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.
Lessons from Multi-Sport Experience Guide Person in Leading New Team
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
August 1, 2024
PARCHMENT — When Amanda Person was in sixth grade, her family hosted an international student from Japan.
Until then, soccer was the main sport for her family – but that soon changed.
“Naoki wanted to play tennis,” Person said. “He started playing and then my sister (Marissa) started playing, and then I started playing.”
That passion for both sports only increased during her four years at Parchment High School.
“Soccer was really fun, but when I look back on my high school career, tennis was the most prominent thing I remember,” the 2008 grad said. “I think it’s because I played year-round: our regular tennis season and then our summer tennis program and winter tennis program.”
Although it has been 16 years since her glory days at Parchment ended, Person has no trouble recalling the best parts of her Panthers sports career.
In fact, coming up with memories from those days is no problem — she has a folder full of photos called “I Miss Team Sports” on her Facebook page.
Playing intramural soccer at Michigan State University, she graduated with a degree in social work, then stayed in the Big Ten. She is the campus tours and ambassador coordinator at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., where she supervises 80 to 100 student tour guides who provide information for families considering the school.
Her ties to the Spartans sometime makes for interesting conversations with her colleagues.
“They give me a hard time,” she said with a quick laugh. “I say Michigan State will always be my No. 1. That’s my alma mater I spent four years of time, tears and money at Michigan State. But I really love Purdue, so I’ll root for the Boilermakers second.”
She is also working on her master’s degree in higher education at Purdue.
Her office in the welcome center shares space with the alumni association, leading to an unforgettable experience.
During a lunch break, she went home to let out her dog, Tessa. When she returned, a trophy and a bucket were sitting on her desk.
Confused, she asked what they were doing there.
“The tour guides I was working with said (during an event) they had to put them somewhere before putting them out (to the public), so they just put them on my desk,” she said.
Turns out, one trophy was the NCAA Final Four runner-up men’s basketball trophy the Boilermakers took home last year after losing to Connecticut in the championship game.
The other was the Old Oaken Bucket, the trophy that goes to the winner between Purdue and Indiana University’s annual football grudge match.
“I didn’t know anything about the Old Oaken Bucket,” she said. “They were like, what do you mean ‘what is this?’ Then they told me the story behind it.”
Creating core memories
Recalling her years at Parchment, Person becomes animated, smiling and laughing at all the memories.
“The first thing I remember is that my sister was really, really good at soccer,” she said. "I was always trying to keep up with her a bit.”
Her dad, Dave Person, noted that “all of our kids (Adam, Marissa, Amanda) had some success in sports during high school while realizing that it was secondary to their education.
“My only input was that I insisted they treat officials, coaches and opponents with respect, which they did. I always thought that while Marissa did very well in tennis, she was a natural at soccer. Amanda, on the other hand, was very good at soccer, but was a natural at tennis.”
Amanda said her soccer memories come down to “we might not have won a lot, but it was still a lot of fun.”
She said while several on the team, including herself, had years of soccer experience, players also welcomed those who wanted to try the sport for the first time.
“Our team had a home for those people, too,” she said. “The games were always fun, but I feel like a lot of being on a team like that is the outside things you do together: the team dinners, the traveling on the bus, even practices.”
Her freshman year, the team advanced to the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 4 Girls Tennis Finals, finishing 19th.
Her senior year was a transition when several sports seasons were switched, putting girls soccer and tennis at the same time during the spring.
Person and the other three two-sport seniors juggled both.
“All of a sudden we were playing soccer and tennis in the spring,” she said. “Thankfully they let us do both, and our coaches were very good in terms (of) making sure nothing important overlapped.”
Person played doubles all four years and was at No. 1 with Kelly Drummond her final two seasons.
“If my memory serves me correctly, I believe we only lost two matches the whole (senior) year, so it was a good year for us,” she said.
It was a very good year.
She and Drummond won their Regional Final, but that ended her prep career since the team did not qualify for championship weekend.
Preparing for life
The best thing about high school tennis, she said, was that it was a combination team and individual sport.
“You can do really well individually and maybe the team doesn’t do well, or maybe the team does well and you don’t do well personally,” she said. “It has the aspect of wanting the entire team to do good.”
Competing in both sports prepared her for the “real” world, she said.
“Playing soccer and tennis and being part of a team helped me cheer other people on,” she said. “The world is a competitive place, so having that foundation of team sports is really good to teach a plethora of things you can use in the real world.
“Even at work, you have your individual job but you’re also part of a team. If one person isn’t doing well, then your whole team isn’t doing well. If someone else is having a hard time, helping them out is helping the team.”
She added that losing also teaches important lessons.
“You’re going to lose at things your entire life,” she said. “Being able to handle losing, handle rejection, is a good skill to have for anything in life. I’ve learned it’s not what happens to you but how you respond to it. That’s a huge lesson. There are a lot of life lessons you can get from playing team sports in high school.”
Her advice to high school athletes today: “Enjoy it, first of all. Don’t take it too seriously in wins and losses.
“When I look back, most of my core memories are being part of a team, having fun with the team, having fun playing the sport. Enjoy your time,” she said.
“Now I miss it.”
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Parchment’s Amanda Person plays a 2008 tennis match with doubles partner Kelly Drummond; at right, Person and her dog Tessa. (Middle) A pair of beloved trophies sit temporarily on Person’s desk at Purdue. (Below) Person also was a soccer standout at Parchment. (Photos courtesy of Amanda Person.)