Ben Murphy
Sports Scene
Despite seeing his Midland High School soccer team’s season come to end at the hands of the H.H. Dow Chargers in a 1-0 district semi-final loss, Chemics head coach Bill Ripke isn’t going to forget that it was a good season.
“It was just two good teams going at it, and it was decided in overtime,” the coach said. “I’m not upset at all, I don’t think the guys are either. Someone has to win it, and unfortunately it wasn’t us. The guys battled right up until the last second on the clock. Plus we had a terrific season.”
That terrific season included going 19-3-1 on the year, and a perfect 8-0 in the Saginaw Valley League, claiming the Chemics first league crown since 2009.
“We started a weight lifting program combined with the other sports,” Ripke said, giving a reason for the team’s strong year. “That was fun to see, there was about 110 kids coming in and lifting, and a lot of them were our soccer guys. It was everybody, they all showed up and were committed to that.
Midland did not just go undefeated in league play, they dominated opposing conference teams, scoring 38 goals while giving up just two.
“I think that the season surprised a lot of people, we didn’t have that many seniors,” Ripke said. “The second day of school we had our second league game [a 3-2 win against Dow], and we just started rolling. That was a tremendous game. A lot of times, whoever wins that game usually ends up winning the Valley, and it proved to be that way again this year.”
On top of winning the league, the coach also enjoyed beating two schools from the Big North Conference.
“One of our big highlights was winning our two games against the Traverse City teams,” Ripke said. “That was big, I don’t think we’ve ever done that before.”
While the Chemics had just six seniors, they also had three freshmen on the team, all of whom had an impact.
“All of those freshmen had a goal or an assist,” Ripke said. “That’s another thing, we had a lot of different guys through the season that scored goals or had assists.”
The Chemics will have to replace only six seniors next season, which leaves Ripke confident that his squad will again be in contention for the SVL crown in 2012.
“We have some big shoes to fill next year, but we have some guys that are ready and able to do that,” he said. “We’re going to have three of the starting fullbacks back and Ryan Sugnet, he was a good keeper last year, he jumped a big level this year, and I expect him to go to another level next year. They just didn’t give up many goals.”