Preview: Finalists Take Familiar Road
June 7, 2019
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
The favorites will be familiar and the challengers are on their way heading into Saturday’s Girls Lacrosse Finals at Novi High School.
Division 1 top-ranked Rockford and Division 2 top-ranked East Grand Rapids have won a combined 12 MHSAA Finals titles, and even shared their league championship this spring. But Brighton will play in its fourth Division 1 championship game, and second straight, while Marian is back on the final day of the season for the third time.
The Division 2 Final will be played at 2 p.m., followed by Division 1 at 4:30. Both will be broadcast on MHSAA.tv, available with subscription, with audio available on MHSAANetwork.com. Click for more information, including all tournament results.
Below is a look at all four contenders, with player statistics through Regional Finals unless noted.
Division 1
BRIGHTON
Record/rank: 16-7-1, No. 4 at end of regular season
League finish: Third in Kensington Lakes Activities Association
Coach: Ashton Peters, second season (24-7-1)
Championship history: Division 1 champion 2011, runner-up 2018 and 2010.
Best wins: 12-10 over No. 3 Hartland in Semifinal, 21-4 (Regional Semifinal) and 17-10 over No. 10 Novi, 14-7 over No. 7 Northville, 15-10 over No. 6 Birmingham United, 11-10 (Regional Final) and 12-9 over No. 5 Ann Arbor Pioneer. Players to watch: Riley Browne, jr. M/D; Cat Kophcia, jr A; Jenna Miodonski, sr. G. (Statistics not submitted.)
Outlook: Brighton certainly earned its way back to the championship game, defeating a number of opponents ranked just below it throughout the season and then avenging two earlier losses with the Semifinal win over Hartland. The Bulldogs have given up single-digit goals in 12 games, and Brown recently was name all-state first team with Kophcia making the second.
ROCKFORD
Record/rank: 14-5-1, No. 1 at end of regular season
League finish: Tied for first in Ottawa-Kent Conference Tier 1
Coach: Mike Emery, 12th season (214-48-7)
Championship history: Division 1 champions 2010, 2013-18.
Best wins: 20-6 (Semifinal) and 20-3 over No. 6 Birmingham United, 16-8 (Regional Final), 15-5 and 13-8 over No. 2 Grand Rapids Forest Hills United, 13-12 over Division 2 No. 1 East Grand Rapids.
Players to watch: Karrington Vander Molen, sr. A/M (34 goals, 7 assists); Sydney Zimmerman, jr. M (43 goals, 16 assists); Isabelle Holmes, sr. A (24 goals, 34 assists); Madelyn Yakes, jr. G (.429 save percentage); Madison Kleefisch, jr. D/M (17 goals, 3 assists). (Statistics through 15 games.)
Outlook: The Rams will play for their seventh consecutive Division 1 championship with a number of familiar faces from title runs of the recent past. Vander Molen, Zimmerman, Holmes, Yakes and Kleefisch have made the all-state first team, while senior defenders Anna Glynn and Shae Strehl made the second and junior defender Bailey Banfield made the second team in 2018. Rockford also has given up single-digit goals in 12 games, including all four of the postseason. Four of the losses and the tie came to teams from Illinois or Ohio.
Division 2
BLOOMFIELD HILLS MARIAN
Record/rank: 20-1, No. 2 at end of regular season
League finish: First in Detroit Catholic League
Coach: Sherry Elliott, third season (48-10)
Championship history: Division 1 runner-up 2009 and 2015.
Best wins: 15-13 over No. 4 Okemos in Semifinal, 17-16 (OT) over No. 8 Farmington in Regional Final, 18-9 (Regional Quarterfinal) and 18-14 over No. 3 Detroit Country Day, 16-13 and 12-10 over No. 6 Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood, 20-10 over No. 10 Grand Rapids Catholic Central, 11-10 over Division 1 No. 6 Birmingham United, 15-12 over Division 1 No. 5 Ann Arbor Pioneer, 16-6 over Division 1 No. 4 Brighton, 15-13 and 18-2 over Division 1 No. 9 Troy.
Players to watch: Mia Hannawa, jr. M (54 goals, 4 assists); Amanda Timmis, jr. M (37 goals, 13 assists), Coco Chinonis, soph. A (77 goals, 13 assists); Anna Reaume, sr. D; Eliana Delusky, soph. G (.460 save percentage).
Outlook: Marian made it into the season’s final week for the first time since its 2015 runner-up season, its only loss this spring in the second of a three-game series with Cranbrook and by just one goal. Hannawa and Reaume recently were named to the all-state first team, while Delusky and Timmis made the second and Chinonis earned honorable mention. Marian has shown it can pull out a close game, going 8-1 in those decided by four goals or fewer. Junior attack Tessy Klein had added another 43 goals and 12 assists entering the week.
EAST GRAND RAPIDS
Record/rank: 23-2, No. 1 at end of regular season
League finish: Tied for first in Ottawa-Kent Conference Tier 1
Coach: Rich Axtell, 10th season (195-33)
Championship history: Division 2 champions 2012-16, runner-up 2017.
Best wins: 24-6 (Semifinal), 25-2 and 19-5 over No. 6 Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook Kingswood; 20-3 (Regional Final), 18-8 and 22-4 over No. 7 Grand Rapids Christian; 25-7 (Regional Semifinal), 24-4 and 16-6 over No. 10 Grand Rapids Catholic Central; 23-9 over No. 5 Mattawan, 12-8 over Division 1 No. 1 Rockford, 20-13 and 15-4 over Division 1 No. 2 Grand Rapids Forest Hills United, 18-7 over Division 1 No. 3 Hartland, 15-6 over Division 1 No. 4 Brighton.
Players to watch: Mary Schumar, sr. A (87 goals, 53 assists); Emily Bergstrom, sr. D; Olivia Grogan, jr. D; Audrey Whiteside, sr. A (131 goals, 52 assists); Lily Kate Rogers, sr. G (5.3 goals-against average, .410 save percentage).
Outlook: After missing the Finals for the first time in six seasons last spring, East Grand Rapids has stormed back with losses this year only to Rockford by a goal (a defeat since avenged) and New Trier, Illinois. Whiteside’s goal total ranks fourth all-time, and she needed just one more goal to tie for third. But she and Schumar hardly are the only offensive stars, with seven players total scoring at least 22 goals entering the week and five tallying at least 13 assists. Junior Anna Knuble is next on the leaderboard in both with 42 goals and 21 assists. Whiteside, Schumar, Grogan and Rogers made the all-state first team, and Bergstrom made the second.
PHOTO: Rockford’s Sydney Zimmerman carries the ball and considers her options during last season’s Division 1 Final win over Brighton.
Trepins Makes Helping Kids Her Business
June 17, 2020
By Tom Lang
Special for Second Half
It’s not enough to recently-graduated Grandville High senior Brianna Trepins to play lacrosse well. She additionally wants to see the sport grow and prosper in west Michigan – and she knows that begins with young kids in the community.
She also knows too well, from personal experience, that coming from less financial means than most peers can keep young girls from giving the sport a try in the first place. Often, it’s as simple as the stigma of not having as nice of a stick as other players.
Trepins, who will continue her lacrosse career at Aquinas College, has helped coach youth in the community. Many times young girls are willing to try the sport but have to borrow a community center stick that’s – let’s say – not top-of-the-line equipment and well-used past its prime.
“Most of the pockets weren’t good, and the girls had to learn how to play with these sticks,” Trepins said. “When they see another girl playing with the brand new, greatest versions of these really cool sticks, that’s hard on them. I could relate. I didn’t have the best equipment growing up, so I sympathized, and I began taking sticks and restringing them – and it all went from there.”
Trepins’ discovery led to starting a business and online store last November – LaxZoo. She sells T-shirts and other lacrosse items to pay for materials to restring lacrosse sticks that people donate. She also repairs sticks of teammates and other players, and the profits from her small fees go to string material for more donated sticks – and in the short term some of the profits have gone to COVID-19 relief efforts.
“I have a ton of respect for entrepreneurs in general, because I think that takes a certain type of bravery – and the fact that she has done that at such a young age; it shows me how much she loves lacrosse and wants to incorporate it into her life moving forward,” said her Grandville coach, Alexandra Vanden Bosch. “And to do all that, she’s taking a big personal risk to start her own business. That’s so huge.”
Trepins first attempted lacrosse in 8th grade, later than most teammates.
“When I first tried lacrosse, I didn’t like it that much,” Trepins said. “I had to wear a skirt, which I thought was weird.”
But she made some good friends and tried out again as a freshman, and made the varsity team. Before the end of the season, she became a starter on defense.
“Throughout the year my coach kept giving me some opportunities to go out on the field and show what I could do as a player, and I really didn’t have that before,” she added. “To have someone really believe in me and believe in my abilities was kind of life-changing. So, going on the field and actually feeling confident playing a sport was an amazing feeling that I never wanted to end. The program at Grandville is great, and my teammates were so supportive.”
Vanden Bosch made it clear Trepins earned it all.
“She just blossomed so quickly and got that opportunity to start on defense, and that was her natural athleticism,” the coach said. “Then when she became passionate about lacrosse because of that, she made the most improvement in between offseasons that I’ve ever seen in a player. Through that she developed leadership, and we named her as a captain her junior year. When I say hardest worker in the room, that is her.”
With the cancellation of her senior lacrosse season after all MHSAA spring sports shut down because of COVID-19, Trepins shifted gears to prepare for college, which had begun over the winter with applying for scholarships. A significant award came from the local Community Choice Credit Union’s Foundation, a $5,000 grant as part of a statewide $100,000 annual program the credit union started 11 years ago that has grown to $1.2 million in educational support for students who are focused on supporting their Michigan communities.
She plans to study pre-dental at Aquinas College – in part because she respects the work of a cousin who is a dental hygienist, but mostly because she has had her own issues growing up with teeth complications that still cause her pain in her jaw on a fairly regular basis. She is missing an adult tooth under a baby tooth that has remained in place as the family cannot afford dental insurance.
“If you looked inside my mouth, my teeth are a little weird on one side (looks concaved),” she said. “My family could never afford to fix it when I was growing up, so I want to be able to fix things like that for other people. I guess it’s quite common, and I want to help other kids when they’re growing up. There are a few options to fix it, but they are all so costly. … I just kind of have to deal with it.”
As to what Trepins has learned from starting and running a small business:
“It feels almost like a reality check at some points but also unreal in all honesty. You always see people with their businesses and think, ‘Wow, I could do that too.’ But the truth is running a business takes a lot of time and hard work for it to really start to get off the ground. But at the same time, every time you have an order that gets placed or you see someone using something that you've made – for example getting to see the little girls run around with the sticks I've strung for them – it feels a little bit unreal, and like all the work that you've put into it is actually paying off.
PHOTOS: (Top) Grandville's Brianna Trepins, left, maintains possession of the ball during a game earlier in her career; her senior season was canceled due to COVID-19. (Middle) Trepins strings and shows off a restrung lacrosse stick. (Photos courtesy of Brianna Trepins.)