Sharpened by OAA Red Schedule, Troy Becomes League's Latest to Win Finals Title
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
November 11, 2026
GRAND LEDGE — Technically, Troy won the Division 1 boys soccer title this past Saturday with a 2-1 win over Livonia Stevenson.
But the Colts probably felt like they also won a state championship when they captured the Oakland Activities Association Red title back in October.
It’s understandable, since it can’t be denied how powerful the OAA Red has been in recent years.
In four of the last five years, and five times since 2019, the Division 1 championship has been won by an OAA Red team – and the league might be on the verge of getting stronger.
With Northville, Novi, Davison and Grand Blanc set to join the OAA next year, the reclassified Red division should see at least one of those teams added to it, adding more muscle to a league that saw Rochester Adams win Division 1 titles in 2022 and 2024 and Troy Athens in 2019 and 2023.
“Seeing (Athens) win it a couple years ago and seeing Adams win it, that really put that fire in us and made us want to win it even more,” said Troy senior Ryan Wind.
The Colts actually did prove themselves different from those championship Adams teams and the Athens 2023 squad in a good way, since Troy became the first OAA Red school to win both a league and MHSAA Finals title in the same year since Athens did so in 2019.
“I knew it had to come,” Troy senior Kevin Garay said. “This is just a special group of guys, a special team and coaching staff. I knew this was the year.”
Make no mistake, playing in and conquering the challenging OAA Red schedule that included No. 7 Clarkston, No. 8 Seaholm, Athens, Oxford and Berkley made top-ranked Troy tough as nails going into the MHSAA Tournament.
Of note, Adams, ranked No. 5 in the state at regular season’s end, was in the OAA White this year, but will likely be back in the Red next fall.
“It’s the best league in the state in my opinion,” Troy head coach Adam Spinks said. “To play such tough competition week in and week out, when you hit the playoffs, it prepares you mentally and physically for those games.”
Troy’s District round of the state tournament was seemingly an OAA Red postseason tournament, with Athens, Berkley and Seaholm also in that bracket.
The Colts rightfully felt that if they could survive that, the path would be less rocky in Regionals and beyond.
Following a 4-2 win over Seaholm in the District Final, Troy was on its way.
“It’s the hardest league in the state, so it prepares you so well for the playoffs,” said Cole Cusmano, an important piece of Troy’s attack who had to miss the second half of the championship game win over Stevenson after suffering a foot injury during the first half.
“We definitely thought once we got past the District – and we were just taking it one game at a time – we knew we had our sights on something big this year.”
Troy certainly did, not only claiming its first Finals championship since 2003 but becoming just the 20th unbeaten champion in MHSAA history.
The big question over the offseason is how the OAA Red will officially be realigned for next year with four new members coming in. Northville – which fell to Livonia Steveson in overtime in District play – is a possibility to join the OAA Red and should add another powerhouse to the league.
It should no doubt make for an even more compelling regular season race next year, and the way things have gone over the last five, lead to an obvious conclusion: Whichever OAA Red team is the last one standing in next year’s playoffs should probably be considered the favorite to win the Division 1 title.
“It was exhausting,” Garay said of the OAA Red slate and tournament run. “It was really hard. But we went for it, and we earned it.”
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Troy’s Jack Bowen (10) and Niko Zhuli (8) celebrate Zhuli’s goal during Saturday’s Division 1 Final. (Middle) The Colts’ Kouta Cawood (11) makes a run at the goal. (Photos by Adam Sheehan/Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)
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.)