Lapeer Seniors Relish Long Walk Together
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
October 10, 2017
Senior Night is an emotional time for any team as it symbolizes the end of a four-year run, even if it doesn’t technically mark the finish of a season.
For the Lapeer boys soccer team, however, it signaled the end was coming to a run that’s lasted much longer than four years for many of the players.
The core of the team and their coach, Deb Johnson, first joined forces as a recreation team in the Under-10 division, and has been building a remarkable chemistry for the past eight years.
“It didn’t really hit me until our senior night, then I was like, ‘Wow,’” senior midfielder Brian Morris, who joined the group as an 11-year old, said. “I’ve been walking out with them for seven years, and it was going to be my last time walking out with them.”
Fortunately for Morris and his teammates, the end isn’t here quite yet, and they feel it may be a while before it actually comes. The Lightning are 8-4-3 on the season and 8-2-1 in the Saginaw Valley League, and they host their Division 1 District. A District championship would be the first for the school since Lapeer East and West merged to make one high school in the district starting in fall 2014.
The main reason for optimism in Lapeer? Chemistry.
“The benefit of playing together for so long is we know each other really well,” senior center back Gabe Curiel said. “We can predict each other’s movements, and we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We know basically everything about each other.”
That chemistry started with a recreation team called the Renegades, and continued at the travel level with the Tri-County Nationals. In total, eight of the nine seniors on the current Lapeer team played for Johnson on those teams at one point or another. The other, Pablo Esteve, is a foreign exchange student.
“I had them all the way up through 13 and 14 (years old),” said Johnson, who is in her second year as varsity coach at Lapeer. “Now they’re all back together again for their final year. For me, it’s super exciting and sad all at the same time. They were babies, now they’re all going to play college soccer.”
Not only have the players been competing together for a long period of time, but their positions have remained fairly consistent, as well.
“My coaching style has changed, but as far as their position on the field, it didn’t really change that much,” Johnson said. “They got to understand and respect each role. They could be interchangeable if I need that, but they have a good idea of what they’re good at. They trust everybody to do their job. There’s not one superman coming in to save the day. Even if they’re not communicating (verbally), they’re communicating in a way that only a team that has played together this long would understand.
“They don’t argue with one another. They don’t fight with one another. If someone makes a mistake, they really rally that player back up. It’s nice to watch them work together.”
The thought the team could be special at the high school level was one that everyone had, albeit at different times. For Morris, it was when the players all came back together in high school that it dawned on him. For Curiel, it happened even earlier.
“When I was like 12 or 13, I saw the way we progressed and I saw us building and bonding,” he said. “I had hope and faith that in the future, that when we would come back together for high school, that we could be good.”
Johnson also saw it early on, and when she looks back on old game film, she sees it even more.
“Sometimes I go back through and I see some of the stuff they still do today that they did when they were little, but it’s just better now,” she said. “It’s still some of the foundational stuff I taught them when they were 8, 9, 10 years old, but they do it better now.”
While the seniors – Harry Hirth, Nelson Gaunt, Michael Mejia, Chad Buike, Ethan Fike and Jack Vangel, along with Morris and Curiel – have a history of playing with one another and make up the core of the Lapeer team, they have integrated well with the classes below them. Sophomore Alex MacNaughton has fit in so well that he became a captain in his second year.
But making the program about more than this senior class is what Johnson has preached.
“I have four freshmen on the team, and (the seniors have) all taken them under their wing and really helped them,” she said. “That’s something I’ve instilled in them, that it’s their job to take care of the youngsters. It’s their job to leave something behind.”
There’s no question, however, that the class of 2018 always will have a special place in her heart.
“They’re my babies,” she said. “Not only on the field; I was hands-on off the field. With their grades, I ask for progress reports all the time. I go to their other events, I go to their basketball games. I want them to know that I’m involved as much as I possibly can be.”
It’s not time to say goodbye just yet, and that’s something the Lightning hope to put off for as long as possible.
“I don’t want to think about that until after it’s over, until the last whistle is blown,” Curiel said. “We’re not saying goodbye to the team; we’re saying goodbye to our family, basically.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Lapeer’s Nelson Gaunt (8) controls the ball against Bay City John Glenn during a 3-1 win Sept 27. (Middle) Lapeer’s seniors stand with coach Deb Johnson during Senior Night. (Photos courtesy of Lapeer’s boys soccer program.)
Parchment Team On Verge of Never Playing Putting Off End As Long As Possible
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
October 17, 2023
PARCHMENT — With just five returning players and no coach, things looked bleak for the Parchment soccer team at the beginning of summer.
Boy, have things changed.
Former football offensive line coach Jesse Roder agreed to take the head soccer coach’s job and, with some intensive recruiting, the Panthers not only fielded a team this season but are headed into tonight’s Division 3 District Semifinal with an 11-6-1 record.
Those 11 wins are two more than the last three years combined and make this the first time in 14 years Parchment has had double-digit wins.
In fact, the Panthers’ record over the previous three seasons was 9-41-3 overall.
Athletic director Brennan Davis credits Roder for the turnaround.
“Our first-year coach has done an excellent job creating a positive environment for the team,” Davis said. “He is focused on building character and camaraderie within the program. Academics, participation, relationships, reliability are all important to Coach Roder.”
The players echo those accolades.
Junior goalkeeper Brady Caswell said it was an angry team the past two seasons with a lot of fighting among teammates.
“This year, everyone’s excited to play, ready to play, a little hungry to play, and I love that,” Caswell said. “Everybody works hard, and that’s the big change.
“You can see it out there. We’re faster, we’re stronger, we have more ambition this year because no one pushed each other before.”
He credits the team’s defense for his own success this year.
“That’s one thing that has changed a lot over these last couple years,” the keeper said. “I used to see 20 or 30 shots a game and we’ve cut that down to about half, which gives me a way better chance at saving shots and less chance of getting injured.”
Major choice
Roder had a big decision to make before taking the head coaching job: His son, Brady Newington, is a senior lineman on the Panthers football team.
But Roder, who played soccer in high school while growing up in Garden in the Upper Peninsula, liked the challenge of turning the soccer program around.
Roder, who also coaches powerlifting and track, recruited from those ranks.
“Most of our athletes are first-year soccer players,” he said. “I approached a bunch of my powerlifters and told them I thought it would be right up their alley, so let’s give it a shot, and they did.”
Because of their dismal record the last few years, the Panthers have been underdogs in most of their games this season, including their District Quarterfinal last week, a 2-1 shootout win over South Haven.
“Last year they beat us 8-0,” Roder said. “We knew they were going to be a little confident, but our team’s philosophy starts with, ‘We’re going to outwork everybody in everything we do.’
![Micah Shank [5] steps into a kick.](/sites/default/files/article-images/2023/231017_Parchment_2H3.png)
“We do an hour conditioning every day when we have practice. We played 100 minutes of soccer last night, and not a lick of them was tired.”
Roder also mandates lifting two days a week and has his own solution to any in-team fighting, holding players accountable.
“We have a three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule,” he said. “If you argue with a teammate once and I warn you about it, you’re sent home and you miss the next game.
“Do it again, you miss another game. You do it a third time, you’re off the team.”
The coach has given out just one warning all season.
Key players step up
Freshman Cameron Wagner, who leads the team with 26 goals, made an immediate impact.
“That kid’s vision of the field and his soccer IQ at the age of 15 is leaps and bounds beyond many coaches,” Roden said. “He’s got a real bright future in front of him.”
Wagner and teammate Caden Ragan were selected to the Southwestern Athletic Conference all-conference team Saturday.
Familiar with past Parchment teams, Wagner figured this season would be more of the same.
“I wasn’t going to take it seriously, but thought it would be good for conditioning,” the freshman said.
“Once (the season) started, it became more like a family.”
Wagner credits the coach with his success.
“The coach made me condition a lot, which helped me,” he said. “He changed dribble moves which I couldn’t even think of. At home, now I do the drills he taught me.”
Ragan was the one who fired the winning shot last week.
“I was the fourth (kicker) and I took the (shot) before the other person,” Ragan said. “Brady saved their fourth and saved us the game.”
Roder said the goalkeeper has been strong all season and is the most analytical and intelligent person he has met as far as goalkeeping goes.
![The Panthers’ Cayden Brown [4] defends.](/sites/default/files/article-images/2023/231017_Parchment_2H4.png)
“During the game, he watches people and the way they play the ball off their foot,” the coach said. “He sees which way they go with the ball more often than not.
“So when we got into the shootout situation (in Districts), he actually was telling the ref before he walked up there which way the kid was going to go, and he guessed right every single time. He didn’t get to all the balls, but he still managed to pull off a couple stops which gave us the win.”
Another captain who has been on the team all four years is central defensive midfielder Ty Mulka.
“First two years weren’t the best,” he said. “My friends kept me on the team. This year was our best year.”
If Parchment did not field a team this year, “I was afraid we’d have to merge with our rival school, Comstock,” he said.
The coach said Mulka has been a workhorse.
“He’s been here every single day for everything,” Roder said. “He’s never missed, and he has a relentless work ethic.
“For being a small guy (5-foot-10, 150 pounds) he loves to put a body on people, so he plays a really physical style of soccer. Does a great job seeing the field, and he’s got a laser of a shot.”
Senior center midfielder Wyatt Nieboer said, “I thought 100 percent there would not be a team this year. I found out during the summer.
“I was just happy to play. I knew there was a new coach, and I heard he was really good, which he is, but I didn’t think there was going to be a massive change like there is.”
Roder said Nieboer is a “high energy, a bigger-bodied kid (5-8, 190). His work ethic will not let people beat him. He’s a honey badger.”
Not ready to end
Having tasted success this season, Ragan said the team is not ready to end it.
“The people want to play more,” the junior said. “We’ve had more practices that are actually helping us as a team.
“Things like the weight room are helping build the team and make us stronger, which helps us win games.”
Roder said Ragan, who is one of the captains, has good leadership qualities.
“He has a natural good touch on the ball,” he said. “He’s very aggressive, very physically dominating. Does a great job going up to get balls, contesting people.”
The Panthers will have a tough test tonight when they host Grand Rapids South Christian (12-4-2), ranked seventh in the state in Division 3 and coming off a bye.
“They’re really good,” Roder said. “They move the ball really, really well. It’s going to be a tough test.
“The kids are excited about soccer around here, and that’s something we want to bring back. We’ve got eight seniors on the squad, probably the last time they’re going to play, so we’re trying to eke out as much time as we can.”
Caswell said all the credit goes to the coach.
“Thank Coach Roder for helping change everything here,” the goalkeeper said. “He’s been one of the biggest parts in changing the culture, changing the team, changing how we play soccer.”
Other seniors on the team are Devin Wilson, Myles Brooks, Kriss Patel, Tyler Lingbeek, Darius Baker and Akhil Veecumsee. Juniors are Keagan Cole, Trey Sukola, Conner Moynihan, Elijah Damron-Webster and Luka Lagina, while sophomores are Tyrone Edwards, Micah Shank, Cayden Brown and Hayden Hose.
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Parchment’s Darius Baker, left, controls possession during a game against Allegan. (2) From left: Parchment coach Jesse Roder, Brady Caswell and Caden Ragan. (3) Micah Shank [5] steps into a kick. (4) The Panthers’ Cayden Brown [11] defends. (5) From left: Wyatt Nieboer, Ty Mulka and Cameron Wagner. (Action photos by Shawnia Preston/Oh Shoot Photography, head shots by Pam Shebest.)