We had a great day for soccer on Saturday as we made preparations for our NCCAA II Midwest Region final against Northland Baptist. There was a strong wind, but it was sunny and dry. We had a great night's rest the night before. We were treated very well at the AmericInn in Iron Mountain. We slept five men to a room. A great bonding experience. Most of the players employed the use of hot and cold treatments - going from the whirlpool to the regular pool and back again every 6 to 7 minutes - to rejuvinate tired legs from the 2OT victory against Moody that daty. Dan Reid, as our unofficial trainer, spent a busy night dealing with strains, pulls and several ankles that needed attention.
We had a great continental breakfast the next morning, some of the men had to take a quiz for Old and New Testament classes at the hotel and we left for NBBC. We arrived about two hours prior to kick-off and we took 5 minute to check out field conditions: the turfwas a little loose and there were some pretty good sized divots in front of each net, but other wise pretty good for late October in northern WI.
The match turned out to be a physical, see-saw battle. We scored first when Tim Reinert headed in a cross from Hollenbeck, but NBBC countered a few minutes later with a goal of their own. After our goal, the rest of the coaching staff and I figured we would need to score about three more to have a chance in this match. They have a very potent attack. Next, Northland scored on a free kick from outside the penalty area. We countered with a penalty kick by Hollenbeck after Andrew Solarek was pulled down in the box. Northland broke the tie and eventually led by two goals at 4-2. I was afraid that things were going to get out of hand.
But our team held fast, with everyone giving everything they had and with about 5 minutes to go, Hollenbeck pulled a great move on the right goal line, dribbled near post and beat the keeper on a great ball on the ground. For the last five minutes we mounted several strong attacks, but the Northland defense held strong.
Final score 4-3.
I can't say enough good things about how our men responed to adversity and played as a team against really strong odds. My greatest prayer is that they transfer that same intensity and strength of character to dealing with the challenges of life and ministry.
Our four year seniors, Kaminski and Reinert both had great games. Both of them started and played almost every minute of every match this year. I believe that Kaminski will be the all-time leader in GK minutes played and they will have one of the winningest four year records in quite some time.
I will have to look at the books, but I am curious to know the last team to score more than three goals at Northland - much less the last NCCAA II team. Here was our starting line-up for that match. Each of the men are to be commended:
Kaminski*
Riffel
Oliver
Esgar*
T. Solarek
E. Callan
Hollenbeck*
Reinert
Board
White
A. Solarek*
*All-Midwest Region team.
Five of our starters have had brothers play for the Maranatha soccer team and the last time that Maranatha defeated Northland, there was a Solarek and a Callan on the squad.
In 1996, the Maranatha men's team had a great game against Moody Bible that went into double OT. We eventually lost in the seventh round of penalty kicks. Jason Boe had an unbelievable game in the net. Alumni from that era always talk about that match when we get together.
The same scenario replayed itself today. We entered the match after a sub-par performance against Marian College on Tuesday. Moody came to regionals with almost two weeks of rest. Both teams play well. Moody took the lead on a break away goal. We think he was off-side. . . but the call was not made.
MBBC 0 Moody 1
Several minutes later, Brett Hollenbeck made a brilliant move at the top of the box and hit a bending shot inside the left post with his left foot. One of the best goals I've seen all year.
MBBC 1 Moody 1
Shortly before half-time, Andrew Solarek was taken down in the box and Hollenbeck scored again on a penalty kick.
MBBC 2 Moody 1
After halftime, Moody came out with a strong push and we struggled with organization. In the chaos, one of our ow player tried to clear a ball out of our box and unfortunately hit a teammate. The rebound went right into the net for an own goal.
MBBC 2 Moody 2
This score held and we went to overtime. I was just hoping that we could keep our legs under us. We have had quite a few matches in a short period of time - and three out of our last four matches have gone to extra time. We are not particularly deep at the moment without the services of Marino or Hale. I don't think that I have subbed anyone on the back line for a month it seems like. But the men kept playing their hearts out. Moody carried play for most of the first overtime period as exhaustion began to affect us to a greater extent. Bryan Oliver went down after a hard hit, but stayed in the match. Toward the end off the first overtime, we were able to attack a bit more and Jarid Lawson who had replaced Everett Callan, began to hit a few crosses from the right midfield position.
One minute into overtime, Bryan Oliver passed out to Jarid on the right side. Jarid took the ball forward and drove a cross to the far side, where Dave Esgar, our left defender was there to head the ball into the net for the win. It was the second time in three games that Esgar has had the gamewinning header in overtime.
All the men gave everything they had. Andrew Solarek was unable to finish but kept the Moody defense on the run the whole game. Reinert slowed down the Moody attack in the midde, Riffel shut down attackers in his corner and Board gave us great possession in the middle. White, Huber, Jochum, Deiss and Foy all gave us quality minutes off the bench.
But we have a big one tomorrow at 1 pm: Northland Baptist. -C
One of the objectives of the Maranatha Soccer program is to produce young men and women who can coach soccer and disciple young people at the same time. Whenever possible, we like to highlight alumni who have moved on to the coaching ranks and who are coaching with an eternal mindset.
I did not coach Jason Boe. I was his teammate for a time - you might remember him from the Top 11 Men post from a year or so ago. For several years now, Jason has been the head men's soccer coach in Minooka, IL. Here is a news article about how his team is advancing through the playoffs. It is a good story and we wish Jason and his team all the best. In the article, Jason has an opportunity to reference his faith in Christ in a public way. I am certain that even though Jason is coaching soccer in a secular setting, his players know for Whom he lives:
"This is business for us," Minooka coach Jason Boe said. "We're not surprised by this win. Even though we upset Bloom, it's not a surprise to us. Because we know what type of players we have on our team, the leadership that we have, the ability that God's given us. And it's not a surprise. We're basically telling the world, 'We're here. Welcome to our world.' "
Susie on the left, Lindsey on the right. Lindsey will hate me for that picture, but she knows that she is still my all-time favorite player. (By the way, shortly before this picture, she had just scored her first collegiate goal with three minutes remaining in the match, on Parent's Day, in her final home game as a senior.)
I'm terrible at birthdays, so the rest of you should not expect a mention. I only have to remember one birthday a year and on April 27th. However, when Susie was on our team, she remembered everyone with a card - even though she was the busiest person on campus - choir, band, orchestra, work, soccer, local church ministry, ministry society, etc. So I thought she deserves a post.
Wish Susie (Ferris) Yuen a happy birthday with an email to ferrismusic at gmail dot com. I think it was actually yesterday the 23rd. If you haven't seen pics from her wedding yet, click here.
If you would like to write a post recognizing another MBBC soccer player's birthday, you can write it in an email or Word document, send it to jcaucutt at mbbc dot edu, I will edit it, and post it. Even anonymously if you so desire. - C
After the women's game on Saturday in River Forest, IL, our ladies team was invited to the home of Laura and Tony Shaver who live about five minutes (depending on traffic) from CUC. They have a cozy apartment into which we squeezed (not a fat joke) 23 players, 2 coaches, 4 soccer alums, and 3 soccer alumni husbands - two of them are actually football alums. They dont' really know what is going on, but we like them at games because they make a lot of noise. They served pizza, veggies and lots of desert. It was a great time for me to catch up with some former players and a chance for our current players to meet them.
We had five members of the starting line-up from our 2003 squad that won 13 games in attendance: Jen Adam, Hayley McGrail, Laura (Frazee) Shaver, Kim (Gavitt) Terpstra and Angie (Fenstermacher) Aulph. It is really difficult to keep up with the name changes sometimes, but I am doing better - we did decide that Angie will always be "Fenster". We also argued about who was a better player: Melissa or Laura. We had a great time of fellowship - we just wished we could have added a victory to the evening. . .
The last few days have brought a lot of contact with alumni. Some of whom have donated for the Women's soccer nationals trip. I don't want to embarrass any of them, but here are some email excerpts:
Wow, I cannot believe how many life-lessons, exciting memories, solid, godly friendships and an assemblance of decent health I can attribute to Maranatha
Soccer!
I am so excited for you guys getting to go to the tournament! That is absolutely awesome...wish I was going =) I can't afford much, but I want to do what I can to help the team since the time I was on the team made a huge impact on my life.
The women's team experienced another tough loss against conference opponent Concordia-Chicago last Saturday. We are really struggling to put the ball in the net. It has been five games since we have put the ball in the net during the run of play. We have "scored" several times and had goals called back because of off-side, fouls, out-of-bounds, ball-over-the-line-but-the-ref-didn't-see-it, and on Saturday, Julie was taken down in the box, the foul was whistled, but the referee pointed the wrong way and awarded the other team a free kick instead of giving Julie the pk.
Really.
It happened.
The referee told Julie later that a mistake had been made.
Anyway the girls have continued to push hard. We are still young and talented. One of these days, our talent is going to burst out.
Wow. The men's team pulled off quite a victory on Saturday.
We came out flat against an opponent that had a similar record as we did. Sometimes it is easy to come out flat after a game like last Thursday, when we took one of the top teams in the conference, Edgewood, to double OT before succumbing to a deflection off of one of our defenders that ended up in the net.
We gave up a goal early in the first half simply because we were not playing with much intensity. The men are a little banged up right now. Hollenbeck missed all but ten minutes of the Edgewood match and only played 60 minutes against CUC, several other starters are playing through fairly significant pain - although that is fairly normal for this time of year. The men stayed disciplined, stuck with our system and began to have some success, even though we were unable to put anything in the net. We put 11 shots on goal and with a minute left and CUC in our half, it looked like the match was over. We were finally able to muster one last push up the field and things got a little crazy. CUC managed a high clear to our left side, in their end, the ball was way up in the air and looked like it was going to go out of bounds on that sideline. A play out of bounds at that point, would have probably ended the match. But Timothy Solarek caught up to it and gave the ball kind of a little bicycle kick back over his head in the general direction of the CUC goalmouth.
His brother Andrew gave the ball a little touch to the right post, where Dave Esgar, our left defender was crashing the goal. Dave took the ball at full speed and just managed to cut the ball back behind the goalkeeper without running into the post and before running out of bounds. There were 14 seconds left in the match when we scored the tying goal.
Seven minutes into overtime, Dave put a header in the net off at corner kick from Hollenbeck.
I'm still recovering. . . - C
Most of you know that the women's team has qualified for the NCCAA II National Tournament in Kissimmee, Florida by defeating Northland earlier this season. Once again, it is the first time that the NCAA III dates have allowed one of the soccer teams to go to this tournament in many years. The tournament dates are November 9-12th in Kissimmee, Fl near Orlando.
Normally, our teams drive to such events, but this year, the college administration is throwing their support behind flying the team to Florida. This will greatly reduce missed classtime and lessen the physical strain that 20+ hours of driving would create. We are extremely thankful for this opportunity, however there is going to be a budget shortfall because the original plan was to drive. We are asking anyone who is interested to make a tax deductible donation toward this effort. Yesterday, the team recieved a pledge of $1,000 from a parent! It was a great email to find in my inbox and we are on the verge of booking the flights.
Will you give to send the Maranatha Women's Soccer Team to the NCCAA II national tournament? We will be representing you. All donors will recieve an MBBC soccer t-shirt and sackpack. If you or your business is interested, please contact me by email: jcaucutt at mbbc dot edu or cell: 920 248 8034.
. . . and the guys get a chance to earn the trip next weekend at Northland! - C
Check out reports and pictures from the MBBC Praisemen. What does this have to do with soccer? Two of the men are former MBBC soccer players: Jon Bennett and Geoffrey Stertz.
The men's team is on a three game winning streak. Last night on our home field, we defeated Lakeland College for the first time since 2001. We have faced a great deal of adversity this year with injuries to key players and a lack of experience, but the young men keep trying to get better. Hollenbeck had four goals last night and two assists on Monday. An unbelievable week for him and we still have another match yet to play. Read more here.
Our defense is really solid right now and our offense is beginning to click. We haven't won a championship or qualified for the playoffs (1-3-0 NAC, 5-7 overall), but winning is fun - especially for our four year seniors: Aaron Hale, Dan Kaminski and Tim Reinert.
Pray that we stay healthy and continue to walk with God. - C
Lot's of good men's soccer pictures here. Some of the best are near the middle of the slideshow - from our match against MSOE. My favorites include: 21 (orange socks), 34, 48, 53, 83, 119, 121, 145, 166, 181, 194, 201, 207, 278, 282, 284, 285, 287.
Lot's of good women's soccer pictures here. My favorites include: 33, 38, 48, 52 (some of you remember my post about the photogenic abilities of Bryan Oliver), 57, 62, 79, 149, and 154.
Let me know which ones you like.
The men travelled to Lake Forest College on Monday night for our last non-conference match of the season. LFC are members of the tough Midwest Conference and while they're record was not that great, they play a very difficult schedule. We started the game a little flat - it always takes us a while to get used to field turf, but we managed to not give up any goals during the first half. That is the difference between last year's team and this year's team. We have not had a huge upsurge in talent, but we are able to shut teams out - even when we are not playing our best. In 2006, I think we gave up a goal in the first 15 minutes in 3/4's of our games.
The score was 0-0 at half-time, but our men came out very strong at the beginning of the second half. Even though we were controlling play, LF managed to spring a break-away that resulted in their first goal. We did not let down, however and a couple of minutes later, Reinert finished a very nice cross from Hollenbeck and Solarek stuck the ball in the net from the left side off another feed from Hollenbeck. The end of the game was pretty crazy, but we made the final score, 2-1 stand up. This was a good win for us. We have been floundering a bit over that last few weeks as we adjusted our formation after Josh Marino went down for the season with an injury. Our midfield defense is improving and we are retraining some of our bad possession habits that we fell into in blow-out wins over Great Lakes and Lincoln Christian.
The women's team came into last night's match against Marian College with a 5-5 record, 3-2 in conference. MC was also 5-5, 3-3 in conference. A very big game with playoff implications. Unfortunately, we were bit by the "finishing bug". We controlled the match, outshot them (12 shots on goal, 22 total), but could not seem to put anything away. Kutz, Nichols, Jones, Dow, Collogan and others all had great chances, but we could not shake the net. The match went to OT and we controlled play once again, but shortly into overtime a MC player struck a nice ball with the wind that went into the corner of our net, just out of Barb's reach to give them the win.
This is the kind of loss that sticks with you for a few days. Our team has a lot of potential and we look forward to improving even further over the next couple of weeks. - C
