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
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
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
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
The women played a great game against a tough conference opponent last weekend. WLC is usually one of our biggest conference rivals going back to the days of Rebekah Himm and Kari Seijkowski (also known as "Psycho") for WLC and Sommer Rodolph and Jen Adam for MBBC. In 2003, we defeated them in regular season play and they spoiled our home playoff game. Every year since then just about every match has been decided by 1 goal:
MBBC 1 WLC 0
WLC 4 MBBC 1
WLC 2 MBBC 1
MBBC 1 WLC 1 2OT
WLC 1 MBBC 0 (MBBC outshot WLC 20 to 7)
MBBC 1 WLC 0
This year was no different as both teams played a tough, phyisical game. For the second year in a row, we held the advantage in possession, but struggled to find the net until Melissa Nichols picked up a ball near midfield, dribbled through about 3 people and just about "willed" the ball into the net. We had strong play out of our midfield, especially Cara Harrisonn who slammed the door shut defensively and Barb Gerlach who earned her first conference shut-out. Our team is relatively healthy right now and we are starting to catch glimpses of the potential of the talent on our squad. We still have a lot of work to do, but we are ready for the challenge.
The men have similarly played a number of close matches with WLC in recent years. Last year's contest featured, physical play, a weather delay, 40+ stitches, lot's of shots by MBBC, but a 2-1 WLC victory. This year's contest showed signs of being another tight match as Maranatha hit the crossbar in the first half on free kick by Hollenbeck and a couple of guys going for the header. The score was 1-0 WLC at halftime and we seemed to be playing okay. WLC scored fairly quickly into the second half to make the score 2-0, but we put together an attack that saw Andrew Solarek hit the right post after a good pass from his brother, Timothy. Then in the 71st minute, everything started to unravel. You can check out the box score here.
We are very injured right now on the men's squad. Joel Smith is still trying to return from his broken arm this summer. Josh Marino had surgery on his elbow yesterday. Steven White, Jarid Lawson, Levi Deiss are all unavailabel due to various tears and pulls. There are also several players playing through their various injuries. Hopefully they do not get worse. -C
Last year, I quit posting half-way through the season. This year, I have determined to do better, but I am already behind. Anyway, the matches at NBBC were a great experience as usual. The ladies defeated the Pioneers 4-1. Melissa Nichols hit the post 2 or 3 times. She has the worst luck of any player I have ever coached, but she still managed to find the back of the net twice. Our possession was better, but we still have a long way to go. I had forgotten what it was like to coach a team this young. I am still excited about our potential. Our first conference match is Thursday against an improved MSOE team.
The men's match was a great game. Tim Reinert led the way with a nice header in the first half off a corner kick by Hollenbeck. Our defense then held strong until the 61st minute when NBBC tied the game 1-1. I would have been very happy with a tie, but we just didn't have the horses to last through double OT. It was a team effort: Andrew Solarek, Timothy Solarek, Shane Foy, Chris Jochum and Levi Deiss were all unavailable for various reasons. Everett Callan, Jarid Lawson, Tim Huber and Dan Reid all came off the bench to record quality minutes. Each of them played double or triple the time that they are used to.
Kaminski recorded 23 saves and had a great game. When he is "on", he is awesome. Our defense over-all, including the midfield played well. We wish we could have lasted another 14 minutes. . . but positive comments about the character and testimony of our young men was mentioned several times by spectators after the match. God was glorified. -C
The women's team struggles continued yesterday against Ashford. We are missing our defensive stopper Angela (Fenstermacher) Aulph and our checking forward, Sarah Beardslee both of whom we we lost to graduation last year. I think we have the talent to replace them, but there is no easy way to make up for experience - other than experience. Freshmen Shannon Delany from New Hampshire and Lisa Collogan from Des Moines, IA continued to show improvement and both will become significant players in future games. We have a quick turn-around with an important match against North Central in Chicago on Tuesday and then three days to work on many of the topics that we missed during preseason. It was nice to see Julie Muse get on the board by converting a PK in the waning minutes of the match even though the final score was unpleasant: 5-1 Ashford.
The men's team played very well in many aspects of our game against Ashford. We had an unfortunate "own goal" in the first half, but we did not back down even though the sun was pretty intense and we had just played a match the night before. Steven White tied the game off an assist from Andrew Solarek late in the second half, but we allowed Ashford to score the game-winner with seven minutes remaining. I still see a number of things that I like about this team. I think we have good team speed and our ability in the air is the best I've seen in my previous three seasons with the men. We look forward to working hard all of this week in preparation for our next match. - C
Both teams played against University of Dubuque today. UD is one of our tougher non-conference opponents and a good early season test. The ladies jumped out to a 1-0 lead on a great hustle goal by Hillary Lockhart from Danville, IL and we led after the first half. The second half was another story as inexperience and poor early season conditioning took its toll. We ended the match with a 5-1 loss and are anxious to move on to the next game tomorrow at Ashford. It was only the second day that we had been on a full-sized pitch with 11 players on a side, however, we had hoped to perform better. Junior Melissa Nichols had a strong game on both ends of the field. Freshmen Cara Harrison and Lisa Collogan showed some early promise.
The men actually played relatively well against Dubuque today. I liked our strength in the air and physical play. We need to finish better - but that will come. Today was the first day that I was able to get a real picture of where people will play this season. We made a couple of critical mental errors and a penalty kick added up to a 3-0 defeat. Sophomore Brett Hollenbeck and transfer Alex Board did a nice job in the middle controlling the attack and starting our defense. Freshman Timoth Solarek from Greenwood, IN had a very good first collegiate game. -C
