Left photo: Jaxson Wilson, at middle. Right photo: #22 Anthony Marchase.
By Travis Smola
The up and down season for the Vicksburg varsity boys’ basketball team continued after the team fell 72-56 while on the road at Edwardsburg.
After starting the season 1-4, the Bulldogs went on a five-game winning streak, starting with the last three games before the holiday break. They followed it up with a road win against Portage Northern, 71-53, and a home victory over Sturgis, 61-42, before the streak came to an end against Niles.
In the most recent matchup, Vicksburg gave the Eddies plenty to think about as the game was mostly closer than the stats show. The score was 16-12 in Edwardsburg’s favor after the first period. However, the Bulldogs rallied back to take a 33-29 lead going into the half.
Vicksburg did a good job spreading the ball around, as eight different Bulldogs scored in the contest. Jaxson Wilson was the leading scorer for Vicksburg. His first 12 points all came on three-pointers. He added a couple of free throws late for 14 points total. Carter Brown and Mitchell Beyer both had 13 points. Anthony Marchese and Andrew Gless had five. Brady Young, Jordan Diekman, and Gabriel Ryder rounded out the scoring with a field goal each.
Unfortunately, in the second half of the game, Vicksburg didn’t have the same success shooting. Edwardsburg capitalized on the mistakes to pull ahead 53-41 at the end of the third. After that the Eddies defense stepped up and closed out the game, shutting down most of the Bulldogs’ shooting attempts.
Although it’s been a tough season, Vicksburg should have the chance to get some more wins in February against Coldwater, Paw Paw, Harper Creek, Lawton, Three Rivers, Plainwell, and Sturgis before two very tough matchups against Portage Central, and a re-match against the Eddies to close out the regular season.
The Vicksburg Varsity basketball team came away with its toughest victory yet of the season on the road against a quality Edwardsburg team. The Bulldogs came out on top 47-35 in an extremely physical matchup where the Eddies greatly limited Vicksburg’s ability to make shots.
“They’re a pretty good team, and we knew they were going to be a good team,” Head Coach Tim Kirby said. “Honestly, I kind of said this would be our best test since that Paw Paw game earlier in the year.”
The first period was a solid defensive struggle that ended with the score just 6-4 in the Bulldogs’ favor. Vicksburg was able to open the scoring a little in the second. But it was still a narrow 20-13 lead going into the half. Edwardsburg limited the girls to just two three-pointers all night. The rest of Vicksburg’s points were earned hard in the circle.
Makayla Allen led the scoring charge for the Bulldogs with 17 points. Kendra Cooley was the next leading scorer with 12. The Eddies seemed to key heavily on Maddi Diekman all evening, but she still managed to put up eight points. Hannah Devries had five points. Emma Steele had a couple of field goals while Scarlett Hosner added a couple of free throws to round out the scoring.
Edwardsburg managed to draw the score to 32-30 at the end of the third period. The Eddies’ shooting kept them in striking distance throughout the game.
“They handled our zone pretty well. Lots of teams don’t handle it,” Kirby said. “When you’ve got three or four girls who can shoot, that makes it tough to stay in the zone.”
Even though it was a close game, Kirby sees that as a good thing. The Conference is loaded with talented teams this year, and Kirby feels some tougher games will keep them prepared. Otsego and Paw Paw will likely be the two toughest tests, although he’s expecting Dowagiac, Coldwater, and Niles Brandywine to be tough contests too.
“We’ve got a good six-game stretch here where we’re going to find out how good we really are,” Kirby said.
Since its last victory before the holiday break, a 49-30 win over Plainwell, Vicksburg has won four straight games, three by wide margins. It defeated Portage Northern 65-25, Sturgis 59-18, and Niles 70-30 before the Edwardsburg game.
Kirby said the break came at an ideal time because the team was showing signs of fatigue going into the stretch. When it returned to practice, it re-focused on shooting and basic skills. Thus far, the results have shown in games.
“We came back, and we beat three teams we expected to beat. But we played with a different intensity and different urgency, and we really talked about that,” Kirby said. “Getting back to that urgency that we played with last year all the time. If this team plays hard, and with that intensity, they’re very hard to beat. I think tonight kind of showed that. That’s a good team we just played, and we found a way.”
Vicksburg’s bowling teams played hard but couldn’t beat Niles.
Vicksburg’s varsity and JV bowling teams played a hard-fought match against Niles High School in a January 17 home game at Airway Lanes. The varsity match came down to the wire as Niles edged out the Bulldogs by a regular game score of 1682 to 1663 and an overall score of Baker and regular games with Niles 17, Vicksburg 13.
A match consists of two full games and two Baker Games in which each of the bowlers take turns bowling in two of the ten frames of the game. Victory is based on Baker and regular games total points for each team.
Brayden Odell, Austin Junde, Donny Kinney, Isiah Elliott, and Jordon Butler represented the varsity team. Emmett Bostocky, Brady Gibson, and Xavier Hart competed on the JV team.
Despite the overall loss, Vicksburg varsity bowlers took the second regular game by a score of 848 to 812. Odell threw three strikes in a row for a turkey. He was on target in knocking all the ten pins down on his first hooking ball of each frame and then topped it off with a fourth strike in a row. All the other players on the varsity team also had at least three strikes in their games. In the second regular game against Niles, top scores for the Bulldogs were Odell 214, Butler 203, and Junde 191.
The JV team was a bit short of bowlers but not short of effort and determination. Bostocky, Hart, and Gibson improved during each game and were supportive of each other after each trip up to the line. Hart had a turkey with three strikes in a row in one of his games. All three were able to make some of their spares, knocking down all the pins remaining with a second throw.
Coaches Ed Mullins and Chris Adams had praise for their bowlers. Mullins called Jordon Butler the most improved bowler on the team this season; all the bowlers have improved. The coach also appreciated the support the team received from the Booster’s Club and parents. Coach Adams also offered praise. “The bowlers on the team are a good mix of different grades from seniors to freshmen and this makes a great combination to work with and develop their bowling skills. They are hard workers, and they all have a good attitude.”
A portion of the 7,800-square-foot Vicksburg village office.
By Jef Rietsma
A new chapter in Vicksburg’s history was set to open January 29 at a meeting of the village Council.
The meeting would be the first at the village’s new municipal office.
Vicksburg Village Manager Jim Mallery provided a tour of the 7,800-square-foot building a few weeks earlier. He said the move from the previous village hall took place in December and day-to-day operations started at the new location Dec. 18. The police department began working from the new building a week before that.
Mallery provided a gem of an anecdote while discussing the move and the number of boxes stored in the basement at the former office.
“We found a bathroom that nobody even knew was there because so much stuff had been piled up in front of the door for who knows how long.” Mallery said. “(Sgt.) Darin Stanfill has been here 20 years or so and he never even knew it was there. It was absolutely bizarre.”
With the aid of professional movers to tackle heavy and bulky file cabinets and boxes, the move was completed over the course of two days without incident.
Mallery compared the two buildings to a 1977 Ford Pinto and a 2024 Chevy Impala. Mallery said the freshness and spaciousness of the new building are features he noticed immediately. He said the village has clearly and finally stepped into the 21st century.
“On a personal note, 99 percent of the time I met with people at local coffee shops, diners, other public places instead of at the old village hall because it was an embarrassment,” he said. “It wasn’t ADA compliant, it was antiquated … it was just an embarrassment and, don’t forget, it wasn’t even designed to be a municipal building.”
Mallery said village old-timers believe the previous village hall was built in the 1950s and initially used as a doctor’s office.
The centerpiece of the new municipal building is a meeting room where the Village Council and Planning Commission will assemble. Previously, those panels and other village committees lived nomadically, meeting through the years at a variety of locations around town, including the Community Center at Main and Prairie, Brady Township Hall, the Historical Society Depot, Angel’s Crossing and, more recently, South Kalamazoo County Fire Authority’s office.
The spacious meeting room features a modern look with up-to-date technology, which will improve audio and video of deliberations.
“Even the locker room for our police department is just such an incredible improvement,” he said. “I really think that and just the modern upgrade will certainly help keep up morale.”
The police department, which features a modern interview room, takes up the north half of the building, while the south end is comprised of offices and the meeting room. Four full-time employees will work on the office side on a day-to-day basis. In addition to offices for the village clerk, finance director and Mallery, there is cubicle space for use as circumstances warrant.
There is also a copier/supply room and an employee breakroom that doubles as a 10-person conference room.
Mallery said he had plenty of occasions to look at drawings and blueprints. But the end product, once he saw the completed village office, exceeded what he anticipated.
“You see everything on paper but it doesn’t really strike you until you see it as a finished product,” he said. “It’s just a phenomenal upgrade for the village.”
He noted landscaping will take place in the spring, after the old village hall is demolished in February and a parking lot put in its place.
The first planning commission meeting at the new complex will be Feb. 12 and a public open house is set for May 18.
Located on a parcel just north of the village water tower on North Richardson Street, the $2.7 million complex was paid for up front. Mallery said the fact the village did not take out a loan to finance construction will save Vicksburg taxpayers $1.5 million in interest.
The first step toward the new village office was taken in spring 2017, when council members agreed to start setting aside money toward construction cost. A ceremonial groundbreaking took place last April and work started in earnest a few weeks later.
Mallery said the village was fortunate to have the expertise of Frederick Construction as project manager and architect Eckert Wordell. Both companies, he said, epitomized professionalism and clearly worked in the best interest of the village.
Vicksburg Village Manager Jim Mallery checks a traffic signal before proceeding in a snowplow truck down Prairie Street Jan. 12.
The area’s mid-January snowstorm provided an opportunity for a closer look into the strategies, dedication and patience it takes to clear Vicksburg’s 22 miles of public streets.
Village Manager Jim Mallery invited South County News for a ride-along Jan. 12, the Friday afternoon a storm arrived amid a fair amount of hype and dumped several inches over the course of the weekend.
Like anyone who relishes the solitude of mowing their lawn, Mallery said he enjoys being behind the wheel of one of the village’s four International plow trucks. Though the task is not in his job description, Mallery said his assistance gives a break to the village’s Department of Public Works staff.
The storm in question started in earnest around 1 p.m. and Mallery indicated he and DPW employee Dustin Knauss would likely start clearing around 8 p.m. The intensity of the storm, however, caused him to revise the plan. They were on the streets by 5 p.m.
In all, it takes a team of six people to respond to a snow event in Vicksburg. Mallery explained their respective roles.
“It’s a little bit of skill set and training … we want to make sure the people in the big trucks like this one have experience with air brakes and things like that,” he said. “It’s a really good crew made up of full-time public works employees who have multiple responsibilities with the department.”
Mallery and a second driver will typically drive what he calls “the big trucks.” They are the vehicles that clear the 14 miles of major roadways and seven miles of neighborhood streets in the village. They also apply road salt at key locations.
A two-man team works downtown and the vicinity. Mallery said that duo also works in tandem – one driving a front-end loader and the other operating a specialized John Deere tractor with multiple implements, including a blade, a brush and a blower dedicated to downtown sidewalks.
The other team focuses on alleys, municipal lots, residential sidewalks and the village’s non-motorized trail.
“The fleet that we’re plowing with now is night and day compared to what was here in 2016,” Mallery said, noting many of the village’s vehicles were purchased second-hand from the city of Kalamazoo.
Once he pulled out of the village’s DPW yard on North Main Street, Mallery turned south and immediately headed for Prairie Street, a major east-west artery through the village. He said the route is not arbitrary: Heavily traveled streets are given priority before attention shifts to neighborhood streets. For example, on Jan. 12 his route stretched village limit to village limit, covering Prairie Street, Wilson Street, Highway Street, South Richardson Street, Boulevard Avenue, V Avenue and 22nd Street.
Those streets alone took nearly an hour to clear and by the time he returned to Prairie Street, it was already covered with more than an inch of new snow.
Inside the truck, it’s loud and shaky. The roaring diesel engine and continuous scraping sound of the blade create a cacophony of noise that doesn’t seem to faze Mallery. He said he has been driving similar trucks dating to his 26 years with the city of Kalamazoo.
Mallery said the big trucks work in tandem and each has a specific role. Mallery, in the lead truck, pushes snow from the centerline toward the curb. The follow-up truck, operated by Knauss, ensures the snow is off the road. Mallery noted Knauss is in his first year driving a big truck for the village.
The trucks have a 75-gallon fuel tank. A typical snow-clearing shift uses about three-quarters of a tank, Mallery said.
Clearing snow is always done first before salt is added at key locations during a second pass through. With the convenience of a dial, Mallery applied salt at intersections, on either side in advance of railroad crossings and on the hill at the end of South Michigan Avenue at West Highway Street. He said the village goes through between 100 and 150 tons of salt per winter.
Around 7 p.m., two hours into the job, Mallery and Knauss stopped at Speedway for a bathroom break, something to drink and to meet up with DPW Director Jimmy Meyers, who was operating the agency’s front-end loader. The three compared notes and discussed the weather before Mallery and Knauss shifted their attention to neighborhood streets and headed off to the Centennial neighborhood at the north end of town.
“The one thing we do intentionally is flip-flop neighborhoods, so the first storm of the year we did the southern neighborhoods and worked north, this time we’ll work northern neighborhoods first and work south,” Mallery said, noting the so-called big trucks have 10-foot-wide blades and salt containers with a capacity of about five cubic yards – equal to two full scoops of a front-end loader.
Mallery reflected on the job and its challenges. Far and away, he said, safety is paramount. Mallery and DPW workers are constantly on guard for impatient motorists who apparently don’t understand what it takes to control and stop a truck of such size and weight.
“Anyone out driving in these conditions, first and foremost, they really should only be out if it’s an emergency,” he said. “But around the plow apparatus, the signs ask you to stay a few hundred feet back. That’s for the benefit of our sight lines or if we’re coming to a stop and we’re about to turn around.”
Right on cue, Mallery reached the end of the western village limits on VW Avenue and steered into the Summit Polymers parking lot to turn around. Knauss waited a fair distance behind, still on VW Avenue, when a westbound car passed Knauss rather than wait for him to move out of the way.
Mallery said he enjoys the serenity of driving an early-morning shift, as fewer vehicles on the road make the job easier.
In the case of the mid-January storm, Mallery said crews finished their shift in about six hours, which he called a typical amount of time for a snow event. They returned the next day to repeat the process and with blowing snow all weekend, the crew did a Sunday morning run. In all, the three shifts over the weekend required 16 hours of work collectively. Mallery noted that equates to 96 man-hours.
Julia Markle is a grandmother and a Vicksburg native whose family connections go back more than four generations in the village.
Her husband Dave owns Markle Auto and Truck Repair on Prairie Street, and their family has been helping customers in need of auto repairs – or who may have been struggling to get transportation while their cars await repairs – for more than 30 years.
They have a 6-year-old grandson named Alaric who has cerebral palsy. They care for him in their home in the village along with Alaric’s dad.
They are deeply rooted here in Vicksburg as Alaric’s great grandfather served as a South County EMS first responder for 30 years and his great grandmother drove a bus for Vicksburg Community Schools for 50 years.
One evening last month, Julia posted what she calls “a rant” on a village group forum on social media. She was frustrated and exhausted as caretaker for Alaric and missed the old sense of community her parents had fostered. She also needed a ramp for Alaric to get down their back steps on the way to and from school in a wheelchair. She mentioned it in the post, saying that in another era the community would have gathered together and pitched in to build a ramp with them for the child.
Her husband Dave had been lifting their grandson down the steps every day but his grandchild was growing. It was getting difficult and unsafe.
“I wasn’t asking for help directly, and I was mostly just frustrated and tired and mentioned that in my grandparents’ days here, everyone would have come over and helped us to build a ramp for Alaric and maybe that spirit wasn’t what it used to be in the village. I just didn’t know where to seek out help and I felt like with all the new activity in town, maybe it wasn’t the same.”
As a writer, mother and newer resident, I happened to see Julia’s post that evening and wanted to help. I could hear the sadness and exhaustion in what she had typed. A few of us on the post’s thread reached out to her and shared a few ideas to help point her in the right direction and empathize with her work caretaking for this sweet child for so long.
That’s when Vicksburg neighbors, old classmates, and longtime customers of Markle Auto shop stepped in to help, prompted by a simple solution to help Alaric get what he needed this Christmas. The solution was to create a gift wish list!
Via Amazon, shoppers could anonymously buy the specific items Alaric needed, including a portable, pre-built 12-foot ramp for the back of their house. After a flyer was circulated on Facebook on the page “Vicksburg Vibes” (my social photography journal,) and the original “Village Watch” group forum post, , which had generated more than a hundred comments encouraging her to seek out support services and take people up on their offers to help, Julia saw packages start arriving at their doorstep for Alaric within days.
“I was just sobbing with joy and thanks. I just can’t believe what this village has done for our grandson! This year he’s going to get a real Christmas. These are things we really needed! Someone sent a very nice ramp for him, and a walker, and a mattress to prevent bedsores, and grips so he can learn to hold his toothbrush and neck supports and… so many other things. I’m just so overwhelmed by all of this! THANK YOU, Vicksburg! This has been a Godsend, and I am just so overwhelmed by our wonderful community and this love for our grandson.” Markle exclaimed.
“I didn’t directly ask for help, so I apologized, but then you offered to help Alaric and we are so grateful. He’s the sweetest boy and he gets to have a real Christmas this year because people cared. You have no idea how much we needed these things.” Many happy tears were shed.
Some of the packages had notes from the senders and Julia recognized the names of many. However, some were from strangers or some simply said “From Someone in Vicksburg who cares.” The Markle’s entire family could not believe how many people sent gifts to help them care for their grandchild. One frustrated moment on social media was transformed into love and care by the Vicksburg community.
It was sort of a George Bailey moment in the middle of Vicksburg!
At the time of publication, Alaric had been admitted to Devos Children’s hospital just before Christmas but Julia was hopeful he’d be home in time to appreciate all the community has done. Cerebral palsy is a group of disorders that affect a person’s ability to move and maintain balance and posture. It’s a congenital disorder of movement and muscle and impacts learning, speech and body functions. It is the most common motor disability of childhood. About 1 in 345 children has been identified with cerebral palsy according to estimates from CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network.
