PETERSBURG – Summerfield’s football team had a fun bus ride home from its final game last season.
The Bulldogs rolled over Erie Mason 29-0 to improve to 5-4.
Most observers were saying they would be in the playoffs the next week, so the players were celebrating on the way home.
“On the bus we were all hooting and hollering,” said Caleb Sheppard, a senior this fall.
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The mood was much different two days later when the team gathered next.
A meeting that was originally scheduled as a party to watch the playoff selection show together turned into a wake.
An unlikely series of events pushed Summerfield out of the playoffs.
The top 32 teams in each of the eight divisions in Michigan get to continue their seasons. Summerfield finished 33rd in Division 8.
The Bulldogs wound up with 25.111 points. The last three teams to make the playoffs had 25.611, 25.417 and 25.361.
“Saturday night I watched some college football and went to bed,” Summerfield coach Dylan Szegedi said. “Sunday morning, I got a call about 8:30 when I was getting up to go for a run,”
The call was not good news.
A Summerfield fan crunched the numbers and told Szegedi that it looked like his team would miss the playoffs by a fraction of a point.
“I sent a message through our group chat and told everyone we would still meet, although there was a real possibility that we were not in,” Szegedi.
By the time the players arrived Sunday, they knew the bad news was true.
“I was actually Up North at my grandparents’ cabin,” recalled Trent Miller when asked how he found out. “It was crushing.”
“It sucked,” added Grady Whiting. “Missing by just a few points was devastating.”
“It was rough,” echoed Sheppard. “It was heartbreaking for sure.”
But some good might come from the heartbreak.
“It left a bitter taste,” Szegedi. “We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. … We don’t want to leave anything to chance this year.”
The players agree.
“We definitely have been working harder,” Miller said. “What happened was not right. We don’t want it to happen again.”
“We’ve got to push harder,” Whiting stressed.
The Bulldogs know how to do that.
They had exactly the same experience in the 2023-24 season, when they wound up 5-4 and finished 33rd in the Division 8 playoff points – less than a point away from their dream.
There was no doubt the next year as Summerfield crafted an 8-1 record.
Is that kind of bounce back possible again?
Szegedi believes the answer is yes.
“Our numbers are pretty solid, 33 or 34 kids,” the coach said. “We have pretty good size and some good skill players. We lost eight seniors, but have 12 or 13 freshmen which is pretty good for us.”
One of the best weapons in Summerfield’s arsenal will be senior running back Austin Taylor who ran for a team-best 891 yards and averaged 6 yards per game last fall.
“He’s added a good 10 pounds,” Szegedi said. “He looks fantastic. He runs cross country, too. He never stops.”
Szegedi says Whiting is the strongest player on the team and also expects Nick Perez to have a good year on the line.
Linebacker Brendan Peace is back after leading the Bulldogs with 69 tackles last season and the secondary will be bolstered by the return of Hudson Crots, who missed all of 2025 with an injury.
The competition for the starting job at quarterback has been intense with Miller, Logan Schwichtenberg and Mason Trout all in the mix.
“Early in the season they will all play and we’ll see who comes out of it,” Szegedi said. “It’s a good thing to have a quarterback controversy. What I absolutely love is that whoever doesn’t win the job will play somewhere else.”
This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Summerfield driven by last year's disappointment | Training Camp Report