GRAND RAPIDS — As another school year begins at Kenowa Hills, the accomplishments of last spring are already beginning to take their place in school history.

There are new seasons underway. Football is back. Fall athletes have returned to competition. Before long, another baseball team will begin preparing for another spring.

But what the Knights did in 2026 deserves to linger a little longer.

Kenowa Hills baseball put together the greatest postseason run in program history last spring, advancing all the way to the Division 2 state championship game at Michigan State University and coming within a few outs of finishing it with a state title.

The Knights didn’t quite get the final celebration.

They came remarkably close.

Kenowa Hills carried a 20-game winning streak into the state championship and finished the season 36-3 according to the MHSAA, with its final loss coming 6-4 in eight innings against perennial power Orchard Lake St. Mary’s.

And for much of that Saturday morning in East Lansing, it looked like the Knights might finish the story.

Kenowa Hills wasn’t supposed to intimidate St. Mary’s.

The Eaglets entered the championship game ranked No. 1 in Division 2 and riding a 26-game winning streak. They had become one of the state’s defining baseball programs, reaching their 10th state championship game since 2007 and averaging 33 victories per season since winning the 2019 Division 2 title.

None of that seemed to matter much to Kenowa Hills.

The Knights attacked immediately.

Senior Brennan Gustinis opened the bottom of the first inning with a double, and Andrew Lake drove him home with a single up the middle.

1-0.

In the third, Kenowa Hills went back to work.

Junior Will Fussman drove an RBI triple into the right-center gap to make it 2-0. Moments later, he broke for home and scored when a St. Mary’s throw escaped the catcher.

Then the Knights got aggressive again.

With runners at the corners, Kenowa Hills executed a double steal. Mason Peebles charged home and beat the return throw to the plate.

Suddenly, the scoreboard at McLane Stadium read:

Kenowa Hills 4, Orchard Lake St. Mary’s 0.

It wasn’t a fluke lead scraped together against an ordinary opponent.

The Knights had put four runs on a team that had won 26 consecutive games.

They were three innings into the state championship game.

And Kenowa Hills was nine outs away.

The Road to East Lansing

The championship game was the culmination of a postseason that repeatedly tested the Knights.

Kenowa Hills opened regional play with a 4-3 victory over East Grand Rapids.

Next came Escanaba.

That game looked nothing like the offensive outburst that would eventually send Kenowa Hills to the state final. Instead, the Knights leaned on one of the strengths that had carried them throughout the season: pitching.

Kenowa Hills won 1-0.

Regional champions.

Later that day, the Knights defeated Standish-Sterling 8-2 in the state quarterfinal, punching their ticket to Michigan State University.

That alone was historic.

Kenowa Hills had never played in an MHSAA baseball state championship game. To get there, however, the Knights still had to survive Vicksburg in the Division 2 semifinal.

And survive might be the appropriate word.

Kenowa Hills built a 5-0 lead before watching it disappear. Vicksburg rallied and carried a 6-5 advantage into the seventh inning.

For a team whose season had included remarkably little losing, the Knights suddenly found themselves three outs away from elimination.

Andrew Lake stepped to the plate with an opportunity to change that.

He did.

Lake delivered a two-run triple to put Kenowa Hills back in front. Jack Stoddard followed with an RBI single, and by the end of the inning the Knights had turned a one-run deficit into a 9-6 victory.

For the first time in school history, Kenowa Hills was going to play for a baseball state championship.

“You dream for this moment,” Lake told MHSAA.com after delivering the go-ahead hit.

Built on Pitching

The dramatic seventh inning against Vicksburg may have provided the signature moment of the run, but the Knights’ identity had been established long before they arrived in East Lansing.

Kenowa Hills could pitch.

Entering the semifinal, three Knights pitchers had combined for a 26-1 record with an ERA below two runs per game.

The staff had thrown 13 shutouts.

In 28 games, Kenowa Hills had allowed three runs or fewer.

Those numbers explain how a team wins 20 consecutive games at the most important point of the season.

They also explain why Kenowa Hills wasn’t overwhelmed when it finally reached Michigan State.

The Knights belonged there.

Four Runs From an Upset

St. Mary’s eventually reminded everyone why it had been the state’s top-ranked Division 2 team.

The Eaglets got one run back in the fourth inning.

Then came the sixth.

A two-run double from Tyler Shubnell reduced the Kenowa Hills advantage to 4-3 before St. Mary’s tied the game with an RBI single.

The four-run lead was gone.

But Kenowa Hills didn’t go away.

The Knights forced the game into extra innings before St. Mary’s finally broke through with two runs in the eighth.

Kenowa Hills couldn’t answer.

Final:

Orchard Lake St. Mary’s 6, Kenowa Hills 4.

The Eaglets celebrated their seventh state championship and fifth since 2015.

The Knights were left with the particular kind of disappointment reserved for teams that get close enough to see exactly what might have been.

“We just gave up a couple too many runs,” Kenowa Hills coach Todd VandenHeuvel said afterward. “They outhit us. If we could have gotten a couple more baserunners on and stayed aggressive like we were and put more pressure on them, it might have been a different outcome. But very proud of the kids.”

There isn’t much more that needs to be said.

What Remains

Two months later, the final score doesn’t look any different.

St. Mary’s is still the 2026 Division 2 state champion.

Kenowa Hills still finished one victory short.

But distance has a way of changing how seasons are remembered.

Eventually, the sting of the final loss becomes only one piece of a much larger story.

The 2026 Knights won 36 games according to the MHSAA. They put together a 20-game winning streak. They won a regional championship. They reached the state semifinals and fell behind in the seventh inning with their season on the line.

Then they came back.

They reached the first baseball state championship game in school history.

And once they got there, Kenowa Hills didn’t simply enjoy the experience.

For three innings, the Knights controlled it.

They ran aggressively. They put pressure on one of Michigan’s most accomplished programs. They built a 4-0 lead against a team that hadn’t lost in 26 games.

They made Orchard Lake St. Mary’s earn every bit of another state championship.

That’s important context when remembering the season.

Kenowa Hills didn’t make a nice postseason run and happen to end up at Michigan State.

The Knights were good enough to win the whole thing.

They simply ran into another outstanding team that found a way to rally.

Now another school year has begun.

The seniors from that team have moved on. Underclassmen have returned to Kenowa Hills with different roles waiting for them next spring. Eventually, the weather will turn cold, winter will arrive and baseball will again feel a long way away.

Then spring will come.

And when it does, the next Kenowa Hills baseball team will begin with something no team in program history had before 2026.

A standard set by a group that made it all the way to the final Saturday of the season.

They didn’t bring the championship trophy home.

But they changed what getting there looks like for everyone who follows.