Bolstered by Bonnema, Kalamazoo Christian Adds 2nd Win of 4-Year Finals Run
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
June 14, 2025
EAST LANSING – Kalamazoo Christian girls soccer coach Jay Allen was asking a lot of senior midfielder Jordyn Bonnema during Saturday’s Division 4 Final at Michigan State University.
Bonnema was tasked with tracking Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett’s Kerith Short around the field, and making sure the Knights’ leading scorer didn’t get free.
Just as Allen expected, Bonnema did her part, and then some.
The Kalamazoo Christian senior scored a pair of goals and made life difficult for Short in the Comets’ 4-1 victory at DeMartin Stadium.
“She’s just a pure athlete,” Allen said. “She was bound and determined to win. It’s not just in soccer – it’s golf, it’s in basketball, it’s in the classroom, she’s a 3.9 student. The kid doesn’t know a loss. She’s driven.”
The title was the sixth in program history for the Comets, and second in three years. They were making their fourth-straight Finals appearance, having lost in a shootout a year ago against Jackson Lumen Christi.
For Bonnema, who had played in all four of those Finals, walking away as runner-up again was not an option.
“This is my last time in the black and gold, or purple and gold, and it’s bittersweet, but I just wanted to give it my all,” she said. “This has been such a long ride. Soccer was my first sport, I picked it up when I was 3 years old. To be here, stepping on the field for maybe the last time in my life, there can be no regrets. So I was just coming into the game with that mentality, that this might be the last time I’m ever going to lace up the cleats, so making sure I left nothing behind and leave it all on the field. I’m just super grateful for the opportunity to play for such an amazing program and with my best friends.”
Bonnema scored the second and third goals for Kalamazoo Christian, twice giving her team a two-goal lead in the second half. Izzy Suloff and Laila Rashid also scored, while Avery Lambarth had two assists and Rachel Miller had one.
Kalamazoo Christian keeper Kailey Triemstra had nine saves. Most came on shots from outside the box, as the Comets defense, led by Maysen Steensma, did a good job of limiting opportunities for the Knights.
“I give them a lot of credit; they were defensively really solid,” Liggett coach David Dwaihy said. “They were really organized. They’d bend, but they didn’t break. They did all the things championship teams do defensively, and their goalie was there for them when they needed. Full credit to them, they deserve that. I thought that we did give them a good game, though, and I thought we represented ourselves really well and played with a style we can feel really good about.”
Short did score the lone goal for Liggett, bending in an Olimpico off a corner kick, after she had created the best scoring chance of the afternoon for her team, cutting inside on a defender and getting off a shot that deflected wide.
It was clear, though, each time she touched the ball that the Comets were determined to not give her any space to work.
“Our gameplan was Jordyn Bonnema,” Allen said. “Jordyn Bonnema was told you just can’t let her beat us. Jordyn just shadowed her, made sure she didn’t get clean looks, and that’s where we were at. We also fall back on Maysen Steensma, who is a solid brick wall back there, and kind of organized things. It was just a group effort.”
Kalamazoo Christian, which arrived late to the 2024 Final after its bus broke down, got off to a quick start Saturday, scoring within the first three minutes. Suloff collected the ball near the top of the box, created space to her right and fired a shot over the head of Liggett keeper Aline Rahaim, who had six saves on the day.
The second half opened much the same, as Bonnema scored less than three minutes in, charging into the box and getting on the end of a cross from Lambarth, making it 2-0.
While that looked to have killed momentum Liggett had been building through the end of the first half, the Knights found their answer five minutes later with Short’s goal.
“I think in the first half it helped us; in a weird way, I think it kind of woke us up,” Dwaihy said. “While playing from behind, we were a little more relaxed, and that ‘Let’s play to win’ vibe, as opposed to playing not to lose. It really favored us for the rest of the half. The next 37 minutes, we worked our way into the game and got some chances, but more importantly, we held a lot of the possession. That was key, because as we started to lose that in the second half, tired legs started to set in and the game got away from us.”
Bonnema made it a two-goal game again, scoring with a header off Miller’s corner with 10:14 to play.
“It’s for sure a little more reassuring, but we’re still back on defense and for sure not ready (to celebrate) until the clock hits zero,” Bonnema said. “It was nice to have a little bit of a gap, though, for sure.”
When Rashid followed up Lambarth’s shot and made it 4-1 with 7:05 to go, however, the die was cast, and it was clear the Comets would be lifting the trophy.
“This senior class has been here four times, so to end their senior year like this is special for them,” Allen said. “They are just such a hard-working group, and with all the hard work they put in, we were knocking off teams we shouldn’t have been and we got here. This week, and the last two days of practice, you could tell they wanted it, and we didn’t quit for 80 minutes.”
PHOTOS (Top) Kalamazoo Christian players celebrate during their Division 4 championship win Saturday at DeMartin Stadium. (Middle) The Comets’ Jordyn Bonnema (21) marks University Liggett’s Aubrey Hermann. (Photos by Adam Sheehan/Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)
Tyler Meets Challenges, Aims for Final Goal
May 9, 2018
By Tom Kendra
Special for Second Half
Talia Tyler has showed her competitive fire, really, since birth. But one really good example of how occurred when she was 6 years old.
She had just scored a bunch of goals in a youth game and her father, Jim – partially to keep her humble and partially to be the smart-aleck that he is – quipped to her tongue-in-cheek:
“Too bad you didn’t score any with your left foot.”
Later that day, little Talia was out in the yard with her soccer ball, shooting exclusively with her left foot. The next game, she scored all of her goals with her left foot, each time followed immediately by a glare to her father on the sidelines.
“I always try to challenge myself, in school and in sports, to be the best that I can,” explained Tyler, whose constant striving – not to mention her speed and smarts – has landed her a spot on the women’s soccer team at Columbia University, a Division I school in the Ivy League, located in New York City.
The immediate challenge for Tyler, the senior striker and leader of the Muskegon Catholic Central girls soccer team, and her teammates is to try and improve on last year’s run to the MHSAA Division 4 Semifinals – which capped the best season in school history.
Muskegon Catholic, which is 8-1 overall and a perfect 4-0 in the Lakes 8 Athletic Conference this spring, lost just three seniors off last year’s team which won the school’s first-ever girls soccer Regional title before bowing 2-0 to Kalamazoo Christian in the Semifinals.
Led by Tyler, the Crusaders have made winning the Division 4 championship their No. 1 goal this year.
Tyler, who has six goals and three assists so far, is joined up front by senior Lauren Doriot (who currently leads the team with seven goals), freshman standout Emily Olsen, sophomores Caitlyn Fodrocy and Payton Helton and junior A’lahna Cherry.
Kyra Tyler, a junior and Talia’s younger sister and the last of four standout Tyler athletes at MCC, is the top defender for the Crusaders – along with seniors Kasia Gasior, Roxy Hubl and Zoie Price, who is currently sidelined with a leg injury.
The final line of defense is one of the state’s best keepers in senior Isabelle Bertolone, although she rarely gets to show her ability in regular-season games as the Crusaders normally keep most of the action on the opposite side of the midfield stripe.
“We are loaded enough that we should make another run,” said second-year MCC coach Art Dorsey, who was notably frustrated after a narrow 2-0 victory Monday over conference rival Muskegon Orchard View. “We should be playing much better than we are. We need a little more hunger, a little more sense of urgency.”
Dorsey knows one of the biggest challenges in the entire state is just a few miles away in North Muskegon, which is undefeated and on a District collision course with MCC.
Tyler said the key to winning games in the postseason is mental.
“Girls soccer really comes down to which team shows up focused and ready,” said Tyler, who has served as her class president for the past three years. “Really, one of the biggest keys for us is staying healthy. We will keep working on it and getting better.”
Tyler’s tenacity and grit shines through in key moments in big games, but the first thing everyone notices about the 5-foot-6 senior is her speed.
Tyler is so fast that in her sophomore and junior years she ran track in the spring, in addition to her soccer. In her sophomore year, she finished eighth in the 200 meters at the Lower Peninsula Division 4 Finals. In her junior year, she qualified for the Finals in four events, but had to miss the meet to play in the Crusaders’ soccer District championship game.
Instead of on the track, Tyler used that speed throughout the tournament to make runs down the edges of the field and put major pressure on defenders. She finished her junior year with more than 20 goals and 20 assists.
“Talia has a complete skill set, and that’s what makes her the best soccer player ever at this school,” said Dorsey. “She can turn it on and get up to her top speed so quickly that it catches defenders off-guard. Then she is smart enough to make the right decisions going to the goal.”
Smarts is another trait that runs through the Tyler family. Talia’s older brother, Ian, plays football at Columbia and her older sister, Annika, is a club soccer player at the University of San Diego.
Talia has maintained a 3.85 grade-point average while taking a steady diet of AP classes and being a four-year varsity starter in both basketball and soccer. She also has racked up more than 200 service hours during high school, many on spring break mission trips.
Her final intangible, which she first displayed as the starting point guard on MCC’s varsity basketball team four years ago as a freshman, is leadership. On a team with plenty of young talent, Tyler is the veteran the other girls look to in crucial situations.
“Looking back to freshman year and everything that we’ve been through together, it’s kind of surreal that now it’s just down to this final sport and this final season,” Tyler said. “It’s great getting this chance to play with my friends and see if we can really leave our mark. That’s our goal.”
Tom Kendra worked 23 years at The Muskegon Chronicle, including five as assistant sports editor and the final six as sports editor through 2011. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Muskegon, Oceana, Mason, Lake, Oceola, Mecosta and Newaygo counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Muskegon Catholic Central’s Talia Tyler (9) winds up to send the ball downfield during a game this spring. (Middle) Tyler (3) charges ahead during her heat of the 200 at the 2016 MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 4 Finals. (Photos courtesy of Kristine Tyler.)