriors finished the season with a 43-27 victory over Springport in the Cascades/Big Eight crossover championship and host Manchester in a Division 6 predistrict game at 7 p.m. Friday.

And before that game, one-by-one, they'll honor the memory of Joe Bechtel and the traditions that have been forged. 

https://www.mlive.com/sports/jackson/2016/10/champions_under_construction_g.html