No second fiddles: Mining Journal’s 2nd 10 of the Top Sports Stories of 2024 just couldn’t quite beat the competition

Northern Michigan University’s Liesl Haugen, front center, goes to the floor to get this dig during a college volleyball match played against Findlay and held at the newly expanded Vandament Arena in Marquette on Sept. 12. This was the first athletic event held at the arena since it was reopened that same day. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)
MARQUETTE — The competition was intense, at least in this reporter’s mind, to come up with The Mining Journal’s top 10 Sports Stories of the Year.
It always seems to end up that way, even if at first it takes some thinking to remind myself about all those good stories.
Because there are so many that are worthy but don’t make the top-10 cut, it’s becoming an annual tradition to honor those stories that fell just outside that list.
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For the record, the top 10 were the following:

Marquette's Jacob MacPhee, left, checks the clock for his personal-record time of 50.47 seconds as he crosses the finish line to win the 400-meter dash during the MHSAA Upper Peninsula Finals in Division 1 boys track and field held in Kingsford on June 1. MacPhee also figured prominently in the Sentinels' 17-game boys basketball winning streak the previous winter, along with he and boys basketball coach Rich Ledy winning multiple prominent awards in that sport. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)
• No. 1, the Ishpeming girls basketball team journey to winning the MHSAA Division 4 state title in March;
• No. 2, the Northern Michigan University hockey’s team’s upheaval due to changing head coaches and only four players returning this fall from last year’s team;
• No. 3, the NMU men’s basketball team winning the GLIAC regular-season title, earning a third straight NCAA tournament bid, tying a program-record win streak, and Max Weisbrod named GLIAC Player of the Year;
• No. 4, NMU women’s basketball team making the NCAAs and winning its tourney opener, along with senior Makaylee Kuhn setting the Wildcats’ all-time scoring record;
• No. 5, Negaunee girls basketball team making it to the MHSAA Division 2 semifinals before bowing out in March;

American and former Northern Michigan University U.S. Olympic Education Center wrestler Helen Maroulis, second from left, poses with her bronze medal with other medal winners in the women’s 57-kilogram (125.7-pound) division at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris on Aug. 9. (Photo courtesy NMU)
• No. 6, NMU women’s soccer team dominating GLIAC awards, winning regular-season and tourney titles and advancing to NCAA tourney, and later, coach Jon Sandoval leaving for a NCAA Division I program;
• No. 7, NMU hosting Superior Dome Showdown, with more than 11,000 spectators coming to see the Tom Izzo-led Michigan State Spartans take on Wildcats’ men’s basketball team in an exhibition; Izzo honored as NMU hoops alumnus;
• No. 8, Negaunee 25-year head football coach Paul Jacobson retiring after 191 wins and being named to the state high school football coaches hall of fame earlier in the year;
• No. 9, Marquette’s Talon Smith voted 11-player lineman of the year in All-Upper Peninsula voting and Newberry’s Matt Rahilly the defensive player of the year in 8-player;
• No. 10, Paige Yoho thought to be the first woman hired to coach a varsity boys basketball program in the area at Ishpeming High School.

Braiden Noskey, right, and Evan DellAngelo leap in the air and hug after their Post 44 Blues team captured the championship by defeating Gladstone 4-2 on July 27 in the American Legion baseball Class A state tournament being held at Gerard Haley Memorial Field in Marquette. (Escanaba Daily Press photo by Mitch Vosburg)
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Before presenting the second 10, there were a few other stories it took some doing to eliminate from 20th place — the NMU volleyball team’s success and senior Jacqueline Smith setting the program kills record; former NMU hockey player Jim Hiller taking over the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings first as interim coach and then permanent coach; Marquette American Legion Post 44 winning the 14-under AA Tier II state hockey title; the Sentinels’ Sam Dehlin winning the MHSAA Division 1 state title in the slalom in boys downhill skiing; the Negaunee boys tennis team completing a perfect season with the MHSAA U.P. Division 1 Finals title as No. 1 singles player Gavin Saunders also had a perfect 22-0 record; Kaleb Chipelewski winning the individual title to lead the Marquette boys to the MHSAA U.P. Division 1 golf title; and Marquette native Adam Hamari umpiring behind home plate in New York for the opening game of an American League Division Series between the Yankees and Kansas City Royals.
So I racked my brain once again with the stories and I came up with this list:
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No. 11 — NMU rededicates Vandament Arena to host Wildcats’ basketball in addition to volleyball teams.

Wawonowin Country Club’s Mark Clements watches his drive on the first hole of the final round in the Upper Peninsula Golf Association Men’s Championship on Aug. 12, 2023, at Portage Lake Golf Course in Houghton. Clements won this UPGA title plus one in 2024, giving him four all-time. (Houghton Daily Mining Gazette photo by Daver Karnosky)
The university reopened the once-volleyball-only arena on Sept. 12 by expanding and updating it so it could seat around 1,400 to 1,500 fans with a large flat-screen scoreboard like those found at Big Ten universities.
This takes the basketball team out of the hockey-designed Berry Events Center, where a temporary floor and bleachers had to be installed before and taken out after every home basketball date, both a headache for building staff and an impediment to a comfortable hoops atmosphere.
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No. 12 — Marquette boys win MHSAA Upper Peninsula Division 1 and Newberry boys the Division 3 team titles in high school track and field on June 1.
This marked the Sentinels’ fourth straight boys team championship, but the first in eight years for the Newberry boys, whose last title came when the Indians were in Division 2.

Heather Brochu, center, holds her Storm Absolute bowling ball while standing with her parents, Donna Sandberg, left, and Clay Sandberg, who were also two of her teammates when Brochu bowled a perfect 300 game and what is believed to be the highest three-game series ever bowled by a woman in the Upper Peninsula, 816, at River Rock Lanes in Ishpeming on Feb. 7. (Photo courtesy Glenn Ayotte)
In addition, among the numerous individual winners at the meet were Munising’s Dan Goss, who had a hand in three victories in the Division 2 boys meet, including a personal best in the 1,600-meter run, while finishing as runner-up in a fourth event.
And Ishpeming’s Lola Korpi went out a winner in the Division 2 girls 800 and runner-up in three other events after a stellar track and cross country career.
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No. 13 — Current and former NMU athletes compete at the Paris Summer Olympics in wrestling.
Ex-U.S. Olympic Education Center athlete Helen Maroulis, 32, won her third Olympic medal by taking bronze in the 57-kilogram (125.7-pound) women’s freestyle division, defeating Canadian Hannah Taylor 4-0 in the third-place match on Aug. 9 after advancing until being knocked out of gold-medal contention in the semifinals.
Current NMU men’s Greco-Roman wrestler Payton Jacobson, 21, was eliminated in his first match on Aug. 7 in the 87 kg (191.8-lb.) division, 10-0 to Aleksandr Komarov of Serbia. Because Komarov was defeated in the quarterfinals, Jacobson lost out on a “second chance” repechage round as only wrestlers who lost to finalists were eligible.
Jacobson was an underdog even during U.S. qualifying, starting as the No. 7 seed among nine challenge-bracket wrestlers as he worked his way through three victories to get to a match against No. 1 seed Spencer Woods. He beat Woods in a best-of-three match in April at Penn State University to earn his ticket to Paris.
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No. 14 — Marquette boys basketball wins 17 games in a row, with coach and a player earning multiple honors.
Every Sentinels’ basketball team is always an underdog in MHSAA tournaments as the U.P.’s only Division 1 school.
But the Marquette boys won 17 straight games in a string that ended in the championship game of the MHSAA district tournament at the school’s Barb Crill Gymnasium on March 1.
They lost 57-45 to Traverse City West just 24 hours after defeating Gaylord 62-56 in overtime due to weather pushing back the Gaylord game a day.
“It’s unfortunate,” MSHS head coach Rich Ledy said. “That’s too bad for these kids. I would love to have been able to play them on a fair playing field. I think you saw toward the end of the game…. We were just tired.”
Around the time the season was over, Great Northern Conference coaches voted Ledy the Coach of the Year and junior Jacob MacPhee the Player of the Year.
In All-U.P. voting about a month later, MacPhee easily made the U.P. Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association Dream Team while also being nominated as Divisions 1-3 Player of the Year.
And Ledy missed by a single vote as Divisions 1-3 Coach of the Year even while the Sentinels were voted the Divisions 1-2 Team of the Year.
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No. 15 — Post 44 Blues win American Legion baseball Class A state championship on July 27.
Led by Hal Newhouser MVP winner Blake Walther, the Blues won at their home Gerard Haley Memorial Field in north Marquette, defeating Gladstone 4-2 in the championship game to cap off a run of three wins without a loss in the state tourney.
Walther batted 6 of 10 with a home run, two triples, a double, six RBIs and no strikeouts in those games.
“I just saw the ball so well. I don’t even know how to describe it,” Walther said. “When everyone around you is hitting well, it helps you hit the ball well.”
The team, sponsored by Marquette’s Legion post but now drawing players from a wider range around Marquette County, opened with a 5-1 win over Gaylord before downing Three Oaks 9-4.
“We spent six years building this program back up,” Blues manager Mark Pantti said. “This is what it’s all about. They’ve been working so hard for so many years. It’s just amazing.”
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No. 16 — Mark Clements defends U.P. Golf Association men’s tournament title at age 51.
Playing this year at his home Wawonowin Country Club course near Champion, the veteran golfer blew the field away with an 11-stroke victory over runner-up and fellow Wawonowin member Tyler Annala, a 2022 Westwood High School graduate and member of the NMU men’s golf team.
This was Clements’ fourth UPGA title, but the one that came in 2023 at Portage Lake Golf Course near Houghton was his first since 2001, as he won it for the first time in another century, specifically 1997.
At Wawonowin in August, Clements shot under par all four rounds for a 13-under score of 275 on rounds of 70, 66, 70 and 69, the final two rounds made more difficult by early rain the third day and windy, cool conditions in the final round.
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No. 17 — Heather Brochu bowls a sanctioned perfect 300 game and three-game score of 816, believed to be highest-ever series by a woman in the U.P.
Brochu, 34, was a high school star as Heather Sandberg but had never bowled quite like this before on Feb. 7 at her parents’ center, River Rock Lanes in Ishpeming.
On a team with parents Clay and Donna Sandberg, she rolled 30 strikes out of 35 shots while averaging exactly 272 that night. She got the 300 — the fourth ever by a woman in Marquette County — out of the way right away, then added a pair of 258 games.
All this happened after she left bowling for more than three years, returning to a league for the first time the previous fall after quitting just after the coronavirus pandemic hit in early 2020. But it wasn’t really the health crisis that caused her to give up something that literally had been part of her lifeblood since she was a youngster.
“My husband and I got married (in 2018), then we moved to Gladstone in 2019 and we lived there until last year,” she said. “Between moving to a new area and the pandemic, it was pretty hard to meet people, so I just didn’t bowl for a few years.”
And she’s had two children, too, with husband Corey, both still preschool age. A move to Sands Township brought her close to her old stomping grounds and makes it a lot easier to bowl once a week at the center she grew up in.
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No. 18 — Marquette sweeps U.P. high school cross country team titles, while leading Sentinels’ senior boys runner Seppi Camilli breaks the all-time finals record time but still finishes runner-up.
With the MSHS girls winning a close competition for the team title, 30 points to 32 for runner-up Houghton, the Sentinels boys dominated by scoring 20 points to 55 for second-place Sault Ste. Marie.
The Marquette boys were led by Camilli, whose time of 15 minutes, 34.7 seconds on the five-kilometer (3.1-mile) Pictured Rocks Golf Club course in Munising broke the all-time finals record.
But he wasn’t the only one to accomplish that feat, as Soo junior Gabe Litzner actually won the race just over 20 seconds faster in 15:14.4. And Marquette’s third-place finisher, senior James Barch, ran the fourth-fastest time ever in 15:57.8.
MSHS won the boys team title with the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh finishers, with the Marquette girls pulling off a similar feat, finishing 2-5-6-8-9, Ella Fure leading the way as runner-up in 19:44.2, about 13 seconds behind winner Tessa Rautiola of Houghton.
Dan Goss, who about five months earlier won three distance races at the U.P. Finals in track and field in Division 2, picked up the area’s only individual victory by taking the boys D-2 title in 16:43.0, about a dozen seconds ahead of Cameron Anderson of team champ Jeffers.
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No. 19 — Marquette reasserts itself as the dominant force in U.P. swimming and diving.
The Sentinels swept MHSAA U.P. Finals titles for the third straight year, the girls racking up that many wins in a row while the Sentinels’ boys actually made it their fifth consecutive championship.
The girls had the most dominating victory, though, winning their title by close to 130 points, scoring 386.5 to runner-up Gladstone’s 258.
The boys posted an only slightly closer 105-point triumph, 319-214 over second-place Houghton.
The Marquette boys displayed extreme depth, winning just three of the nine individual events — junior Trevor Crandell took the 50-yard freestyle in addition to swimming where his team can show its depth, the 200 medley and 400 free relays, with Isaiah Youngren doing much the same, taking the 100 breaststroke and joining the winning 200 medley and 200 free relays.
That meant the Sentinels boys swept all three relays.
Marquette’s girls were in a similar circumstance, taking just four individual events but also two relays. They were led by Grace Sobczak, who won the 200 individual medley, 500 free and swam on her school’s two victorious relays, the 200 free and 400 free relays.
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No. 20 — NMU football posts an 0-11 record for the second consecutive year.
This Wildcats team has yet to win a game since Shane Richardson took over as head coach just about two years ago, variously blamed on a dearth of talent due to its best players leaving through the NCAA transfer portal before the new coach signed on.
While the 2023 team gave up at least 60 points four times, this group only had that happen once, a 63-14 home setback to Saginaw Valley State on Oct. 5.
And while a 55-9 loss to Ferris State doesn’t sound very impressive, remember that the Bulldogs just finished winning the NCAA Division II national championship less than two weeks ago, scoring a 49-14 victory over multi-time champion Valdosta State (Georgia) in that game played in Texas. And Ferris scored more than 55 points three times, while matching it against Roosevelt.
Speaking of Roosevelt, the Wildcats’ most heartbreaking loss in this two-year run came to the GLIAC newcomer on Oct. 19, when the Lakers — now the third GLIAC team with that moniker — posted a 16-10 overtime win in the Superior Dome.
Northern forced overtime early in the fourth quarter when quarterback Aidan Hoard ran in for a 1-yard touchdown and Michael Karlen added the crucial extra point.
The Wildcats missed one dagger on the final play of regulation when Roosevelt went wide on a 49-yard field goal try, but the hard-luck NMU squad proceeded to fumble the ball away on the first possession of overtime.
Trying to force a second OT if the Lakers didn’t score in their half of the extra period, Roosevelt’s Cyrus Zuell instead scored on an 11-yard run on their third play.
Several area players had a chance to shine at skill positions during the season, including Negaunee High School graduate Nico Lukkarinen, who was in the top 20 in the GLIAC in rushing throughout the season.
Steve Brownlee can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 552. His email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.
- Northern Michigan University’s Liesl Haugen, front center, goes to the floor to get this dig during a college volleyball match played against Findlay and held at the newly expanded Vandament Arena in Marquette on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)
- Northern Michigan University’s Liesl Haugen, front center, goes to the floor to get this dig during a college volleyball match played against Findlay and held at the newly expanded Vandament Arena in Marquette on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)
- Northern Michigan University’s Liesl Haugen, front center, goes to the floor to get this dig during a college volleyball match played against Findlay and held at the newly expanded Vandament Arena in Marquette on Sept. 12. This was the first athletic event held at the arena since it was reopened that same day. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)
- Marquette’s Jacob MacPhee, left, checks the clock for his personal-record time of 50.47 seconds as he crosses the finish line to win the 400-meter dash during the MHSAA Upper Peninsula Finals in Division 1 boys track and field held in Kingsford on June 1. MacPhee also figured prominently in the Sentinels’ 17-game boys basketball winning streak the previous winter, along with he and boys basketball coach Rich Ledy winning multiple prominent awards in that sport. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)
- American and former Northern Michigan University U.S. Olympic Education Center wrestler Helen Maroulis, second from left, poses with her bronze medal with other medal winners in the women’s 57-kilogram (125.7-pound) division at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris on Aug. 9. (Photo courtesy NMU)
- Braiden Noskey, right, and Evan DellAngelo leap in the air and hug after their Post 44 Blues team captured the championship by defeating Gladstone 4-2 on July 27 in the American Legion baseball Class A state tournament being held at Gerard Haley Memorial Field in Marquette. (Escanaba Daily Press photo by Mitch Vosburg)
- Wawonowin Country Club’s Mark Clements watches his drive on the first hole of the final round in the Upper Peninsula Golf Association Men’s Championship on Aug. 12, 2023, at Portage Lake Golf Course in Houghton. Clements won this UPGA title plus one in 2024, giving him four all-time. (Houghton Daily Mining Gazette photo by Daver Karnosky)
- Heather Brochu, center, holds her Storm Absolute bowling ball while standing with her parents, Donna Sandberg, left, and Clay Sandberg, who were also two of her teammates when Brochu bowled a perfect 300 game and what is believed to be the highest three-game series ever bowled by a woman in the Upper Peninsula, 816, at River Rock Lanes in Ishpeming on Feb. 7, 2024. (Photo courtesy Glenn Ayotte)
- Heather Brochu, center, holds her Storm Absolute bowling ball while standing with her parents, Donna Sandberg, left, and Clay Sandberg, who were also two of her teammates when Brochu bowled a perfect 300 game and what is believed to be the highest three-game series ever bowled by a woman in the Upper Peninsula, 816, at River Rock Lanes in Ishpeming on Feb. 7. (Photo courtesy Glenn Ayotte)
- Marquette’s Seppi Camilli, left, and Sault Ste. Marie’s Gabe Litzner run together during the Division 1 boys race at the MHSAA Upper Peninsula Finals in cross country held at Pictured Rocks Golf Club in Munising on Oct. 19. Both broke the finals-record time, but it was Litzner who won the race while Camilli’s Sentinels won the team title. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)
- Marquette’s Grace Sobczak swims in the 500-yard freestyle, one of four events she was victorious in during the MHSAA Upper Peninsula Finals in girls swimming and diving held at the Sentinels’ pool in Marquette on Feb. 17. (Photo courtesy Daryl T. Jarvinen)
- Northern Michigan University running back Nico Lukkarinen, top, gets lifted by an teammate in the end zone after scoring a touchdown in a game against Alma on Sept. 21 in the Superior Dome in Marquette. (Photo courtesy NMU)

Marquette's Seppi Camilli, left, and Sault Ste. Marie's Gabe Litzner run together during the Division 1 boys race at the MHSAA Upper Peninsula Finals in cross country held at Pictured Rocks Golf Club in Munising on Oct. 19. Both broke the finals-record time, but it was Litzner who won the race while Camilli's Sentinels won the team title. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)

Marquette’s Grace Sobczak swims in the 500-yard freestyle, one of four events she was victorious in during the MHSAA Upper Peninsula Finals in girls swimming and diving held at the Sentinels’ pool in Marquette on Feb. 17. (Photo courtesy Daryl T. Jarvinen)

Northern Michigan University running back Nico Lukkarinen, top, gets lifted by an teammate in the end zone after scoring a touchdown in a game against Alma on Sept. 21 in the Superior Dome in Marquette. (Photo courtesy NMU)