So, when’s the movie being made?
“You’re about the 10th person to ask me about that,” Doug Drenth, head coach of the boys golf team at Charlevoix High School, said with a laugh. “A lot of people have talked about Hallmark or Disney.
“When we figure it out, I’ll let you know. … It’s a horrible, great story.
“It couldn’t have ended in a better fashion.”
A little over a year ago, in late April 2025, the Charlevoix boys golf team was playing in a tournament trip at Arcadia Bluffs when their lives were changed forever. Returning to ther hotel at Crystal Mountain between rounds of the tournament, their team van was struck head on by a driver in a stolen vehicle who was being chased by police in Benzie County in northern Michigan.
Miraculously, all seven members of the golf team and their coach, Drenth, who was driving, survived the horrific crash, though the road to recovery has been long and painful — and is ongoing. The driver of the other vehicle was killed in the crash. Drenth and Joe Gaffney, now a senior, spent weeks in the hospital. Other plays suffered physical injuries. All of them suffered a deep emotional toll.
This past weekend, Charlevoix boys golf was back in the headlines — this time, as champions. The Rayders won the Division 4 state championship at Forest Akers West Golf Course on the campus of Michigan State.
It was the program’s first state championship.
“It’s crazy … it’s a little bit surreal,” Drenth told The News over the phone Monday. “Don’t get me wrong, we really believed that we had a good chance to win. We believed that going down. It’s really hard to compare yourself to others you haven’t seen.
“It was just a really rewarding three days of fun, to see the joy in those guys, especially with what they’ve gone through. It was an amazing few days. I’m very grateful.”
Charlevoix shot a team score of 332 the first day, Friday, trailing Muskegon Western Michigan Christian by a stroke. Charlevoix then caught fire the second day, Saturday, especially on the back nine, to post a team score of 313, to run away with the state championship. Charlevoix’s winning margin was 17 strokes, a dominant showing, and a rare triumph for a public school in the state golf finals.
Senior Bryce Boss, 17, led the way, shooting rounds of 77 and 72 to tie for first place individually (he lost on the second playoff hole, for the individual championship). Gaffney, 18, who remarkably returned to the basketball court this winter after suffering significant injuries to his hip in the accident and going through months of grueling physical therapy, shot an 84 on the first day, then shot his career best, a 76, on the second day. He tied for ninth. Landen Whisler, 16, a junior, shot two rounds of 81, and Maxwell Drenth, 17, a junior and the coach’s son who suffered a broken arm in the crash, shot rounds of 90 and 84.
Those four players were all in the crash last April.
“I get teary-eyed and choked up just thinking about what these guys went through,” Doug Drenth said. “It was an emotional day on both ends of the spectrum.”
Said Aaron Gaffney, Joe’s dad: “Impossible to even script anything better. … Just feels like destiny.”
The odds of Charlevoix making this kind of run in the boys golf state tournament were long, to say the least. For starters, while the northern Michigan town has a thriving golf scene and an excellent junior golf program — Drenth runs that program, too, and the four players who led Charlevoix to the state title all grew up in the junior golf program, starting around 8 years old — it’s a small high school that only had ever made one bid at a state title before. Charlevoix was runner-up in Division 4 in 2014.
This year’s weather in northern Michigan also was so bad, Charlevoix didn’t even get to play a full practice round outdoors until late April. Players did most of their practice on a simulator, in a building with no heat, and in a building so small Drenth had to alternate days with his players.
Public schools also don’t traditionally have great success at the boys golf state finals. In fact, Charlevoix was the first public school to win the title in Division 4 in over a decade, and the first public school to win a state title in any division since Northville won in Division 1 in 2023.
“It shows you can do it,” Drenth said. “Public schools can do it.”
Leave it to the boys from Charlevoix to prove that. No team went through what it went through in the last year.
It took Drenth months to walk again, and he still walks with a limp. He still can’t walk nine holes. He probably is facing more surgery down the road. He’s also set to see a pulmonologist this week, to check a concerning cough he can’t seem to shake. Gaffney had high hopes of playing college basketball, but he’s come to accept that now won’t happen. He also might need more surgery. Drenth still worries about the mental health of players in the crash, two of whom graduated in 2025 and now are in college. (A GoFundMe, started by the local golf community and buoyed by donors from all throughout the town and even the country, raised over $200,000 and still has money left over, which will go toward future health expenses.)
The players from Charlevoix have spent months striving to get their lives back to normal. They even returned to Arcadia Bluffs for the tournament in late April. They prefer not to talk about the accident. They prefer talking about golf — and they made the ultimate statement Saturday afternoon.
That was followed by a happy drive home Saturday night. Billy Joel and Mumford & Sons blared on the radio, the kids’ choice, but straight off the play list of the coach they’ve called their hero — he swerved the team van last April to take the brunt of the impact. Back home, hundreds family members, friends, neighbors and, yes, even strangers were waiting, line the streets of downtown Charlevoix (population, just over 2,000), with the team getting an escort from a firetruck and police cars as they held the championship trophy out the window.
It was quite the scene, almost like it was right out of a movie.
“I’ve said this to a few parents … I don’t know if I would’ve written this movie, having lived it,” said Drenth, 62, who also coaches Charlevoix boys cross country, which won a Division 3 state championship last fall. “But also, there’s so much to be grateful for. To be alive and to see joy in them again to see health and hope, that’s pretty amazing.
“It’s a tribute to these guys, the adversity they fought through.
“It’s a tribute to them.”
tpaul@detroitnews.com
@tonypaul1984
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Charlevoix golf wins title year after crash: ‘A horrible, great story’
Reporting by Tony Paul, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Tony Paul, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
