Battle Creek -- Grass Lake scored 14 unanswered runs to beat Allendale 14-4 in six innings and win the Michigan High School Athletic Association Division 3 Championship June 14 at C.O. Brown Stadium.

   No. 10-ranked Allendale took an early 2-0 lead, but eight errors proved costly for the Falcons as the Warriors scored 10 unearned runs.

   It was the first title for No. 6-ranked Grass Lake since winning the 1988 Class D title. The Warriors also won the 1980 Class D championship.

 "Errors are part of the game," said Allendale coach Charlie Ham. "Unfortunately, sometimes they are a highly contagious disease that I don't have a vaccination for. It seems like once you make an error everybody starts to kind of press a little bit. We haven't made eight errors in the last 15 games, but, odds are, they are going to happen sometimes, but it's just not the game you want it to happen in."

   Grass Lake took advantage of the Allendale miscues by scoring five runs in the second inning, four in the fourth and five in the sixth. Casey Hall, Travis Rubingh and Jordan Bliss had two hits and two RBIs apiece for Grass Lake, which finished its season at 34-6.

   "You hate to see that," said Grass Lake Head Coach Ben Hamilton about the Allendale errors, "because their kids work just as hard as us so you want everyone to come out here and play their best, but you know, it's baseball and you've got to take advantage of any opportunities you get."

"I have a group of nine seniors. They all play together. That makes it easy. They pick each other up. We had never won our conference before. That's the first thing we wanted to do and we did that. Then we reassessed our goals at the end of the season and took one round at a time. It worked out pretty well for us.”

   Grass Lake's Charlie Fisher was the winning pitcher, striking out five in six innings.

   Allendale's season ended at 28-7.