BANNER ROLE CALL

Congrats to the Walled Lake Central boys baseball team and the Lakeland girls softball squad that each captured league titles on Wednesday in the KLAA.

Central topped Brighton 9-0 behind ace senior hurler, Jake "The Snake" Paulson's venomous performance on the mound –his sixth shutout win of the year. With the knockout-outing, the Vikings' infamous "Jake the Snake" slithers his way to a 10-0 overall pitching record and steers his team to its first ever conference championship.

Unlike the boys over at Central, the young ladies hacking away over at Lakeland are no strangers to championship hardware. Led by the incomparable Carlee Meek – complete-game win from the circle (5-hit, 8 K) –, the Eagles took to the road on Wednesday and barreled over hated-rival, Howell, 3-1, to raise another league championship banner. Meek added an RBI-base hit per her standard overall in-game brilliance.  Kelsey Johnson and Sierra Burke delivered an RBI apiece to account for Lakeland's other two runs. The win on Wednesday is the team's 30^th of the campaign, making it five straight seasons the softball program at Lakeland has won 30 or more ball games.

A Southfield Surprise

In one of the better feel-good stories of the area's prep summer hoops circuit is emerging from an unlikely group of ballers hailing from the city of Southfield. The relatively-new Southfield Transition AAU team (16 and up) has been making a lot of noise in the first month or so of the off-season.  What's most interesting about the Transition is that the team is made up of a group of role players from various successful local high school squads. Unlike other traditional boys AAU powers like The Family, Team Detroit, or The Michigan Mustangs, which every year have rosters packed to the gills with high-D1 hoop talent, the Transition is comprised of a bunch of hard working, secondary-players, lunch pail-types who will probably be mid-major D1 recruits at best.

I'm talking about "intangible" guys like Carter Elliott of Birmingham Detroit Country Day, Spencer "The Big Easy" Parker from West Bloomfield, Marlin Mason, formerly at FH Harrison, now at Detroit Cass Tech and Xavier "The X-Man" Cross, Joshua Brown, and Landon "The High-Wire Squire" Atterberry of Southfield, among others. Besides Parker, not one of these players were their respective prep team's leading scorers last season. Yet, let us not overlook that Elliott was an integral part of the Yellowjackets Class B state title - playing a mean power forward next to All-American candidate, Amir Williams, and Cross, Brown, and Atterberry did a more than admirable job flanking all-staters Carlton Brundidge and Pee Wee Barnes to the Bluejays Class A Final Four back in March.

That's what makes this such an interesting group to follow –no true superstars, just bangers, bruisers, glue-guys, and sticky-handed defensive specialists. And the results so far have been extremely pleasing to the boys sporting the Transition's royal blue and yellow jerseys.

Out of four tournaments competed in so far this off-season, the Transition have taken home first place championship trophies twice, one in Saginaw in late-April and the other at Ferndale High School last weekend. The trophy garnered in the Eagles Nest on Sunday qualified this upstart group for Nationals. "The Big Easy" …er….Parker was awarded tourney MVP honors and Mason made the all-tournament team.

Quick side note – Wow, did Harrison lose out in a stud in Mason when he transferred to Cass Tech last summer. As Dick Vitale might say, this guy is a 'PTP'er" and "Awesome with a capital A, baby". Burney wonders if Mason would have bolted if Pete Mantyla – a disciple of NF's Tom Negoshian and a local OC sideline general on the rise – had been at the helm of the Hawks program at the time of his decision.

The Iceman Cometh

Farmington's very own "Cool Papa", senior P.J. Cooley (Hillsdale) is playing SO out of his mind the second half of the prep baseball season, Burney thinks he deserves another nickname. Okay, so here it is: From now on, Cooley should be referred to as "The Ice Man", because this kid simply as cool as ice every time he takes the hill for the Falcons (22-6). Cooley……er……."The Ice Man" was at it again on Wednesday, carrying his team to a hard-fought 4-2 victory on the road over a "nails-tough" Birmingham Seaholm squad with a 13-K outing, only allowing four hits.