LAKE CITY — When the final buzzer rang out in the Lake City gym Wednesday, March 18 in what became Petoskey’s final game in a historic season, PHS senior Lauren LaHaie kept a smile on her face.
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And rightfully so.
Sure, the moment may have called for tears, maybe hanging heads after a Division 2 quarterfinal loss to Flint Powers Catholic in a 53-38 final, but a smile and head held high as she hugged teammates seemed to fit better.
After all, LaHaie and her teammates were just part of a playoff run no Petoskey team had put together since well before they were born. It had been 27 years and LaHaie chose to celebrate that after giving it her all against Powers.
“We started at the beginning of the season and talked about our goals and our goal was to be here,” LaHaie said. “It was to be conference champs, it was to be district champs and regional champs. We accomplished it all, but one we didn’t get was the Breslin Center. But, we had a great group and there’s nobody else I’d rather have done it with. You can’t be sad it’s over, we have to be happy that all happened.”
A senior seeing the bigger picture in a crushing moment is a big reason why the Petoskey girls team ended up where they did.
That regional title that put them there was just the second ever by a PHS girls team and the first since 1999, so a 22-4 season like that isn’t just rare, it’s beyond that.
“We have so many great memories that we get to hold onto for years to come,” LaHaie added.
For all but four teams in the state of Michigan, there comes a point where an opponent just seems to have all the answers. For Petoskey (22-4), that turned out to be Powers, who advanced to the semifinals to meet defending champion Tecumseh on Friday, March 20.
Petoskey coach Brooke Carlson and the rest of her team obviously knew the Chargers brought in Kendyl Smith, a Miss Basketball finalist and Liberty commit, along with Davenport commit Paige Ringwelski and a talented post to match.
“We knew they had a solid lineup and we thought we did too,” Carlson said. “We liked our matchups. I think we scouted them exactly how we wanted. We weren’t really surprised by anything. They’re just a good team. We have a heck of a team too, we just came up a little short.”
Petoskey trailed after both the first and second quarters in scores of 12-9 and 27-16, though for Carlson, it wasn’t like they haven’t crawled out of deficits already this postseason.
“Halftime talk was, ‘Well, we’ve done this before and we can do it again,’” Carlson said. “We didn’t want to keep having that talk but when we came out in the third quarter it was like, ‘Okay, here we go.’”
Petoskey instantly answered in the third, with LaHaie nailing a 3-pointer on the first possession, which then came followed by back to back baskets by Leah and Ella Sulitis. Just like that, it was only a 29-25 Powers lead.
The only difference between Powers and others Petoskey had met was the Chargers never got rattled. They closed the third on an 11-2 run and controlled the game the rest of the way.
Kendyl Smith finished with 17 points, Ringwelski had 14 points and Evah Smith added eight. For Petoskey, Elaina Flynn scored 12, then LaHaie and Ella Sulitis each scored nine.
As Carlson said goodbye afterward to her players, putting into words just how proud she was of a season few had ever seen for a Petoskey girls basketball team was hard to do.
“I don’t have words for how proud I am,” Carlson said. “They’re a really special group. When you talk about being proud of a team, I don’t have words for it. They were a really awesome group.”
LaHaie looks at the season that was as an amazing accomplishment with a group she never grew tired of across a sports season that can grow long and tiresome.
“We’ve been together since before Thanksgiving, it’s almost five months,” she said. “It might have been easy to be down or bored like, ‘Oh, we’re going to the gym again.’ But never once did we feel that in the locker room. It’s going to be hard next week. It’s going to be like, ‘Okay, where’s basketball?’ But it’s been really cool to come this far this year.”
She’s part of a senior group that incldues Kiley Bromley, Claire O’Donnell, Leah Sulitis and Haidyn Wegmann that Carlson again had to gather herself to speak about.
“Talk about being proud,” she said. “They were great leaders and each had a role in how they led in different ways.”
While it’s easy to look at Petoskey’s roster, see two starting freshmen and a starting sophomore and believe they’ll be right back in that very moment next season, it takes more than just returning good players. It takes countless hours of hard work, special bonds and drive that’s fueled by passion.
“You never know what the future is going to hold, but we’ll get back to it and see what we can put together,” Carlson added. “I’d love to build up a strong program, keep it going and have something that this is expected.”
Contact or send game stats/info to Sports Editor Drew Kochanny at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @DrewKochanny, and Instagram, @drewkochanny
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Flint Powers delivers end of 2025-26 Petoskey season in quarterfinals