Birmingham Groves football star Avery Gach is headed to Ann Arbor.
The 4-star offensive lineman announced his commitment to join the Michigan football team during a special ceremony Friday in front of a packed crowd inside the school’s auditorium and for thousands of college fans watching the event’s livestream provided by recruiting website 247Sports.com.
He’s considered the No. 2-ranked 2025 player in the state, behind only Belleville quarterback Bryce Underwood, the LSU commit widely considered the top-ranked player in the entire country by most recruiting outlets.
Gach picked the Wolverines, who won the College Football Playoff National Championship in January, over offers from Michigan State, Ohio State and Wisconsin, which were also part of his final four. He held 40 offers in all.
“They treated me well every time I went up there,” Gach said. “It’s a family atmosphere. They treat my family very well. They just came off the national championship. You can see how many NFL players they’re producing, especially on the O-Line. Their whole coaching staff is amazing, and I love Coach (Sherrone) Moore and Coach (Grant) Newsome. They treated me right throughout the whole entire process. It feels like home, and I’m going to win a national championship at the University of Michigan.”
When former U-M coach Jim Harbaugh left the Wolverines to coach in the NFL, they replaced him with his top assistant, Moore, who, coincidently, was the coach who had been recruiting Gach for the past 2 years.
Moore was originally U-M’s offensive line coach, so the two have had a close bond. So close, in fact, that Gach elected to not go on any of his official visits to other schools and decided to end his recruiting early.
“I have a great connection with him,” Gach said of Moore. “… I really want to play for him because he’s a great coach.”
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According to Falcons coach Brendan Flaherty, Gach is the first player from Groves to announce a college commitment live on a national broadcast.
But it’s not a surprise why 247Sports.com brought in a camera crew to film the event.
Gach, who is a monster of a human at 6-foot-5 and almost 300 pounds, has one of the best work ethics Flaherty has ever seen, and it’s his lineman’s attitude about getting better every day that helped him become a future Big Ten player.
“Each morning he gets up thinking, ‘How can I be a better football player?’ and that’s his best quality or trait,” said Flaherty, who will enter his 25th season as head coach this fall. “He almost lives with the fear that somebody else is catching up on him. I describe him as having a walk-on mentality. He wants to get better.”
That’s been evident since Day 1.
Flaherty promoted Gach to the varsity midway through his freshman season.
By the time he was a sophomore, he was one of the most dominant road-graders in Oakland County. That was true again as a junior and — barring injury — will continue as he wraps up his career as a senior starting in August.
“He turns a switch on between the lines where he’s not happy unless the guy over him is on their back,” Flaherty added. “And he plays with great tenacity and great effort.”
And his teammates have been happy to have Gach blocking for them.
Cayden Hardy was a junior when he quarterbacked Groves past rival Birmingham Seaholm to win a Division 2 district championship and Livonia Franklin to win a regional title in 2022. His effort helped earn the Falcons a berth in the state semifinal against eventual champion Warren DeLaSalle.
The Olivet Nazarene University (Bourbonnais, Illinois) signee said Gach made running and throwing TDs much, much easier over the years.
“It always starts up front, and he’s definitely a leader up front,” Hardy said. “To know I’m always going to be protected, have such a great leader by my side, have someone who will always be there for me and always help lead the offense, I just can’t say enough about Avery. It’s always great to lean on him and have him in my corner to work, grind and push each other to get better every single day.”
And, of course, Gach was there to help Noah Sanders, the son of Detroit Lions legend Barry Sanders, have a breakout season this past fall, despite the Falcons playing in the Oakland Activities Association-White, a division that saw both Southfield A&T and Harper Woods win state championships in 2023.
Those yards were hard for Sanders to come by, especially against the tough opponents on Groves’ schedule. But Gach helped pave the way for Sanders to catch recruiting attention from colleges in the Mid-American Conference, Big Ten and Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. He already holds offers from Bowling Green, Toledo and Wayne State.
“It was fun seeing that guy move the people in front of me,” said Sanders, a speedy junior running back who runs a 4.4-second 40-yard dash. “It took a lot of worries off my shoulders, for sure, having confidence running to his side. If there was no defender in my gap, I definitely noticed that and knew it was him (securing the block).”
Michigan is getting a top-200 player overall and the No. 13-ranked interior lineman in the country, according to 247Sports.com, so Gach should help the Wolverines pursue another national title down the road.
But that’ll have to wait. He has one final go-around with the Falcons before college. And that gives him many more opportunities for his “walk-on mentality” to help him improve before he leaves for Ann Arbor.
Brandon Folsom covers high school sports in metro Detroit for Hometown Life. Follow him on Twitter @folsombrandonj.
