New Novi Champion Goes Even Bigger
June 15, 2019
By Jason Schmitt
Special for Second Half
EAST LANSING – Scoring goals in a championship game is never easy.
But Novi sure made it look that way in Saturday’s Division 1 title game at DeMartin Stadium. The Wildcats had four players score at least once – including senior Jessie Bandyk, who netted two – and cruised past Plymouth, 5-0, to take home their second straight Finals championship.
The five goals were the most that have been scored in a Division 1 championship game.
“These seniors, knowing that this was their last game, they were given a gift,” Novi head coach Todd Pheiffer said. “When you start the state tournament, you never know when your last practice is going to be. You show up for the game the next day, you hope you win and get to practice the next day. When you get to the state championship game, you know when it’s your last practice.”
There will be no more practices this season for the Wildcats – nor games. There’s nothing left to prove. Novi wrapped up an unbeaten season, finishing 28-0-1, becoming just the second team in state history – along with Hudsonville Unity Christian in 2006 – to win 28 games and finish unbeaten.
Despite Saturday’s dominating offensive showing, Pheiffer spent a lot of time after the game praising his defense.
“I cannot tell you how proud I am of my back four,” said the coach, speaking about senior Lauren Calhoun, juniors Nevada Larson and Sarah Katinas and sophomore Eva Burns. “My back four defenders, my goalkeepers, they just pride themselves every single game about limiting the other team’s shots and giving up no goals.”
The Wildcats allowed just eight goals this season and picked up 23 shutouts – the second most in state history. On Saturday, they allowed just five shots, two on goal. They outshot Plymouth 25-5.
Junior Avery Fenchel scored the first goal of the game for Novi, off a pass from Katinas, just before the midway point in the first half. Katinas slid a pass through a pair of Plymouth defenders, finding Fenchel, who made a stop-move to her right before shooting back left near post to beat the goalkeeper for a 1-0 lead.
The game stayed that way until the final three minutes of the half. That’s when Novi senior Lexi Whalen took a long pass from Fenchel and dribbled to her left to set up a 20-yard strike to make it 2-0.
The Wildcats would add three more goals in the second half to pull away for the win – their third over Plymouth this season. Senior Julia Stadtherr poked in a pass from junior Michelle Jecmen to make it 3-0 with just under 28 minutes left in the game. Bandyk then did her magic over the game’s final 26 minutes.
“We came into this game like it was the first time we had played (Plymouth), and we gave it everything we had,” said Bandyk, who scored both of her goals off passes from Stadtherr. “Speaking as a senior, this was our last 80 minutes playing high school soccer. We all gave it our all, and we just connected and put the ball in the back of the net.”
Freshman Sammy Maday made two saves in goal for Novi. Sophomore Abbey Pheiffer, the team’s regular starter who was injured prior to the start of the tournament, finished up the game in goal to share in the shutout.
Plymouth’s struggles started early, as during the first half it was outshot 15-1 and did not put a shot on goal.
“We played them a lot tougher the last two times. But they’re a strong team,” Plymouth head coach Jeff Neschich said. “When we got down, we kind of lost our composure.”
Plymouth had just two shots on goal, those coming off the feet of senior Kennedy White and junior Lily Tiplady during the second half. The Wildcats finished the season 19-5-1. They had a wild postseason run which included a pair of comeback victories.
“We had two playoff games where we came from two goals down to tie them up and eventually win them (Canton and Troy),” Neschich said. “We couldn’t keep pulling the rabbit out of the hat. But the accomplishments they had were incredible. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Novi has now won seven Division 1 titles, all since 2005, and is a perfect 7-0 in its championship game appearances. The Wildcats were ranked No. 1 all season by the Michigan High School Soccer Coaches Association.
“All we kept hearing at the beginning of the year was, ‘They’re the defending champ, everyone wants to knock you off,’” Todd Pheiffer said. “We graduated 10 seniors from last year’s team. We are not the same team as last year. We had a good corps coming back, some great senior leadership back, but we were a different team. This was about these girls winning their state championship. I’m just so proud of how this team’s played all year long.”
PHOTOS: Novi keeper Sammy Maday sends the ball downfield during the Division 1 Final on Saturday. (Middle) Novi's Lexi Whalen (12) and Plymouth's Audrey Kananen work to get possession.
Buckley Girls Soccer Back, Dreaming Big Again
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
April 30, 2021
When you sign up to play soccer at Buckley High School, you just don’t join a team. You get a chance to become family and make history.
And, bet on being welcomed into the den.
That’s always been true under coaches John Vermilya and Ryan Jones, who built a single co-ed team into a Division 4 boys soccer contender toward the end of the last decade.
Buckley then added a girls program as well in 2019 – and this spring, with soccer back and players leading the way who were part of the co-ed team’s success and girls team’s start, history-making aspirations are alive again.
“Jonesy and I always tell them, ‘We love you as people more than we love you as players,’” stressed Vermilya, who serves as head coach for both teams. “And, especially before big games, we have them look us in the eyes and say no matter what happens ... win, lose or draw ... we love you.
“Whether you perform well or don’t perform well when you join our team, you join our family.”
And it was family — his own — that got Vermilya back into coaching in 2013. Buckley struggled its first few years under Vermilya, including a winless season. But, after ending that 2013 season in the District Final against a storied Leland program, Buckley has reached Regionals multiple times and even advanced to the Division 4 Semifinals in 2017. No Buckley soccer team had made it that far before.
Vermilya, a former college and professional soccer player, had been on the coaching staff of the Charlotte Eagles USSL pro team and head-coached Buckley in the early 2000s. The Bears varsity boys leadership slot opened up again as his daughter, Isabell, entered high school.
“She’s the reason I am in coaching today,” Vermilya acknowledged. “She came home from school in the eighth grade in May and said to me, ‘Dad, I just found out girls can play on the boys team so I am playing boys soccer next fall.’
“I knew the coaching position was vacant, so if my daughter is going to play I am going back to coaching.”
Vermilya treated all the Bears like family, but especially his daughters. Isabell played four years at Buckley and went on to college soccer. Daughter Lily played four years and recorded two goals and three assists in boys competition. Daughter Sophie is in her fourth year playing for the Bears. Youngest daughter Gabrielle is a freshman on the girls varsity this spring.
The girls team started as a club in the Spring of 2018. The Bears went 4-6-2 in 2019, their first official year, losing to Houghton Lake in their first-ever District game. (The Lakers went on to the Regional Final.)
The girls are off to a 1-4 start heading into tonight’s conference game with a rebuilding Kingsley team. But they stand perched to make history. COVID-19 took away the junior seasons for the current seniors, and this spring they’re hoping to win their first-ever District match. The Bears are hosting the District tournament and also have thoughts of winning the title. Big Rapids Crossroads Academy, Hart, Mason County Central, and McBain Northern Michigan Christian also will be in that field.
Twin sisters Jordan and Taylor Emery earned Regional championship medals as freshmen along with Sophie Vermilya. Buckley had eight girls on that co-ed team, including one of John Vermilya’s assistant coaches today, Joy Nolf.
The three girls remaining as part of this season’s team will never forget their start in high school soccer.
“It was super cool because nobody at Buckley (had) made it that far before,” noted Taylor Emery. “The boys basketball team also made it that same year.
“It was something being able to be a part of one of the teams (at) Buckley (that) made history.”
Known in Buckley’s history as the “Fab 5,” Austin Harris, Joey Weber, Denver Cade, Brock Beeman and Ridge Beeman led Buckley on the 2017 run that included shootout wins in the Regionals. They set a school record with 20 wins. That group also led the Bears boys basketball team to the 2017 and 2018 Class D Finals.
“When you play with the boys all those years, you don’t think you’re a very good player,” Sophie Vermilya admitted. “But then you play with the girls, you find out you are actually a pretty decent player.”
Jordan Emery enjoyed her time with the boys team but is thrilled Buckley now has enough girls for a team.
“Guys and girls play completely different,” she pointed out. “When you’re watching you don’t realize it, but when you play it (you) see a really big difference and you feel a really big difference.
“I was just super happy to see all the girls come out, get together and put a team together for the first time.”
Coach Vermilya has only four other players with experience on this year’s girls squad, but they are all very coachable. He loves coaching boys, but finds the girls even more rewarding.
“What I find with the girls is they are way more apt to play soccer properly than boys are,” he said. “You usually only have to tell girls once what you want the shape of the team to look like or how you want them to play, and maybe a reminder.
“In a lot of ways it is much more rewarding to coach them because the vision the coach has of how (he) wants them to play, they’ll go out and execute that to the best of their ability.”
Vermilya, who played soccer as a kid in Haiti and in college at Indiana Wesleyan University, has five children with his wife, Darcy. He is likely to get a chance to coach his son, Benjamin, who played on Buckley’s middle school team this fall.
Tom Spencer is a longtime MHSAA-registered basketball and soccer official, and former softball and baseball official, and he also has coached in the northern Lower Peninsula area. He previously has written for the Saginaw News, Bay County Sports Page and Midland Daily News. 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: Buckley is led by seniors Taylor Emery (2), Sophie Vermilya (18) and Jordan Emery (13), with head coach John Vermilya (far left) and assistant Joy Nolf. (Photos by Tom Spencer.)