TEMPERANCE – It’s a good thing the Monroe County-Lenawee County All-Star football game is on a Friday this year.
If it was Saturday, R.J. Cornett might have been busy.
The recent Whiteford graduate spends most Saturdays behind the wheel of a late model car at Flat Rock Speedway. In his last two races, he’s powered the 2,800-pound stock car to fourth place and second place finishes.
“We’re knocking on the door,” Cornett said.
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This week Cornett will be putting a different kind of helmet on when he joins about three dozen Monroe County Region athletes for the All-Star football game that pits seniors from the region against a team of Lenawee County players. The game is at 7 p.m. Friday at Siena Heights University.
“I’m so excited,” he said. “I can’t wait to get out there one more time. To lose in that last game of your high school career leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”
Cornett was in the Bobcat starting lineup when Whiteford lost to Ubly in the Division 8 state championship in November. Last year, when Whiteford won a state title, Cornett wasn’t able to play due to an injury sustained at Fremont Speedway the August before his junior season.
“I went through all off-season workouts, all of the summer workouts and fall camp,” Cornett said. “The last weekend before the season, I crashed driving in a truck. It was the hardest hit I ever went through.”
Cornett initially exited the truck quickly.
“Ever since I started racing, when I get in a wreck, I have this fear that I’m going to be paralyzed,” he said. “So, when I crash, I just want to get out fast, just so I know I’m okay.”
Within seconds, however, Cornett fell to his knees when the pain overcame him. He left the speedway by ambulance but as they discovered bleeding, the ambulance stopped and waited for a helicopter to pick him up and rush him to a nearby hospital.
Cornett was in a wheelchair for a week, then walked with a cane for a short period of time as he recovered.
By October, he was anxious to get back on the football field. He asked the Bobcat coaches if you could play in a JV game just to see how it would go.
“It hurt so bad,” he said. “I tried it. I practiced for a couple of weeks. There was just too much pain.”
Cornett missed out playing for the state title that season.
“I didn’t get a ring,” he said.
Last year, he opted out of some of the racing to concentrate on football and ended up having a good senior season, earning post-season honors from the Tri-County Conference and Michigan High School Football Coaches Association.
Cornett was satisfied with his senior season.
“You can’t ask for anything more than a chance,” Cornett said. “We had a chance in every game we were in. You can’t ask for wins, you can’t ask for rings, but you can ask for a chance. And we had a chance.”
With football over, he’s now free to focus on racing, something he’s done since he was 5 years old when he first started in go-karts. He’s also raced in Modified, winged cars; trucks and on both asphalt and dirt. His dad, Royce Cornett, prepares his cars along with a regular crew of guys. He has sponsors and plans to make every race at Flat Rock Speedway this season. He’s currently in fourth place in the late model standings, just 50 points out of first.
“We’re running the full season,” he said.
Practice for the football all-stars started Monday.
Monroe County’s all-star game history dates back to 1999 when the first game was held at Bedford. It’s gone through a couple of changes over the years, from East vs. West to North vs. South to Blue vs. White last year.
This is the first year the Monroe County All-Stars are on one team and will face Lenawee County. The head coach for Monroe County is T.J. Thieken, assistant coach at Whiteford and son of Bobcat head varsity coach Todd Thieken. T.J. is an Evergreen, Ohio, graduate who coached at Tecumseh, in Hawaii, served in the Navy and has been an assistant at Whiteford since 2021.
“I think it’s important to make this a memorable experience for the kids,” Thieken said. “For a lot of them, this is going to be the last football game they get to play.”
Cornett will be joined by five Whiteford teammates and 31 other players from across the Monroe County Region. Players signed up to play, by team:
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Flat Rock quarterback Graham Junge completes passes to Rocco Breslin and Corey Lannon on the Rams’ first drive of the night.
The Monroe News
Bedford: Avery Labadie, Kyle Klocek, Logan Benjamin.
Dundee: Braiden Whitaker, Cooper Buhl, Ethan Layton, Aidan Williams, Gabe Daniel.
Erie Mason: Korbin Herrera, Mario Ybarra, Toby Frazier, Vaughn Brown, Cole Kreger, Dillon Cannon, Jordan Adkins-Black, Blake Stanish.
Flat Rock: Rocco Breslin, Teigan Donovan.
Gibraltar Carlson: Jake Nagy, Adam Zurawski.
Ida: Jac Kocinski.
Jefferson: Malachi Pribyl, Gabe Hall.
Milan: Jackson Poling, Brody Lopez.
Monroe: Logan Loveland, Ty’shawn Moore, Camden Schmidt, Michael Burns, DeShun Richardson Jr., Hayden Wood.
Whiteford: Hunter DeBarr, Kolby Masserant, Brandon Knaggs, Stepan Masserant, Drew Knaggs, R.J. Cornett.