Dakota seniors bid farewell with standard-setting baseball season

MACOMB TOWNSHIP — The list of uncertain things was much larger than the list of expectations that surrounded Dakota baseball this season.

With first-year head coach Angelo Plouffe taking over the helm in one of the toughest conferences in the state, the Macomb Area Conference Red, the only given was Dakota’s substantial senior class and its belief that it could lay the groundwork for the foundation of the program.

Earning the school’s first regional championship since the 2019 season, the 2023 senior class made their dreams into a reality.

“We take immense pride in being the foundation for the next group of guys to come through Dakota,” senior Alex Kavalick said. “We had a unique opportunity to start something great here with a new head coach, and we all wanted to set the standard of what our program can achieve. I believe that the underclassmen now have much bigger goals than they otherwise would have just off the success we had this year.”

Kavalick was one of 12 seniors who cemented their legacy with the program this season alongside Will DeMasse, Blake Garbarino, Charlie Chmielewski, Brendan Borowicz, Evan Johnston, Luke Marley, Zane Mullins, Jonathon Youngblood, Dom Miller, Ryan Jarvis and Max McPeek.

While Dakota’s season ended on June 15 in a 6-4 loss to Brownstown Woodhaven in the Michigan High School Athletic Association Division 1 semifinals at Michigan State University, it wouldn’t be a storybook season without an incredible journey through districts and regionals.

Dakota dominated district play, outscoring Port Huron Northern and Macomb L’Anse Creuse North 23-1.

It was as close to a community effort as it can get with Garbarino, Kavalick, Chmielewski, DeMasse, Jarvis and Borowicz continuing to pace the offense.

Borowicz and DeMasse both posted impressive performances on the mound, but the team’s execution of the ice shower on Plouffe was arguably its best moment.

“I have a great group of kids,” Plouffe said. “It’s an, ‘I care about them and they care about me,’ kind of thing. They wanted to make sure they got me for my first district win. We celebrate all wins.”

Dakota drew a familiar opponent to open up regionals, facing off against MAC Red rival Sterling Heights Stevenson.

DeMasse went 6.1 innings and went 3-4 at the plate and said his confidence has been key to his success this year.

“Mentally, I feel like I’ve improved mentally a lot over the course of the season,” DeMasse said. “I feel like that really helps in big games. Against Stevenson when we were down, I wasn’t over my head about everything. I was really level-headed the whole time.”

While DeMasse and the offense continued to flex their muscles, the hero of the game was someone Plouffe has looked to all season off the bench.

Johnston, who has had his number called multiple times this season, collected a pinch hit single to give Dakota a one-run lead in the sixth inning.

Plouffe told his guys early on in the season that if they wanted to see the field, have a helmet on with a bat in hand, and Johnston’s persistence paid off.

“Evan, of all the kids on the team, took that seriously,” Plouffe said. “He sat there in the dugout with a bat in his hand prepared to hit. We saw that he was actually doing that, and it was pretty cool. He did that all year round, and we started letting him hit and pinch-hit some games.”

In the regional finals, it was all junior Brendan Pryzbycki, as he went the distance in a dominant seven-inning effort to defeat Lake Orion 5-1 on June 10.

Kavalick said the team set out to make a statement in Division 1 this season.

“We didn’t care about what anybody told us and said about us,” Kavalick said. “We knew that if we believed in ourselves, we could beat anybody. We didn’t care that our guys didn’t throw 90 or hit a bunch of homers. We had competitors that wanted to win and that carried us to multiple victories.”

Dakota will have to retool a healthy amount of their starting lineup this season, but their slew of junior and sophomore talent should fill a considerable amount of the void.

Junior shortstop Matt Wouters and sophomore catcher Evan Kavalick will be the lone state finals starters returning in 2024, with Pryzbycki leading the pitching rotation.

Losing seven senior starters, including the state finals starting pitcher in DeMasse, is more than most schools lose in the span of two seasons, but not every school also has the leadership Dakota possessed this season.

“We just don’t want to be like, ‘Oh, we just had one good year and now we’re going to be an okay team for the next four years,’” DeMasse said. “We want this program to be consistently good, and us doing this this year I think sets a good foundation for the other teams to be like, ‘This is a standard.’

“We want to set a new standard for the program, and I think we’re doing that this year,” DeMasse said.