County teams taking stoppage in stride
The other shoe dropped Sunday night, as the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the MHSAA paused the 2020 high school football playoffs for the next three weeks due to an increase in COVID-19 cases across the state in the past month.
The decision is just another dip in the rollercoaster that has been 2020 with a nationwide pandemic effecting nearly every aspect of daily life. This is the second time the football season has been upended since August.
Originally, the MHSAA cancelled the 2020 campaign and pushed it to the spring until it reversed course in early September and green-lit a shortened regular season and expanded playoff format where every team qualified.
Last weekend, district champions were crowned in all eight divisions, including six squads from Oakland County. MHSAA Executive Director Mark Uyl made clear in his Monday press conference the MHSAA has every intent on finishing the final three rounds of the playoffs and crowning a state champion before the end of the calendar year.
“You’ve got to keep hope alive and take the MHSAA at its word,” longtime Birmingham Detroit Country Day head coach Dan MacLean said. “We can’t get too low. You roll with the punches, which is what we’ve been doing all season. It’s just another setback in a year of setbacks. You have to adjust or you’ll drive yourself crazy.”
MacLean took his 6-2 Yellowjackets to a second straight Division 4 district title last Friday night with a 20-10 defeat of Madison Heights Lamphere. In 2019, Country Day advanced into the state finals before falling to Grand Rapids Catholic Central (44- 0).
During the 2020 campaign, MacLean’s club has been forced to cancel two games ( Week 1 & Week 3) as a result of positive COVID-19 tests within his program. The Yellowjackets were slated to play North Branch this week in a regional championship game that is now up-inthe-air.
Ron Bellamy, the head coach of the top-ranked team in Oakland County, the West Bloomfield Lakers, saw this pause as almost an inevitability even as his team was peaking in its play and demolishing the competition in the playoffs. Bellamy’s Lakers have outscored their postseason opponents by the score of 161-9 in three playoff contests.
“Things got real, real fast” he said. “Unfortunately, it was hard not to see this on the horizon with the uptick in COVID-19 cases around the state lately. We can’t be trading football for lives. Everyone is sad, but we understand why we had to do this.”
The Lakers won’t stop preparing for their Division 1 regional final showdown with Romeo, even if the team can’t practice in person.
“We’re going to keep the players engaged, keep them ready for when and if we’re allowed to get back on the field,” Bellamy said. “We handled a situation like this in the spring and then at the beginning of August with the temporary shutdown of the season. We’ll be doing virtual meetings, team phone calls and the players will keep them
selves in shape with individual workouts. You can only control what you are able to control. Hopefully, this three-week layoff will help and the medicine and science will allow us to return and finish what we started.”
Out of the Division 2 ranks, North Farmington (6-3) was preparing to travel to Traverse City Central this weekend to play in the program’s first regional since the late 1970s. However, as of now, the Raiders won’t be making the trip north until mid-December at the earliest.
“If this year has taught us anything it is to expect the unexpected,” Raiders head coach Jon Herstein said. “There have been so many ups and downs, we just have to hope we’ll end on an up note and get to complete this thing. Nobody knows what will happen, in your head though, you’re shooting for the happy ending.”