Top 10 individual performances in 2023 Livingston County sports
It doesn’t require a state championship to make the Livingston Daily’s top 10 high school sports performances of 2023, but it helps.
The first four efforts on this list produced individual or team state championships. The next two helped teams reach state title games.
Some were singular one-time events, while others were an extended period of excellence.
Nobody knows what 2024 holds in store, but it will be tough to top some of the great performances turned in by Livingston County athletes in 2023.
10. Drew Lockwood, Hartland lacrosse
Lockwood chose the state quarterfinals to have the best game of his three-year career.
He emerged from the shadow of brother Bo, the state’s two-time Player of the Year, with a huge junior season that included an eight-goal, two-assist performance during a 21-3 victory over Muskegon Mona Shores in the Division 1 quarterfinals.
Lockwood finished the season with 85 goals and 125 points.
“He’s a junior captain for us,” Hartland coach Nick Levanti said. “He wears that ‘C’ proudly. He is all that embodies our culture in so many ways with his hard work, his gritty play, his toughness. It’s infectious to play around him with how hard he goes. Other guys see that. They want to respond and they want to go hard as well.”
RELATED: Drew Lockwood scores 8 goals in Hartland's state quarterfinal lacrosse win
9. Justin Jones, Howell football
Jones set the tone for Howell’s stunning 43-7 rout of Brighton, breaking off a 41-yard touchdown run to open the scoring.
That was just the beginning of a performance that will be talked about in Howell for years to come. Jones finished with 230 yards and four touchdowns on 24 carries and also intercepted a pass, leading the Highlanders to victory in the Battle for the Little Brown Jug.
“The line of scrimmage, we won that,” Jones said. “The offensive line did an amazing job. They held their blocks and the running backs saw it and we broke free.”
RELATED: Howell football senior returns from injury in time to savor rout of Brighton
8. Liam Kinney, Brighton track and field
Only one pole vaulter in Livingston County history had cleared 16 feet before last spring.
Brighton senior Liam Kinney reached that magical barrier by soaring over a 16-foot bar in the state Division 1 finals June 3 in Rockford. He was one-half inch off the county record set in 2010 by Fowlerville’s Max Babits.
Kinney, who committed to the University of Michigan after the meet, finished second on misses to Saline senior Dolan Gonzalez.
“It was a pretty big (personal record),” Kinney said. “The Michigan coaches were there to watch me and I got to talk to them afterward, as well. They called me a week ago and said this secured my roster spot for Michigan either for decathlon or pole vault.”
RELATED: Brighton's 16-foot pole vaulter Liam Kinney may have decathlon future at Michigan
7. Natalie Savage, Howell softball
It’s a pretty big deal to hit a home run in back-to-back games.
Try doing it for seven games in a row.
That’s what Savage pulled off from May 17-26, hitting eight home runs in the process. She had a double in the game in which the streak ended.
The longest previous streak in Livingston County were four-game runs in 2019 by Howell’s AJ Militello and Maddie Gillett and Hartland’s Delaney Robeson.
“I honestly didn’t know I had a streak going,” Savage said. “I kind of was going up to bat thinking, ‘What can I do to help my team out?’ I’m always told home runs are mistakes.”
RELATED: Howell's Natalie Savage had record-worthy home run streak
6. Cam Duffany, Brighton hockey
It’s not as if Livonia Stevenson didn’t know about Duffany.
Brighton had played the Spartans twice before the teams met in the state Division 1 quarterfinals, so he was certainly a focal point of their game plan. But Duffany turned in one of the greatest single-game performances in program history, scoring all three Brighton goals in a 3-2 double-overtime victory.
Duffany stole the puck in the corner, took it to the net and scored under the crossbar with 2:35 left in the second eight-minute overtime.
“Scoring in the quarterfinal itself is incredible,” said Duffany, who scored in the final 30 seconds of the first and second periods. “But to be able to score all three and the OT winner is just something that won’t happen again. I love it.”
RELATED: Stuff of legend: Cam Duffany gets hat trick, OT winner in hockey quarterfinals
5. Devlin McGinnis, Brighton soccer
McGinnis carried Brighton to its second appearance in a boys soccer state championship game by producing big goals at big moments.
His goal with 3:21 left in the second overtime gave Brighton a 1-0 victory over Detroit Catholic Central in the regional championship game.
In the next game, he scored the tying and game-winning goals in the second half of a 3-1 victory over Rockford in the Division 1 semifinals.
He finished with 22 goals, earning a spot on the all-state Dream Team.
“It’s amazing,” McGinnis said. “At the beginning of the season, this is all you can wish for, and here we are.”
RELATED: Soccer Player of the Year Devlin McGinnis 'big fan of scoring'
4. Luke Newcomb, Brighton swimming
Brighton has been traditionally strong in swimming, but hadn’t produced a male state champion until Newcomb won the 100-yard breaststroke in the Division 1 finals with a school-record time of 55.34 seconds.
Newcomb was second in that event the previous year, one of four Brighton boys who had fallen one spot short of a title. He joined Howell’s Hunter Gubeno (2019), Pinckney’s Tyler Ray (2021, 2022) and Pinckney’s Erik Bolang (2022) as the only county boys to win state swim titles.
“I just let my body take over,” said Newcomb, a junior at the time. “My mind wasn’t really in it at that point. I was just going through all the motions, what I’ve learned, leaving everything in it. It was kind of an out-of-body experience. It was really cool. When I finished, I heard all the cheering. I was just hoping it was for me.”
RELATED: Luke Newcomb, Brighton swimmers make history at state meet
RELATED: Staying busy helped Luke Newcomb become Brighton's first state boys swim champ
3. Sophie Daugard, Howell track and field
Livingston County is accustomed to producing individual state champions in wrestling, but it’s shockingly rare in girls track and field.
When Daugard won the state Division 1 shot put championship, a search through the records revealed she was only the fourth girl from the county and first from 1998 to claim the top spot on the podium in track and field.
With her toss of 41 feet, 7 inches, Daugard joined Fowlerville’s three-time champion Debbie Hughes (1974, 1975), Howell’s Ellen Dempsey (1974) and Brighton’s Julie Stowers (1998) as the only county girls to win state titles.
Daugard didn’t begin throwing the shot until early in her junior year because of a sprained ankle sustained playing basketball.
“I couldn’t do much else,” she said. “I told my coach, ‘Can I do shot put, because I don’t want to just sit here and do nothing?’”
RELATED: Howell's Sophie Daugard is Livingston County Female Athlete of the Year
RELATED: After rough start, Howell's Sophie Daugard wins state shot put championship
2. Bodie Abbey, Hartland wrestling
Wrestling is a strength in Livingston County, but the only boy to win a state championship was Fowlerville’s Adam Coon in 2010.
That’s until Abbey had an incredible high school debut, winning the Division 1 title at 113 pounds. He ended his freshman season with 33 consecutive victories, an impressive accomplishment given the difficulty of Hartland’s schedule.
Abbey, who went 44-3, won the state title with a 13-5 major decision.
“I knew I had the talent, but I took an early loss, so it kind of brought me down a little bit,” he said. “I really improved through the year and got better and beat those kids back. I had a clear mind going into the state finals and was ready to win it.”
Abbey took the first step toward winning four state championships. That same day at Ford Field, Brighton junior Sabrina Nauss won her third girls wrestling state title and Fowlerville sophomore Maggie Buurma won her second. Nauss will look to win her fourth in March, while Buurma is halfway toward that goal.
RELATED: Rare freshman state champ Bodie Abbey is Livingston County Wrestler of the Year
1. Kylie Swierkos, Hartland softball
It’s supposed to get more difficult dominating hitters as a softball pitcher gets deeper into the state tournament.
Instead, Swierkos made it look easy as she dismantled some of the top teams in the state during Hartland’s state Division 1 championship run.
In the final four games of the postseason, she allowed only one run on 12 hits and no walks, striking out 41 batters. Only a meaningless run in the final inning of a 9-1 victory over Woodhaven in the state final prevented her from pitching four straight shutouts.
“It’s still hard for me to believe every time I wake up that, ‘Wow, we’re state champions!’” Swierkos said a couple weeks later. “That’s something I’ll always remember. It all happened so fast. The last several weeks of the postseason were a blur. It came and went so fast.”
RELATED: 'I can't believe we did this': Hartland wins state softball championship
RELATED: Softball Player of the Year Kylie Swierkos looks forward to next step in career
Contact Bill Khan at wkhan@gannett.com. Follow him on X @BillKhan
This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: Top 10 individual performances in 2023 Livingston County sports
