Comeback Crusaders Come Through
June 14, 2014
By Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half
MASON – It was not a premonition, but Hudsonville Unity Christian girls soccer coach Randy Heethuis picked the right tape to show his players at a team dinner Friday night.
It might have provided the added spark needed as Unity Christian rallied from a 1-0 halftime deficit to defeat Detroit Country Day 3-1 on Saturday in the MHSAA Division 3 championship game at Mason High School.
It was the Crusaders’ eighth championship in the past 10 years and first since 2012.
“At our team dinner, we watched a tape of the 2012 Final that we were down 1-0 at halftime,” Heethuis said, “so we went into halftime and said, ‘This looks vaguely familiar. We just watched this last night.’
“I said, ‘Girls, we’re going to come back and win this one, too,’ and sure enough, they did it.”
Both teams came into the Final riding impressive defensive streaks. Unity Christian had allowed only one goal in its previous six tournament games, while Country Day had an eight-game shutout streak, including blank sheet the past six in the tournament.
So a 1-0 halftime lead in a game that featured just three shots on goal in the first half seemed somewhat safe. However, Unity Christian began the second half with more intensity after the halftime speech from Heethuis.
“At the end of the first half, we started putting a little more pressure on them,” he said. “We had probably three really good opportunities that just hit wide, and at halftime we talked about it. I said, ‘Girls, we’re OK.’ I asked them to believe, and I asked them to come out and play the hardest 40 minutes of their lives.”
The first payoff came in the 51st minute when senior forward Aubrey Schierbeek took a corner kick and scored from the left side. She was deep in the box, and the ball went over the head of the goalkeeper and fell into the far end of the net.
“I didn’t call it,” said Schierbeek, who is one of four Unity Christian players who are slated to play at Spring Arbor University. “Honestly, I didn’t think it was going to go in until I saw it in the back of the net.”
The goal came moments after a flurry in front of the net created the corner-kick opportunity, and Heethuis pointed out the importance of that part of the game.
“Tessa Glashower won a nice ball there, and she took a shot that the keeper tipped over the top that won that corner for us,” he said. “It’s the little things like that – the kid who steps up and makes a play that wins a corner for you is huge.”
Schierbeek struck again 16 minutes later for the tie-breaking goal from right in front of the net.
“Coach told me in a previous game that you’re not going to get a chance to dribble it around, so when you get the open shot, take it, and that’s exactly what I did,” said Shierbeek, whose two goals gave her 32 this season. “I had the opening, and I took the shot, and it happened to go in.”
With a 2-1 lead, the Crusaders had all the momentum, and just two minutes later Schierbeek assisted on a goal by Rachel Roerig, a junior forward who scored from in front of the net.
“Once we were level, I think the girls just relaxed a little bit, and then our intensity level really picked up,” Heethuis said. “Then we got a glimpse of watching us attack the way we’re capable of attacking.”
Unity Christian (23-1) finished with a 13-3 edge in shots on goal in the second half and finished with a 14-5 advantage. Country Day (21-4-3) had two shots on goal in the first four minutes of the game, including a goal by senior Michelle Manning, who took a rebound and scored from the left part of the box.
“I kind of broke in and didn’t have many options,” she said. “The goalie did a good job of covering the near post - and far actually when she stepped out - and I froze for a second and then tried to slip it by her,” said Manning, who plans to continue playing soccer at Northwestern. “I couldn’t slip it by her, so I kind of tried to poke it past her. It didn’t really work out, but it came right back at me and I put it in.
“Unity Christian came out a lot stronger than us in the second half. I felt like they kind of put us on our heels, and it took us a hard time to adjust.”
Unity Christian goalkeeper Abby Veeneman had four saves as the Crusaders held their opponent to fewer than two goals for the 22nd time in the 24-game season.
“I was a little worried when we were behind, but I have a lot of confidence in my team that we can come back,” said Veeneman, who plans to next go to Australia to do mission work with a youth group. “Our team knows how to defend well. They communicate, and they work good together.”
It was a tough defeat for Country Day, which was chasing its sixth MHSAA championship and first since 2004, which came against Unity Christian in the title game.
“Unity is an excellent team – an excellent team – and they’re the better team than we are,” Country Day coach Bob Bukari said. ”They have more weapons, they’re well coached, they’re well organized, they are strong in goal, they’re strong defensively.
“… Unity deserved the victory without a doubt. We hit the crossbar, and we could have scored a second goal in the first half that would have changed the whole complexity of the game. But we didn’t put our chances away, and they buried theirs.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Unity Christian's Aubrey Schierbeek (22) pushes the ball ahead while Country Day's Libby Ronchetto (11) pursues. (Middle) Schierbeek and Bethany Balcer celebrate during Saturday's Division 3 Final.
Mona Shores Sails Through Historic Run
June 7, 2017
By Tom Kendra
Special for Second Half
PORTAGE – The end is never easy, especially when it’s a team’s first taste of defeat – and especially when it appeared, for almost three quarters of the game, that a monumental upset was in the works.
There were plenty of tears Tuesday as Muskegon Mona Shores saw its 1-0 lead, and its perfect season, come unraveled as No. 1-ranked Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central scored three goals over an 8-minute stretch midway through the second half of a 4-1 victory in the Division 1 Regional Semifinals at Portage Central.
“We just ran out of gas,” explained first-year Mona Shores coach Dylan Darga, whose team finished 21-1. “We took the top-ranked team in the state deep into the second half. You always want one more win, but what we accomplished this season was pretty incredible.”
Top-ranked Forest Hills Central advanced to Friday’s 6 p.m. Regional championship game at Portage Central against No. 2 Brighton, which downed host Portage Central 3-1 in Tuesday’s first Semifinal game.
And perhaps Mona Shores’ dream season ended at the appropriate time.
For one thing, Darga can now focus 100 percent on his wedding this weekend.
Darga, a 3rd-grade teacher at Marquette Elementary School in the Muskegon Public School District, is getting married Saturday and his rehearsal dinner is Friday night – which would have been in direct conflict with the Regional championship game.
When Darga made his wedding plans last summer, he had no idea he would be coaching varsity soccer. Darga previously coached the junior varsity girls team at Muskegon Reeths-Puffer before taking the Mona Shores varsity job in February.
“We had some plans in place for Friday night if it came to that,” said Darga, who is assisted on the varsity by Scott White and also junior varsity coach Ashley Moblo. “I have a couple of very good assistant coaches, and they would have done a great job. It would have been strange for me not to be there with them.”
The timing of the loss provided the Shores players, coaches and fans with several nice trophies, as champions of the Ottawa-Kent Conference Black and their Division 1 District, while also whetting their appetites for next season. Mona Shores, which graduates just three seniors, should now have plenty of motivation heading into the 2018 season – which was the year everyone was targeting as the Sailors’ breakout year on the statewide stage, anyway.
Mona Shores just decided to get the party started one year early, putting together the first undefeated regular season in school history and their first District championship since 2007 with a 3-1 win over rival Grand Haven on Saturday.
Along the way, there were individual school records falling left and right – all by underclassmen.
Sarah Mikesell, a junior forward, already has the school record with 73 career goals (including 40 goals this season) with her senior season still to come. Sophomore Raegan Cox, a dynamic playmaker who has already verbally committed to sign with the University of Arkansas, set another school record with 31 assists. In goal, junior Megan Swanker recorded a school-best 15 shutouts – and did not allow a single goal in May until the opening game of the District tournament.
While those three have garnered the lion’s share of headlines this season, sophomore Nora Brown and junior Peyton Erndteman also were key cogs in the offensive attack.
But Darga singled out the play of his four starting defenders as a key reason Shores was able to rise to No. 3 in the final state rankings entering tournament play. Junior stopper Mal Meston was the ringleader of that defense, which also included senior Isabel Grace (the team’s lone senior starter), sophomore Erin Powers and freshman Alexa Musk.
“Those four are really the unsung heroes of our whole operation,” said Darga, a 2004 Fruitport High School graduate and soccer standout. “As a former defenseman myself, I tell them all the time how important they are. If you never allow a goal, you will never lose a soccer game.”
In addition to Grace, the other seniors on the roster were McKenna Matthews and Haley Gartland.
Even after taking the Mona Shores varsity job in February, Darga had little reason to believe there was going to be a potential conflict between his wedding and Regional tournament games.
Mona Shores had not won a District title in 10 years, and with just three seniors, it appeared the program’s breakthrough season would be another year away.
“Honestly, when I looked at the first six games of our season, I could see a scenario where we would be 4-2 or even 3-3 coming out of those games,” said Darga, pointing out early games against Holland West Ottawa, Grand Haven and Spring Lake. “So when we were 6-0, I knew we had something special going.”
Tom Kendra worked 23 years at The Muskegon Chronicle, including five as assistant sports editor and the final six as sports editor through 2011. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Muskegon, Oceana, Mason, Lake, Oceola, Mecosta and Newaygo counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Muskegon Mona Shores junior forward Sarah Mikesell, right, battles for possession of the ball during the Sailors' 3-1 victory over Grand Haven in the Division 1 District Final on June 3. Mikesell scored 40 goals this season and has 73 goals for her career. (Middle) First-year Muskegon Mona Shores soccer coach Dylan Darga reacts to the play during the Sailors' win over Grand Haven. Darga led Mona Shores to a 21-1 record in his first season as coach. (Photos by Tim Reilly.)