Check out our playoof preview

As an award winning journalist, I have to say that one of the things I am most proud of in my entire career is the playoff preview we put out this week. The seven page, full color preview, which included our Division 6 & Division 7 guides gives information on all 64 teams that make up those two divisions.
Certainly over the next five weeks, it should be a valuable tool to refer to for both the hardcore and average fans as they try to see who is next on the horizon for our Thumb area teams.
Please feel free to leave your feedback on the material.

Volleyball bonanza in Bad Axe

The Hatchets hosted Ubly, Harbor Beach and USA in a quad meet on Tuesday. Updates to follow.

Ubly plays this Friday

Ubly will host their playoff opener on Friday @ 7:30p.m.
Check out this Wednesday's 8 pg. playoff preview in this week's paper, for times and info on other games.

Harbor Beach claims district title

Both teams battled almost gale force winds in the quest to move on to the quarters on Wednesday. The wind definitely played a factor in the game and gave the advantage to the team with the wind at their back.

The Pirates took advantage of the breeze when they scored the lone goal..............just barely as the Marlette goalie watched the ball slowly roll just over the line after the ball squirted through his hands in the second half. That's what it took to move on to the quarterfinals in Wednesday.

Playoff update

BaRELY awake at this point, but here is the playoff update for the night. There are 230 automatic qualifiers after Friday, leaving 26 possible additional qualifiers.
However, there are two more head-to-head games between 5-3 teams, so there will certainly be at least two more automatic qualifiers, reducing the total possible # of additional qualifiers.
So the answer to the question on all the Ubly fans' minds is, where will Mendon go. Based on my numbers and I'll double-check them in the morning, but at 24 additional qualifiers Mendon is the last team in Divison 8. We predicted in the last week that Mendon would likely be an eight and that Ubly would be a seven, which also appears to be the case.
There are four other 5-3 teams competing tomorrow with the chance to automatically qualify, possibly cutting the field of additional qualifiers as low as 20 or five per division. At that point, Ubly would be the smallest D7 school.
Deckerville also makes it in D8, as the fourth or fifth qualifier, depending on the result of the heads up game between Battle Creek St. Phillip and North Adams-Jerome.
We;ll have the complete list of qualifiers tomorrow night (won't be official, but based on our info, it will be correct).

Perfect again: Ubly beats Bad Axe, finishes 9-0

Time to crunch the playoff numbers, who's in, etc. so let's just say Ubly was dominate in a 51-12 win. A few mistakes to clean-up, but overall a workman-like effort.