Pilgrims Complete Mission for Respect, Title
November 2, 2013
By Tom Kendra
Special to Second Half
KENTWOOD – Grand Rapids Covenant Christian was on a mission to take the final step after losing in last year’s MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 4 boys soccer championship match.
Apparently, somebody forgot to let Lansing Christian know.
The Pilgrims were on a mission of their own – for respect – and they walked off the Crestwood Middle School field with plenty of it Saturday after a dramatic 1-0 victory over Covenant Christian that earned the Division 4 championship.
“We loved being the underdogs today,” said Lansing Christian sophomore keeper Chase Hansen, who helped his team withstand a furious Covenant rally over the final 20 minutes. “There was a lot of pressure at the end, but I just handled it by playing goal the way I’ve always been taught.”
Jordan Terry, the Pilgrims’ all-state senior forward, scored the game’s only goal 7 minutes into the second half, taking advantage of a brief open moment against the Covenant defense, and whipping a point blank shot from the 18-foot box over the head of keeper Austin Brower for the game’s only score.
The goal came after Brower, an all-state keeper, thwarted several other quality scoring chances by Terry and junior teammate Martin Lang Jr.
“I can’t really describe exactly what happened on that goal; it was just a split-second and the ball was on my (left) foot,” said Terry, who finished his senior year with 27 goals and 11 assists for the high-scoring Pilgrims. “I just had a go at it, and it got in there on the top of the net.”
Lansing Christian (22-0-1) came into the game with an outstanding record and on a recent hot streak, but was still considered an underdog because of the outstanding soccer tradition and superior size of Covenant.
The Pilgrims were playing in their first-ever championship game and failed to make it out of Regionals the past three years. And, in spite of their unbeaten record, they could only manage to garner honorable mention status in the final Division 4 soccer coaches poll.
Led by four double-digit goal scorers in Terry (26 goals), Lang Jr. (18 goals), Brayan Guzman-Ortiz (11 goals) and Alex McDowell (11 goals), Lansing Christian outscored its six postseason opponents by a combined score of 22-1. The Pilgrims used their speed to overwhelm one larger opponent after another.
“We can’t do anything about how small we are, so we try to change the game,” sixth-year Lansing Christian coach Joel Vande Kopple said. We wanted to get the ball out on the pitch and run.”
Terry’s goal appeared to stun the Chargers, who dominated the final 30 minutes of play but were unable to convert on myriad scoring chances. Derek Dykstra nearly scored on a backward kick with 19:18 remaining; Corbin Prince, Travis Bouwkamp and Cole Bleyenberg had good looks down the stretch; and Jared Minderhoud was just high on a great chance off a corner kick with 6:29 to play.
“We just couldn’t find the back of the net today,” said 10th-year Covenant Christian coach Mike Noorman. “That’s really the only thing we didn’t do. They are obviously very good, and we didn’t capitalize on the chances that we had.”
Lansing Christian also had several other good scoring opportunities, most of them in the first half. Lang clanked a shot off the post 9 minutes into the game, and the Covenant defense almost scored a costly “own goal” 13 minutes before halftime.
The final minutes were a flurry of activity, as Lansing Christian defenders, notably Zach Hagy, Nick Ballein, Gabe Loredo and Josiah Granger, fought valiantly to protect the precarious one-goal lead. After the final seconds ticked off, the Pilgrims swarmed Coach Vande Kopple while the Covenant players lay strewn all over the field in disbelief.
“To be honest, in those last few minutes we were just holding on,” said Vande Kopple, whose team finished unbeaten, with one 0-0 tie in the sixth game of the year against Jackson.
The loss was particularly devastating for Covenant since it lost by a goal in last year’s Division 4 title game as well, 3-2 against Hamtramck Frontier International.
Covenant, which finished 22-2-3, was champion of the soccer-rich River Valley Conference and defeated No. 2-ranked Kalamazoo Hackett Catholic Central (1-0) in a shootout in the Regional Final and highly-touted Bellaire (3-2) in the Semifinal. But once again, their quest for an MHSAA championship came up one game short.
On the other side of the field, Vande Kopple was struggling to find the right words.
“I don’t think I will realize exactly what we just did for a few weeks,” Vande Kopple said. “When it hits me, I’ll be able to explain it a whole lot better.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Lansing Christian huddles after claiming its first MHSAA title. (Middle) Jordan Terry celebrates after scoring the game's lone goal. (Click to see more from Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)
De La Salle Continues Reign, Delivering Previously-Unbeaten Unity's Lone Defeat
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
November 1, 2025
GRAND LEDGE — Call this the continued resurgence of a program that’s long been a state boys soccer power.
Before last season, tradition-rich Warren De La Salle Collegiate hadn’t won a Finals championship in nearly two decades after claiming five from 1990-2005.
De La Salle seems to have returned to its glory days again, capping back-to-back championships Saturday for the first time since 1992 and 1993 with a 2-0 triumph over Hudsonville Unity Christian in the Division 2 Final.
It was the seventh state title in school history, all under legendary head coach Thaier Mukhtar.
“Credit goes to the boys,” Mukhtar said. “It goes to them for just listening to what they were supposed to do, and they got it done.”
In winning title No. 7, De La Salle (21-4-2) did something no other team was able to do before the championship game – defeat a Unity Christian contender also looking for its seventh Finals title.
De La Salle scored first with 29:03 remaining in the first half on a goal by senior James Spicuzzi.
Following a throw-in into the box by senior Max Wyszczelski, the ball deflected off the head of a Unity Christian defender to the foot of Spicuzzi, who buried the chance to make it 1-0 De La Salle.
“I was kind of anticipating it coming to me,” Spicuzzi said. “It definitely was just composure. That was really it.”
De La Salle then took a 2-0 lead with 3:41 to go in the first half when senior Nikolai Zacharko converted a penalty kick after Wyszczelski was fouled in the box.
Unity Christian had a golden chance to get back in the game with 21:36 remaining in regulation as De La Salle was called for a foul in its box, giving Unity Christian a penalty kick.
But Pilots junior goalie Dominic Baldarotta saved the kick and the ensuing rebound to keep the score 2-0.
“I knew right when he placed the ball down where he was going,” Baldarotta said. “He placed on the other side so I just went the other way. It was a lot of momentum. It really changed the entire course of that second half.”
From there, De La Salle held firm defensively, preventing Unity Christian from getting quality scoring chances as the clock ticked down.
“Once a team gets a lead, the other team knows they have to get it done and they throw everything at you,” Mukhtar said. “We weathered the storm and settled the ship down a little bit. The game worked out the way we wanted it to work out.”
Unity Christian, which won the Division 3 title two years ago, finished its season at 19-1-4.
“We knew it was going to be a dogfight,” Unity Christian head coach Ian Billin said. “They play very similar to us. Just a lot of high pressure and try to make things chaotic. Kudos to them. They get one early, and that changes the dynamic of the game.
“For us, I was really proud of our guys in the second half. To go down 2-0, we really settled in and we created in the second half quality corner kicks, free kicks and we got the PK as well. We just couldn’t get the back of the net today. But I’m really proud of this group and what they’ve done all season.”
PHOTOS (Top) De La Salle’s James Spicuzzi (5) and his teammates celebrate during Saturday’s Division 2 Final. (Middle) The Pilots’ Andrew Corder (14) controls the ball with Unity Christian’s Landon Crump (19) and Kyler Berghuis (3) working to gain possession. (Below) Berghuis gets up high to stop a shot headed toward his team’s goal. (Photos by Adam Sheehan/Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)