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.
Performance: Anchor Bay's Ally Gaunt
May 3, 2019
Ally Gaunt
New Baltimore Anchor Bay senior - Soccer
Anchor Bay’s three-year starting goalkeeper continued to build on her substantial legacy last week, tying the school career record with her 32nd shutout against then-No. 3 ranked Utica Eisenhower to earn the Michigan Army National Guard “Performance of the Week.” She became the school’s sole record holder the next game as Anchor Bay shut out Port Huron Northern 5-0 on Friday.
Gaunt tied and broke the record of 2015 graduate Emily Zweng, who went on to Oakland University, and with the 32nd shutout also earned a spot in the MHSAA record book. She’s now up to 29th all-time with 34 career shutouts and has led Anchor Bay to a combined 41-5-10 record over three seasons including 5-1-4 this spring. The Tars also have won two District titles with her guarding the net. In fact, Gaunt has never given up more than two goals in a game at the high school level – and in 13 games, she’s allowed just one – and she has a career goals-against average of 0.52.
Anchor Bay coach Kevin Grammens considers Gaunt one of the best keepers in Macomb County history, and she earned Division 1 all-state honorable mention as a sophomore and made the second team a year ago. When she’s not playing, she’s still in the game as a youth soccer referee and goalie trainer. Gaunt also played basketball as a freshman and sophomore on sub-varsity teams and carries a 3.7 grade-point average. She’s signed to continue her academic and soccer careers at Saginaw Valley State. A fan of numbers and math, she plans to major in accounting and finance and eventually become a certified public accountant.
Coach Kevin Grammens said: “Ally is usually the first player to arrive at practice and the last to leave. She is a student of the game and true believer in the growth mindset. She soaks in the mental skills training that we teach in our program and intently trains the finer details of her position with her goalkeeper coach, Keith Jarema. She is humble and is first to acknowledge that she cannot set records on her own. We've played tremendous team defense the past three years in front of her and have had and currently have fantastic, selfless players willing to play defense to benefit the team.”
Performance Point: It was a great week. It means a lot, but it’s not everything – to be fair, it’s just a record,” Gaunt said. “The season that we’ve had this year, it’s been a process. And to get that with this team, it means a lot. We graduated our back line – all four of them graduated last year, so we had to rebuild it. We had to start from scratch basically the first day of tryouts, and from then till now it’s grown tremendously. We were ready for battle, and we definitely stepped up. I knew Coach Grammens had a plan, and we had to stick with it. And I trust him, and it worked out.
Success to the successor: “My sophomore and junior year (Zweng) came back for the District games and a few of the other games, and I talked to her. She gave me some pointers, and it was really beneficial just to hear it from another player that set the record here at Anchor Bay, (made the NCAA Tournament) at Oakland.”
At home in goal: “I love it back there. You can see the entire field. You can see the plays developing before they happen. Just (from) practice, you see it, what we work on, and when it shows in games it shows practice really helps. I can see in goal what we’re trying to do.”
Our time: “My communication is better than it was two years ago. My physical aspects are better than they were two years ago. Every day we’re working on both physical and mental stuff, and it’s very helpful to get something every single day that’s beneficial. Being a senior – there’s six of us, and we all want to do something great here. ‘Leave the jersey in a better place’ is our biggest motto on the team for the seniors, and I truly believe all six of us can do it and are doing it. … Coach Grammens here at Anchor Bay has helped me become the leader I am. We have a binder with a bunch of different articles on how to be mentally strong, and reading those and going through with him helping us individually to become a better person grows our leadership skills as well.”
Problem solver: “I like the structure of (math), knowing there’s not only one way to do a problem to get the correct answer. Within the team, within soccer, you have to be able to see a problem from more than one angle – if there’s two people on the team and something happens, you have to be able to see both angles to be a good leader and try to diffuse the situation. I believe math helps with that because with numbers, you can see it that way.”
- Geoff Kimmerly, Second Half editor
Every week during the 2018-19 school year, Second Half and the Michigan Army National Guard recognizes 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.
Past 2018-19 honorees
April 25: Kali Heivilin, Three Rivers softball - Read
March 28: Rickea Jackson, Detroit Edison basketball - Read
March 21: Noah Wiswary, Hudsonville Unity Christian basketball - Read
March 14: Cam Peel, Spring Lake swimming - Read
March 7: Jordan Hamdan, Hudson wrestling - Read
February 28: Kevon Davenport, Detroit Catholic Central wrestling - Read
February 21: Reagan Olli, Gaylord skiing - Read
February 14: Jake Stevenson, Traverse City Bay Reps hockey - Read
February 7: Molly Davis, Midland Dow basketball - Read
January 31: Chris DeRocher, Alpena basketball - Read
January 24: Imari Blond, Flint Kearsley bowling - Read
January 17: William Dunn, Quincy basketball - Read
November 29: Dequan Finn, Detroit Martin Luther King football - Read
November 22: Paige Briggs, Lake Orion volleyball - Read
November 15: Hunter Nowak, Morrice football - Read
November 8: Jon Dougherty, Detroit Country Day soccer - Read
November 1: Jordan Stump, Camden-Frontier volleyball - Read
October 25: Danielle Staskowski, Pontiac Notre Dame Prep golf - Read
October 18: Adam Bruce, Gladstone cross country - Read
October 11: Ericka VanderLende, Rockford cross country - Read
October 4: Kobe Clark, Schoolcraft football - Read
September 27: Jonathan Kliewer, Grand Rapids Forest Hills Northern soccer - Read
September 20: Kiera Lasky, Bronson volleyball - Read
September 13: Judy Rector, Hanover-Horton cross country - Read
PHOTOS: (Top) Anchor Bay goalkeeper Ally Gaunt sends a kick downfield during a game this season. (Middle) Gaunt launches another toward waiting teammates. (Photos courtesy of the Anchor Bay girls soccer program.)