Hunter Cox took home the Enterprise’s Boys Athlete of the Year with 105 votes out of 394 cast, edging out Glen Lake’s Tanner Crick and Leland’s Adrian Spencer for the honor.
At just one-fourth the votes in the boys competition compared to the girls, the vote was split narrowly between the three contestants.
Cox earned his Dream Team nomination in a sport he’d never played before. The Glen Lake senior stepped in at kicker and delivered all season, capping it with a 23-yard game-winner against Mancelona to clinch a conference championship. He was steady on extra points all year and was named regional kicker of the year, then closed out his fall by earning a spot on the soccer Dream Team as well.
Cox picked up all-conference and allregional honors as a specialist in his first and only season on the football field.
That kicking leg was never more valuable than in the Northern Michigan Conference Championship, where a game-winning Glen Lake drive set up the go-ahead field goal in a comeback 23-22 win over Mancelona. The Lakers had to survive a 2nd-and-20-plus situation and multiple third-down conversions on the final drive, with junior quarterback Parker Robinson scrambling the offense down to the Mancelona goal line with under 20 seconds left before Cox trotted on for the kick.
It was Cox’s only field goal attempt of the season outside of extra points. Mancelona had led for most of the game, including deep into the fourth quarter, before Glen Lake’s late push secured the Lakers’ second straight conference championship.
Tanner Crick
(Glen Lake) Crick finished second in the voting after a senior season that pushed Glen Lake past expectations and into a regional finals appearance.
The Glen Lake senior earned his own Dream Team MVP nod on the strength of his pitching and timely hitting, none bigger than his outing in the regional semifinal against Bear Lake, where he went five and onethird innings, allowing four hits and zero earned runs while striking out 10 in a D4 regional semifinal win.
Crick is headed to NMC in the fall while moving into carpentry.
Adrian Spencer
(Leland) Spencer’s senior season ended the way he wanted it to — back on top with Leland’s soccer program, which returned to a state championship behind his goal-scoring.
The Leland senior claimed the 2025 soccer Dream Team MVP after scoring 18 goals in his final season, nine of them in the playoffs, including the gametying goal in the state championship.
Spencer closed out his career with second team All-State, All-Region and All-District honors.
Spencer’s game-tying goal came in the state championship itself, a 2-1 shootout win over University Liggett in November that gave Leland its second title in school history and capped a seven-game win streak to close the season. Spencer opened the scoring before Liggett answered before halftime, sending the game to a shootout still tied.
Senior Nano Creamer put the Comets ahead in the shootout after a save by Ravello Smith, and Weston Burda scored to extend the lead before Liggett battled back to tie it at two. Spencer converted his attempt, and after another Smith save, senior Howie Kropp — who had switched from goalkeeper to a new position at the start of the year — stepped up and won it.
Kropp earned a vote of his own in the Athlete of the Year balloting for that championship- winning kick.
Daniel Chaney (Lake Leelanau St. Mary), Jacob Plamondon (Glen Lake), Ravello Smith (Leland) and Hayden VanSteenhouse also received votes, with 11 write-in votes going to nominees outside the named field.
