Keeper Hopes to Help North Muskegon Take Championship Step
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
May 26, 2021
Syann Fairfield says she won’t let anything stop her from leading her team to the Division 4 girls soccer championship.
But don’t take her word for it. Look at her actions.
The last time North Muskegon’s girls soccer team was making a tournament run, Fairfield suffered a nasty eye injury early in the second half of a 2019 Regional championship game win over Houghton Lake.
“I went down to grab the ball and took a knee to my eye,” Fairfield recalled with, of all things, a laugh. “I had to come out for a concussion test and to make sure I could see, but then I went right back in. I was not going to let us lose in the Regional Finals because I had to go out.”
Fairfield is the daughter of Jenny DeJohn and Muskegon High School football coach Shane Fairfield, so she grew up as a ball girl and water girl for her dad’s teams and says she learned about toughness and teamwork in the process.
North Muskegon, which is 14-1-1 and ranked No. 1 in Division 4, hopes that the experience of Fairfield and the team’s other seven seniors will be enough to lift the Norse to the school’s first soccer state championship after heartbreaking 1-0 Semifinal losses to Kalamazoo Christian in 2018 and 2019.
“We definitely have a special team,” said senior forward Emily Olsen, one of four senior captains along with defender Sophia Schotts, midfielder Audrey Wilson and forward Hope Johnson.
“We’ve come so close in the past. We’re giving 100 percent every day and hope that makes the difference this time.”
If the popular school of thought holds that a championship soccer team starts in the back with the goalkeeper and defense, then the top-ranked Norse might just be ready to break through.
Fairfield, who first-year head coach Caleb Parnin calls “one of the greatest athletes that North Muskegon has ever had,” is a dominant, 6-foot-1 keeper and the final line of defense for a team that has allowed just four goals all season.
Fairfield benefits from a pair of standout defenders in Schotts and junior Grace Vander Woude, but the real secret of this North Muskegon team is the combination of great senior leadership and up-and-coming and talented underclassmen at every position.
Fairfield, an all-state middle hitter who will play volleyball next year at Ferris State, injured her ankle late in the basketball season and missed the first several weeks of this soccer season. But she used that time to mentor freshman keeper Emma Lamiman.
The same is true at midfield, where the dominant Wilson missed time earlier this month with an ankle injury, forcing promising freshmen Spencer Zizak and Allie Jensen to be thrown into the heat of the battle.
The leaders up front are the lethal 1-2 combination of Johnson, the leading scorer with 25 goals and 16 assists, and Olsen, whose powerful right leg has produced 19 goals and 18 assists. Among the youngsters learning from those two everyday are sophomores Natalie Pannucci (11 goals, 6 assists) and Jaley Schultz and freshman Kennedi Koekkoek – who scored the most memorable goal of the season with two seconds remaining to salvage a 2-2 tie against No. 2-ranked Lansing Christian.
“When I was out, Spencer and Allie stepped up and now they’re both playing with so much confidence,” said Wilson, who was still taking it easy at Tuesday’s practice. “So, sometimes injuries help the team in the long run, but I will definitely be back and ready to go.”
The Norse suffered their only loss of the season against visiting Division 1 school Holland West Ottawa, 1-0, on April 24, a game in which Johnson did not play.
The tie against Lansing Christian came on May 17, when the Norse found themselves trailing 2-0 at halftime. Johnson cut the lead in half with a goal on a penalty kick, before the harried final moments, when Schotts put a shot on goal and Koekkoek converted the rebound just before time expired.
North Muskegon played its last game May 21, a tight 2-1 win at Ludington. With no conference tournament in the West Michigan Conference, the Norse will have an 11-day layoff before their District opener June 1.
“Honestly, we’re excited to have this extra practice time, because our coaching staff really thinks we can bring these girls to the next level,” said Parnin, who is assisted by Chris Wilson, Pete Johnson, Adam Schultz and Kim Gorbach – the program’s junior varsity and goalkeeper coach.
Parnin, a 2003 North Muskegon graduate who played collegiate soccer at Trinity International University near Chicago, returned home in the fall of 2019 to teach English at his alma mater. The plan was to serve a one-year apprenticeship as Ryan Berends’ assistant, before COVID-19 wiped out last spring’s season.
Parnin, who compared coaching this year’s talented team with “being handed the keys to a Corvette,” has made a point of getting more girls out for soccer. His work is paying dividends with 34 high school girls soccer players, nearly double the number from 2019, with the ability to field a junior varsity team.
While the future looks bright for the program, right now everyone’s focus is on this year’s tournament – where another potential showdown with No. 3-ranked Kalamazoo Christian looms, as well as a possible rematch against Lansing Christian in the Final on June 19 at Michigan State University.
If those clashes come to fruition, Parnin is well aware they could be decided by a shootout, in which case he feels very confident with Fairfield in the net.
“I couldn’t trust anyone more than I trust Syann,” said Parnin. “When we do our penalty kick drills, Syann wins. I mean, she shuts it down.
“She has the size and athletic ability, but she also has that intangible quality of a great athlete where she welcomes the challenge.”
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) North Muskegon senior keeper Syann Fairfield boots the ball during a game against Holland West Ottawa. The Norse have allowed just four goals in 16 games this spring. (Middle) North Muskegon senior captain Emily Olsen, who has 19 goals and 18 assists, leaps before making a play on the ball. (Below) Norse senior captain Audrey Wilson, who has 16 goals and 10 assists, battles for possession of the ball. (Photos by Rhonda Kinahan.)
Surging Boyne City Shining in Spotlight
April 25, 2019
By Chris Dobrowolski
Special for Second Half
Boyne City is a force to be reckoned with on the girls soccer pitch.
Katie Harmeling still remembers when that wasn’t the case.
“Our first two years we were struggling a lot,” said the Ramblers’ senior defender. “We got mercied a lot of the time. Just had a lot of trouble as a team.”
The Ramblers won just six games during an inauspicious first two years of Harmeling’s career, but my how things have changed.
Boyne City went undefeated through the regular season last year while winning its first Lake Michigan Conference title and started off this year with an unbeaten streak of seven games. The only game the Ramblers have failed to come out of victorious was a 1-1 draw with league rival Harbor Springs. Otherwise, they have been dominant, winning games by an average of six goals and posting five shutouts along the way.
“We’re continuing to improve each game we play,” said senior keeper Cora Hauger. “Now that we’re getting into the thicker part of our season, we’re starting to figure out what needs to be done and we’re starting to connect more as a team and work together in that sense. We keep improving each game.”
Boyne City received a big boost, and began to see its fortunes turn around, when a large and talented class of freshmen joined the program last season after years of honing their skills at the youth level and on the club circuit. Seven started in their first year, and right from the beginning they showed they were ready to lift the Ramblers to new heights in spite of their youth.
“I knew (we) were going to be getting a good influx of players coming in,” said head coach Ed Fantozzi, who is in his fourth year leading the varsity. “The youth program is excellent. It feeds a lot of kids. It’s building, even on the boys side. It’s a great feeder program.”
Because Boyne City had never experienced success in girls soccer, the common belief was that the Ramblers were catching teams by surprise last year. That’s not the case now, however, as Boyne’s reputation has changed quickly. The Ramblers suddenly have a bulls-eye on their backs.
“Last year we came out of the gate and nobody knew who we were,” said Hauger. “This year we’re battling back from everybody knowing who we are. We kind of have to overcome that in the sense that nothing we do is surprising. Everybody knows about the big throw-ins. Everybody knows who our shooters are. Everybody knows we have a strong midfield. We just have to play our game.”
The light is now shining brightly on the Ramblers, and they are proving capable of handling the added attention they’ve brought upon themselves.
“People are focusing on us more than they might have in the past,” said Fantozzi. “It brings a different dynamic to the season. Winning is awesome, but it’s also one of those things where you have to learn how to deal with it. We have a young team and they’re handling it well. They’re a very mature group.”
Boyne City has a well-rounded squad overall. The Ramblers possess dynamic goal-scoring ability and are backed by a stout defense.
“We don’t look at it like one person is the reason why we are winning. It’s a team effort,” said Fantozzi. “The twins (Jordan and Taylor Noble) are phenomenal forwards, but without the rest of them they’re not going to be phenomenal by themselves. It is all of us who are doing this — from me, to the two assistant coaches that are helping out, to all the girls — we are a team. We work together. We win as a team, we lose as a team and we tie as a team.”
Knowing it could now win games and championships, Boyne City wanted to take the next step and bolstered its schedule this season. The Ramblers already have played, and beaten, much larger schools such as Traverse City Central and Alpena. They also have a match next month against Freeland, the Division 3 runner-up last year.
“That was one of our first steps this season was to get some highly-competitive games that pushed the envelope, that shook things up a little bit,” said Fantozzi. “We can pick up nonconference games and say, ‘Oh, we want to pad our record,’ but we’re really trying to pick up as many games that push us past our limits, put us out of our box of comfort.”
It’s all in an effort to perhaps add more championships to the board on the gymnasium wall; the program finally was able to attain a board detailing the school’s girls soccer titles when it won a league crown. The Ramblers are looking to repeat in the Lake Michigan Conference as well as win postseason hardware. Last year Boyne City saw its season end in heartbreaking fashion with a 2-1 overtime setback to Harbor Springs in the District Final. That loss came after it had beaten the Rams twice during the regular season.
“To be cut short on our season was very hard,” said Harmeling. “We were all very upset. It was really hard all around. That loss has given us something to work toward this year.”
The Ramblers don’t just want to stop at a District title, either. They feel they have what it takes to make noise even longer than that.
It’s quite a contrast from just a few years ago, but it’s also made some of the older members of the team appreciate the prosperity they are now enjoying.
“It’s a phenomenal feeling to go from being on that team where we didn’t play very well and we didn’t have very much talent on our team — we worked hard but we didn’t have much talent — to progressing to being a senior and a leader on this team where we have the potential to go very far,” said Hauger. “It’s just a really cool feeling to see the evolution of the Boyne City soccer program.”
Chris Dobrowolski has covered northern Lower Peninsula sports since 1999 at the Ogemaw County Herald, Alpena News, Traverse City Record-Eagle and currently as sports editor at the Antrim Kalkaska Review since 2016. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Boyne City's Jaelyn Jarema (4) works to maintain possession against Grayling this spring. (Middle) Inanna Hauger (7) finds an opening to move the ball ahead against Kalkaska. (Photos by Sports in Motion.)