Upcoming Exhibitions

U.P. Power! High School Sports in Upper Michigan 

High school athletics are a staple of the life of communities throughout the Upper Peninsula.   They are represent more than just an opportunity for your people to compete but also are a source of pride and even entertainment for the community as a whole.  Over the past 130 years, the Upper Peninsula has had a proud history of athletics in its schools and some of these stories and legends will be on display in the new exhibition, “U.P. Power! High School Sports in Upper Michigan.”  The exhibit will open on October 20 at 1p.m. in the Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center on the campus of Northern Michigan University.  There will be a reception for the exhibit and a number of U.P. sports legends will be on hand at the display.  The exhibition will be on display at the Beaumier Center through March 30, 2013.

The exhibit will feature stories about the greatest teams, players and coaches in Upper Peninsula high school sports history, including photographs, trophies, uniforms and other memorabilia.  There will also be an interactive computer station with statistics for each team sport for boys and girls.   The artifacts for the exhibit will be on loan from high schools, historical societies and individuals from throughout the Upper Peninsula, and will represent the greatest stories in U.P. sports history.

To create the exhibit, the Beaumier Center put together a committee of sports writers, historians and former athletes from throughout the Upper Peninsula.  The task of the committee was to form the basic framework of the exhibit, develop the outline and identify players and teams that would be featured.  Members of the committee include Craig Remsburg from the Mining Journal, Denny Grall from the Daily Press (Escanaba), Rob Roos from the Sault Ste. Marie Evening News, and many at large members including Jim Dwyer, Rod Guizetti, Larry Rubick, Dave Hallgren, Dave Lahtinen, Tom West, Pat Gallinagh, Tom Peters, Barb Patrick, and many others contributors.  The group began meeting in January 2012 to discuss the exhibit.

The exhibition will feature several great teams and sports dynasties in high school sports. An example would be the Chassell boys basketball team which went undefeated from 1956 through 1958, winning three state titles and setting a still unbeaten winning streak record.   The Chassell Historical Society is loaning several historical items related to the team to the Beaumier Center for the exhibit.   The exhibition will be broken up into various sections not by sport but by subjects, such as Dynasties, Greatest Teams, Greatest Performances, and Legendary Games. 

Throughout each section will be featured teams, players and coaches who contributed to these teams or achieved something great either during their career or on one particular day.  An example would be John Payment, the Brimley high school high jumper who broke the all-state, all class high jump record in May 1989 with his jump of 7’ 1” at the U.P. finals in Marquette.  This meet is a legend in U.P. sports history and Payment’s record still stands for all schools in the State of Michigan.  Another athlete, who many sports historians had forgotten, was Christy (Salonen) Provost who from 1993 to 1996 won four straight Giant Slalom state titles (3 all-class, 1 Class B) and one slalom title, the only skier ever to do that in state competition.  

The title for the exhibit comes from a popular chant of U.P. high school teams and their fans when they go to downstate Michigan for state tournaments.   No one is sure when it exactly originated but it became a rallying cry for U.P. teams after the 1975 State Football championships when both Ishpeming and Crystal Falls-Forest Park won titles on the same day.  It is considered a watershed moment for U.P. football because for over 50 years, our teams never got to play the best teams from the Lower Peninsula.  Ishpeming ended Hudson’s record setting winning streak in the Class C final and CFFP trounced Flint Holy Rosary 50-0.