Mother Nature was no match for a small town in northern Michigan when faced with the monumental task of facing down a snowstorm in time for a regional finals football game.
 
The Boyne City High School varsity football team had a fantastic run in its 2014 season and rattled off 12 straight wins, putting them in position to host the Division 6 State Quarter Final on their home field on Friday, Nov. 14.
 
Boyne City, however, is about six miles inland of Lake Michigan in the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula and mid-November typically brings lake effect snow that represents a very powerful force of nature.
 
As the Boyne City Ramblers’ luck would have it, those same lake effect snows were in full swing throughout the team’s week of preparation for their first Regional Final appearance in 14 years – as witnessed by the photo of the team practicing in the blinding snow.
 
The local weather forecasters called for between 8 to 16 inches of snowfall on Wednesday and Thursday of that week, which would have put the field and the regional final game Friday night in a state that no one could imagine, let alone predict.
 
A rallying cry was put out in the small and very close knit Boyne City community, and by Tuesday night enough tarps, tires and materials were scrounged up to cover the field as best they could. Then, in what was an absolutely spectacular show of community togetherness, scores of volunteers came to the stadium Friday morning to uncover and prepare the field for the evening’s game on the Earl Brotherston Field (see the time-lapse video illustrating the work).
 
Community volunteers, Boyne City Public School students K-12, players, staff and retirees all bonded together in the monumental task of clearing off a 50,000 square foot football field – really a green island in an ocean of snow.  
 
To everyone’s amazement, the playing surface cleaned off and was in fantastic shape for the game. With the overwhelming support, emotion and community togetherness that came with the daylong field clearing, the Boyne City team walked into the game with a fantastic home field advantage - and walked away with a 28-16 win, a Regional Championship and a trip to the Michigan State Semifinals.
 
Of equal importance, the town walked away with a bond and sense of togetherness that has truly become part of Boyne City's legacy.
 
We all know that high school athletics are invaluable at teaching life lessons to our youth. Character, perseverance, work ethic, teamwork and commitment are all essential values that students learn every day through their participation on the fields and courts of high school athletics. It is not only the lessons that are learned inside the lines of the playing surface that make extra-curricular athletics such a powerful learning tool.
 
Sports have an uncanny ability to bring people and communities together in extraordinary and extremely powerful ways. A lesson proved yet again this fall in a small town in northern Michigan.

View a time lapse video of the snow removal here.

(Footnote: Boyne City lost on the last play of the game 16-20 against the four straight years running state champions, the Ithaca Yellowjackets, in the Michigan Semifinals, on Saturday, Nov. 22, and came home to a hero’s welcome from their appreciative town.)