Performance: Holland's Jose Penaloza
November 9, 2017
Jose Penaloza
Holland Soccer – Senior
Penaloza, a four-year varsity starting forward, averaged more than a point per game during the Division 2 tournament to help Holland claim its first MHSAA Finals championship. He scored his final high school goal in the Dutch’s 3-0 win over East Lansing in Saturday’s championship match to earn the Michigan Army National Guard “Performance of the Week.”
An all-stater as a junior – when he scored 26 goals – Penaloza missed 10 games over five weeks this season after suffering a right knee sprain in his team’s first home game against rival Holland Christian. But his scoring touch was fully returned by playoff time. He ended the season with eight goals and nine assists, but with six goals and four of those assists over seven postseason games. Holland was one of three first-time champions at this year’s Finals, and has become known locally over the last few seasons for breaking team huddles with a “Los Dutch” shout – a unifying nod to the various ethnicities of its players. Penaloza – a fan of Real Madrid and Pumas of the Mexican league – moved to Holland from California in sixth grade and didn’t play soccer at his new school until friends got him to come out in eighth grade. He joined the high school varsity a year later as a freshman and four years later capped his career with 40 goals and 27 assists.
As part of his school work, Penaloza attends classes in auto body repair at the Careerline Tech Center in Holland. He had been focused on following that career path, but of late he’s begun considering as well studying entrepreneurship and playing soccer at the college level – with an eye on potentially starting a business after school is done. He said he enjoys hands-on work and being part of the before-and-after process of auto body repair – even as he excels in doing damage to opponents’ chances on the soccer field with his feet.
Coach Greg Ceithaml said: “Jose Penaloza is one of the hardest working players I know, making his success well-earned. He plays with great emotion, and his passion is contagious. I was very upset to see his season truncated by injury, but his persistence and dedication to return to the pitch were inspiring. I was very happy to see him contribute to the team's ultimate success in winning a state championship.”
Performance Point: “It was a feeling that I probably won’t ever be able to describe,” Penaloza said of his championship match goal. “I felt like as soon as I kicked it in it was just such a relief to our team. It gave us the confidence for the whole game. … I feel like once they see me going, that it gives them motivation. As soon as I score, it’s a feeling like, ‘He’s in this game. We’ve got to pick up ours and just do the best to keep that going.’ If I score, they feel like, ‘We’re doing really good. Let’s keep it up. We can do more.’”
Coming back strong: “Having such a great year last year gave me so much more motivation to keep going this year. I wanted to do as much as possible, make everything I could. And then getting hurt gave me a step back. I felt like everything was over at that point. (But) I took my injury really seriously. I did everything I had to … as soon as they gave me treatments and what to do, I did them. It was just more motivation to me to get back on the field and do what I do, what I love best.”
Seen from the sidelines: “Our reaction time, how we start the game, how we react after we or the other team scores. I was just seeing small points (watching while I was injured) where we can increase just by simply talking with our team – some small things we can do to get better. I witnessed it myself. I saw it through my teammates, so once I got back I was like, I can’t be doing what they’re doing. To have a change, you’ve got to be the change. … Almost daily, they were telling me like, ‘Hey, we need you back’ or ‘We wish you were back already. Why can’t you be back?’ So it was giving me motivation to come back. Once I got the news that I was playing, they were really excited about it.”
Great expectations fulfilled: “My class, eighth grade year, we went undefeated. We didn’t have every player we did our senior year, but we picked up some very talented players that helped us through it. When we were eighth graders and went undefeated, we were like, ‘We’re going to win state.’ Our junior year we made it to Regional Finals, so we were kinda expected to make it at least that far this year. And we all had it in mind that we’re not just going to make it this far to end where we did last year, so it gave us more motivation to keep going. The next thing we knew, we were in the state finals.”
Shout out to Los Dutch: “It was just something to get us going. The fact that for so many years, we just said ‘Dutch.’ And then we started saying we’re not just one race; we’re more than one. So when we say ‘Los Dutch,’ I feel like every time we said it, it just brought us together, that we acknowledge all the different races and yeah, we didn’t really care about it. It just brought us together even more. … (To my teammates:) We made it. We’re state champs.”
- Geoff Kimmerly, Second Half editor
Every week during the 2017-18 school year, Second Half and the Michigan Army National Guard will recognize a “Performance of the Week" from among the MHSAA's 750 member high schools.
The Michigan Army National Guard provides trained and ready forces in support of the National Military Strategy, and responds as needed to state, local, and regional emergencies to ensure peace, order, and public safety. The Guard adds value to our communities through continuous interaction. National Guard soldiers are part of the local community. Guardsmen typically train one weekend per month and two weeks in the summer. This training maintains readiness when needed, be it either to defend our nation's freedom or protect lives and property of Michigan citizens during a local natural disaster.
Previous 2017-18 honorees:
November 2: Karenna Duffey, Macomb L'Anse Creuse North cross country - Read
October 26: Anika Dy, Traverse City Central golf - Read
October 19: Andrew Zhang, Bloomfield Hills tennis - Read
October 12: Nolan Fugate, Grand Rapids Catholic Central football - Read
October 5: Marissa Ackerman, Munising tennis - Read
September 28: Minh Le, Portage Central soccer - Read
September 21: Olivia Theis, Lansing Catholic cross country - Read
September 14: Maddy Chinn, Pontiac Notre Dame Prep volleyball - Read
PHOTOS: (Top) Holland's Jose Penaloza controls the ball in the midfield during Saturday's Division 2 Final. (Middle) Penaloza is introduced before the championship match.
Pilgrims Complete Mission for Respect, Title
November 2, 2013
By Tom Kendra
Special to Second Half
KENTWOOD – Grand Rapids Covenant Christian was on a mission to take the final step after losing in last year’s MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 4 boys soccer championship match.
Apparently, somebody forgot to let Lansing Christian know.
The Pilgrims were on a mission of their own – for respect – and they walked off the Crestwood Middle School field with plenty of it Saturday after a dramatic 1-0 victory over Covenant Christian that earned the Division 4 championship.
“We loved being the underdogs today,” said Lansing Christian sophomore keeper Chase Hansen, who helped his team withstand a furious Covenant rally over the final 20 minutes. “There was a lot of pressure at the end, but I just handled it by playing goal the way I’ve always been taught.”
Jordan Terry, the Pilgrims’ all-state senior forward, scored the game’s only goal 7 minutes into the second half, taking advantage of a brief open moment against the Covenant defense, and whipping a point blank shot from the 18-foot box over the head of keeper Austin Brower for the game’s only score.
The goal came after Brower, an all-state keeper, thwarted several other quality scoring chances by Terry and junior teammate Martin Lang Jr.
“I can’t really describe exactly what happened on that goal; it was just a split-second and the ball was on my (left) foot,” said Terry, who finished his senior year with 27 goals and 11 assists for the high-scoring Pilgrims. “I just had a go at it, and it got in there on the top of the net.”
Lansing Christian (22-0-1) came into the game with an outstanding record and on a recent hot streak, but was still considered an underdog because of the outstanding soccer tradition and superior size of Covenant.
The Pilgrims were playing in their first-ever championship game and failed to make it out of Regionals the past three years. And, in spite of their unbeaten record, they could only manage to garner honorable mention status in the final Division 4 soccer coaches poll.
Led by four double-digit goal scorers in Terry (26 goals), Lang Jr. (18 goals), Brayan Guzman-Ortiz (11 goals) and Alex McDowell (11 goals), Lansing Christian outscored its six postseason opponents by a combined score of 22-1. The Pilgrims used their speed to overwhelm one larger opponent after another.
“We can’t do anything about how small we are, so we try to change the game,” sixth-year Lansing Christian coach Joel Vande Kopple said. We wanted to get the ball out on the pitch and run.”
Terry’s goal appeared to stun the Chargers, who dominated the final 30 minutes of play but were unable to convert on myriad scoring chances. Derek Dykstra nearly scored on a backward kick with 19:18 remaining; Corbin Prince, Travis Bouwkamp and Cole Bleyenberg had good looks down the stretch; and Jared Minderhoud was just high on a great chance off a corner kick with 6:29 to play.
“We just couldn’t find the back of the net today,” said 10th-year Covenant Christian coach Mike Noorman. “That’s really the only thing we didn’t do. They are obviously very good, and we didn’t capitalize on the chances that we had.”
Lansing Christian also had several other good scoring opportunities, most of them in the first half. Lang clanked a shot off the post 9 minutes into the game, and the Covenant defense almost scored a costly “own goal” 13 minutes before halftime.
The final minutes were a flurry of activity, as Lansing Christian defenders, notably Zach Hagy, Nick Ballein, Gabe Loredo and Josiah Granger, fought valiantly to protect the precarious one-goal lead. After the final seconds ticked off, the Pilgrims swarmed Coach Vande Kopple while the Covenant players lay strewn all over the field in disbelief.
“To be honest, in those last few minutes we were just holding on,” said Vande Kopple, whose team finished unbeaten, with one 0-0 tie in the sixth game of the year against Jackson.
The loss was particularly devastating for Covenant since it lost by a goal in last year’s Division 4 title game as well, 3-2 against Hamtramck Frontier International.
Covenant, which finished 22-2-3, was champion of the soccer-rich River Valley Conference and defeated No. 2-ranked Kalamazoo Hackett Catholic Central (1-0) in a shootout in the Regional Final and highly-touted Bellaire (3-2) in the Semifinal. But once again, their quest for an MHSAA championship came up one game short.
On the other side of the field, Vande Kopple was struggling to find the right words.
“I don’t think I will realize exactly what we just did for a few weeks,” Vande Kopple said. “When it hits me, I’ll be able to explain it a whole lot better.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Lansing Christian huddles after claiming its first MHSAA title. (Middle) Jordan Terry celebrates after scoring the game's lone goal. (Click to see more from Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)