Gladwin Soccer at a Fever Pitch
Even before the season was over, Gladwin soccer coach Jerome Smalley was ready to put his stamp of approval on it.
“I’ve had some good teams in the past,” said Smalley, who has been running the show for the Flying G’s since 2003, “but this is our best. We’re breaking all of the school records for scoring and defense, we won our league championship, and we’re looking forward to making a run in the state tournament.”
Gladwin finished atop the South Division of the Northern Michigan Soccer League to qualify for the league tournament. The Flying G’s then buried Northern Michigan Christian Academy, 8-0, in the semifinal round and blanked North Division champion Roscommon, 4-0, in the final.
Neither team scored in the first half of the championship game, but Keagen Hover took over in the second half, staking the winners to a 3-0 lead with a natural hat trick.
“We came out a little slow,” Smalley said. “We are a good passing team, but we were making some little mistakes. We settled down after awhile, and I’d say we controlled the first half, but we couldn’t score. We finally broke through about 10 minutes into the second half on a wonderful goal by Keagen.
“I was actually happy with a 1-0 lead, because we really weren’t letting them have any shots at all, but then Keagen scored two more, and we were able to let everybody get into the game after that.”
Hover’s hat trick gave him a total of 33 goals for the season. Sophomore Ryan Wisniewski had 34 goals heading into the district tournament, and those two shooters created all that havoc without the assistance of senior Jacob Garafalo, who is the school’s all-time leading scorer with 119 goals. Garafalo scored 20 before being sidelined with an injury this year and is working his way back into the lineup.
Senior center midfielder Tyler Boylen has played a major role in creating the fireworks, while sweeper Konner Russell leads the defense in front of record-breaking goalie Mason Nash.
“Tyler is as good a center mid as I’ve ever coached,” said Smalley, “and Konner is an excellent defensive player. We give him a lot of responsibility back there.
“We tend to control the ball and limit the other teams’ ability to get shots, but when we need it, we have a very good defense, and Mason will have all of our records for goalkeeping when he leaves here.”
The win over Roscommon gave Nash 12 shutouts this season and 28 for his career. Both are school records, along with his career total of 45 victories.
The victory gave Gladwin a 12-0 record in league play and an overall mark of 18-4.
Same Old Story For Young Clare Runners
A pack of new runners followed an old, familiar path to victory, when the Clare boys cross country team won the Jack Pine Conference championship for the eighth year in a row.
The Pioneers have only one senior in their top five, but they still swept all three of the league’s jamborees this season to run away with the crown again.
“This is one of the youngest teams I’ve had,” said coach Adam Burhans, “but all of these kids have been in our program for awhile, and they understand the tradition we’ve established here. They understand that we love to win, and that we love to win the right way.
“We’ve got five of the better freshmen that you can find on any one team in the state, but they all run like veterans, because they’ve been in our program for awhile. The guys on this team are all extremely coachable, and every one of them has been progressing nicely through the season.”
The Pioneers packed their top seven runners into the top 16 at the final jamboree and finished atop the charts with 36 points. Meridian was a distant second with 73, followed by Beaverton with 78, Gladwin with 93, and Farwell with 135. Houghton Lake and Roscommon each finished with 140.
Junior Ben Haupt was first in a time of 17:35, with sophomore Jimmy Teall second in 17:55, to lead the way for the champions. Chase Field, the lone senior on the squad, was ninth in 19:00. The freshmen checked in after that, with Jayce Miller 10th in 19:03, Aidan Boyd 14th in 19:14, David Good 15th in 19:24, and Charlie Brown 16th in 19:37. Junior Scotty Baldwin was 17th in 19:38.
The end of the league season sends the Pioneers into the stretch run, with the Division 3 regional set for Halloween at Manistee National Golf & Resort and the state meet the following Saturday at Michigan International Speedway.
Clare knows the way. “We’ve finished in the top 10 in the state three times in he past few years,” said Burhans, “and our obvious goal is to get as many guys as we can through the regional and take them to the state finals.”
The Pioneers had three seniors in the top seven last year and big ideas of winning it all at MIS, but wound up in eighth place.
That’s the way it goes in Division 3, where anything can, and does, happen.
“I thought we had as good a shot as anyone else of being up on the podium last season,” said Burhans, “but for whatever reason, everyone agrees that Division 3 is one of the most difficult in the state. There are probably 10 teams or so that are carbon copies of each other. We all show up at the same camps and clinics and there is a great deal of mutual respect.”
All of which means there isn’t much margin for error. “One slip, and you can move up five or six spots in the team standings, or down three or four spots,” Burhans said. “It’s no surprise. We all accept that, and we feel that if we can finish in the top 10, we’ll have had a very good season.”
Clare’s youth movement was followed by the bulk of its local rivals. Meridian’s best finisher at the jamboree was sophomore Zach Grubaugh, who finished third in 17:59. Junior Daylen Garver ran fourth for Farwell in 18:01. Gladwin’s top runner was junior Jack Pellerito, who was fifth in 18:12. Beaverton sophomores Graham Govitz and Parker Hayes took the next two spots, with Govitz sixth in 18:41 and Hayes seventh in 18:53.
Harrison Hopes Experience Counts
A wall came down last fall when the Harrison football team qualified for the playoffs for the first time in 15 years. The Hornets and their fans whooped it up, but the party ended quickly with a 30-21 loss to Calumet in the first round.
Harrison beat Beaverton 31-21 for its sixth victory to clinch a spot in this year’s postseason tournament, and the idea is to build on the lessons learned last fall.
“There was a lot of excitement in the community last year when we finally got in,” said coach Mike Petrongelli. “We’re excited about making it the second time in a row, too, but now we think we know how to handle the experience.
“It’s a learning process for the players and the coaches. When you haven’t been there, it can be difficult to handle things emotionally.
“Football is football when it comes to what you’re trying to do physically out on the field. What can make all the difference in the bigger games is how you prepare mentally. Hopefully, the experience of making it last year will help us out in the coming weeks.”
In the first eight weeks of the regular season, Harrison’s only losses were a 33-32 overtime battle with Lake City in the opener and a 30-8 setback at the hands of rampaging Meridian.
The offense has been led by senior Kenny Haskell, who took over as the starting quarterback this fall and has done an outstanding job directing a powerful rushing attack. “We run the Power T, and he’s been doing a nice job,” said Petrongelli. “He’s not really fast, but he’s quick, and he’s been one of our top rushers.”
Senior halfback Blayne Fowler has also been running the ball well, but nobody in the lineup would exactly light up a fantasy football scoreboard with his individual statistics. “We rotate quite a few guys in and out and share the wealth,” said Petrongelli. “When people want to talk about stats, none of our guys have huge numbers, but three or four of them have been running really well.
“That’s a tribute to our linemen. Those guys are the heart of our team, and we are very fortunate to have some great, hard-working kids up front on both sides of the ball.”
The headliners on defense include senior Jarod Given, who calls the shots from his spot at middle linebacker, defensive end Steven Scherrer, linebacker Brent Veite, junior cornerback Justin Wilson, and Fowler, who does an excellent job at safety.
“Last year, we went into the playoffs with a good group of athletes who were big and strong,” said Petrongelli. “We had a good football team then; we have the same kind of guys this year, and looking down through the classes, it looks like we are going to continue to be tough for years to come.”
Looking Ahead is a No-No, but…
The one thing everyone is sports wants to avoid is “looking ahead.” No one ever wants to get caught taking an upcoming opponent for granted, so all of those cliches about taking things “one game at a time” will never disappear from the athletic vernacular.
But still…The Meridian football team has blazed its way into the Division 6 playoffs with a senior-dominated team that has known since the final gun sounded on last year that this year was its big chance to do something special.
Regardless of who the Mustangs meet in the first round, they are determined to improve on last season’s disappointing loss to Pine River in the second round, and that means they need to be ready for the possibility of facing a team that may have the most impressive record in the nation over the past several years – Ithaca.
Meridian coach Mike Bilina isn’t looking past anyone, but he knows for sure that, if his team holds up its end of the bargain, it is more than likely to run into a squad that had a 69-game winning streak snapped in the state championship game last year and that seems to be off and running on another.
“With our proximity to Ithaca, we realize that we are going to see them sooner, rather than later,” said Bilina. “This year’s team has the talent and the heart to make a run, and we understand that, to be the best, we have to beat the best, and they look like a very good football team again this year.”
The Mustangs ran into Ithaca in the first round two years ago and were dispatched, 36-0.
“It was only 17-0 at halftime, but then they put some drives together and wore us down and rolled us pretty good,” Bilina said. “We have three kids starting for us now who played in that game and a group of guys who were on the sidelines that we called up to watch.
“It’s not a new concept for these kids, that Ithaca is close to us, and we better be ready if we run into them again.”
Meridian won the first eight games of the regular season by an average score of 41-16, and the key was speed.
Senior quarterback Christian Petre did not start his first game as a freshman but has been under center ever since. He is a state champion in the 100-meter dash, an all-state baseball player, and a lightning bolt on the gridiron.
Petre headed into the final week of the regular season with 799 rushing yards with nine touchdowns and another 1,040 passing yards with 12 touchdowns.
“His speed is something that is extremely rare,” said Bilina, “and he’s been a captain the past two years, so he is also a good leader.
“But what really makes us a threat is that we have a lot of talented guys surrounding him. We’ve had eight different guys score touchdowns, and three of them have scored double-digit touchdowns.”
Running back Matthew Hoffman rushed for 12 touchdowns, while slot receiver Miles LeViere ran for six scores and caught six more touchdown passes.
Bilina said he has a special perspective on his team’s offensive weaponry. “I am the defensive coordinator,” he said, “and every week I enjoy the fact that I don’t have to game-plan against us. You can almost always figure out a way to stop one guy, but we have a lot of other options.”
He also enjoys an ability to take a chance here and there when he calls the defense.
“We have been able to get away with a lot of stuff this year,” he said. “We’ve been more aggressive in blitz packages and things like that, because we know we can make mistakes and still not give up big plays because of our speed.”
Beavers Win Race for Second Place
With perennial power Roscommon rolling over its rivals with a perfect record, the tightest race in the Jack Pine Conference volleyball standings this fall was for second place, and Beaverton won it.
The Beavers were swept in their first meeting with Roscommon but managed to take one set the next time around. They beat everyone else to wind up alone in second place.
“Roscommon went to the Final Four last year, and they’ve won so much up there that they have developed an expectation for winning,” said Beaverton coach Steve Evans. “They graduated a lot of players, but they tend to reload real well.
“Gladwin took them to four sets, and we did it the second time we played them. We beat them, 25-17, in the second set, and the third was really close, but they won it late. We couldn’t bounce back from that. If we had won it, maybe it would have been a different story.”
Beaverton hosted Gladwin in the final battle for the silver medal in the standings. The Beavers needed five sets to win the first meeting between the rivals but swept to a 25-16, 25-18, 25-18 victory in the rematch.
“We watched film and made some adjustments,” said Evans. “We took away some of the things they like to do, and we executed very well. We stopped their offense and attacked the flaws in their defense effectively.
“It seemed like we caught them off guard. We went after them aggressively and never let them get any momentum.”
Lia Andrews had a big night with 10 kills, two aces, and 14 digs.
Mercedes Parker-Urban served up four aces and put up 17 digs. She took over over the libero spot after team MVP Karly Longstreth was sidelined with an ACL injury.
The win left Beaverton with an overall mark of 34-11, which tied the school record for wins. “Getting to 34 wins is pretty exciting with this group,” said Evans. “With Karly getting hurt, we’ve got four seniors and six sophomores on the varsity and there was a lot of uncertainty heading into the season, so this has already been a great year.”
There is more to come, including a potential third shot at Roscommon in the district tournament. “If we can make it to the finals, they will probably be there,” Evans said. “We have won some big matches and beaten some big teams, but we have never won the league, and we have never won a district. We need to get over that hump.”
Which means that they have to beat Roscommon. “I think we gained some confidence in that last loss,” Evans said. “As soon as it was over, the girls wanted to play them again. It will definitely make a big difference for our program if we are able to beat them some day.”
Run Far, Run Well, Run Farwell
The Jack Pine Conference recently held its third and final girls’ cross country jamboree of the season.
Clare won for the third time and Farwell did not post a team score for the third time.
In fact, Farwell had only one name on the results sheet all three times – Contessa Hammond.
The senior formed a one-woman pack for the Eagles and had an outstanding season.
She was third at the first jamboree on her home course at Eagle Glen with a time of 22:02, and she dropped her time to 21:23 and placed fourth at the the second race in Gladwin.
Hammond jumped back up to third in 22:11 at the final league showdown, which was hosted by Harrison .
If past performance is any indication, she isn’t done yet. Hammond finished fourth at last year’s regional at Delta College to qualify for the Division 3 state meet as an individual, where she placed 52nd in a time of 20:23, which was second-best among all Jack Pine Conference representatives.
This year’s regional is slated for Oct. 31 at Manistee National Golf & Resort, and the state meet is the following Saturday at Michigan International Speedway.