Comeback Crusaders Come Through
June 14, 2014
By Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half
MASON – It was not a premonition, but Hudsonville Unity Christian girls soccer coach Randy Heethuis picked the right tape to show his players at a team dinner Friday night.
It might have provided the added spark needed as Unity Christian rallied from a 1-0 halftime deficit to defeat Detroit Country Day 3-1 on Saturday in the MHSAA Division 3 championship game at Mason High School.
It was the Crusaders’ eighth championship in the past 10 years and first since 2012.
“At our team dinner, we watched a tape of the 2012 Final that we were down 1-0 at halftime,” Heethuis said, “so we went into halftime and said, ‘This looks vaguely familiar. We just watched this last night.’
“I said, ‘Girls, we’re going to come back and win this one, too,’ and sure enough, they did it.”
Both teams came into the Final riding impressive defensive streaks. Unity Christian had allowed only one goal in its previous six tournament games, while Country Day had an eight-game shutout streak, including blank sheet the past six in the tournament.
So a 1-0 halftime lead in a game that featured just three shots on goal in the first half seemed somewhat safe. However, Unity Christian began the second half with more intensity after the halftime speech from Heethuis.
“At the end of the first half, we started putting a little more pressure on them,” he said. “We had probably three really good opportunities that just hit wide, and at halftime we talked about it. I said, ‘Girls, we’re OK.’ I asked them to believe, and I asked them to come out and play the hardest 40 minutes of their lives.”
The first payoff came in the 51st minute when senior forward Aubrey Schierbeek took a corner kick and scored from the left side. She was deep in the box, and the ball went over the head of the goalkeeper and fell into the far end of the net.
“I didn’t call it,” said Schierbeek, who is one of four Unity Christian players who are slated to play at Spring Arbor University. “Honestly, I didn’t think it was going to go in until I saw it in the back of the net.”
The goal came moments after a flurry in front of the net created the corner-kick opportunity, and Heethuis pointed out the importance of that part of the game.
“Tessa Glashower won a nice ball there, and she took a shot that the keeper tipped over the top that won that corner for us,” he said. “It’s the little things like that – the kid who steps up and makes a play that wins a corner for you is huge.”
Schierbeek struck again 16 minutes later for the tie-breaking goal from right in front of the net.
“Coach told me in a previous game that you’re not going to get a chance to dribble it around, so when you get the open shot, take it, and that’s exactly what I did,” said Shierbeek, whose two goals gave her 32 this season. “I had the opening, and I took the shot, and it happened to go in.”
With a 2-1 lead, the Crusaders had all the momentum, and just two minutes later Schierbeek assisted on a goal by Rachel Roerig, a junior forward who scored from in front of the net.
“Once we were level, I think the girls just relaxed a little bit, and then our intensity level really picked up,” Heethuis said. “Then we got a glimpse of watching us attack the way we’re capable of attacking.”
Unity Christian (23-1) finished with a 13-3 edge in shots on goal in the second half and finished with a 14-5 advantage. Country Day (21-4-3) had two shots on goal in the first four minutes of the game, including a goal by senior Michelle Manning, who took a rebound and scored from the left part of the box.
“I kind of broke in and didn’t have many options,” she said. “The goalie did a good job of covering the near post - and far actually when she stepped out - and I froze for a second and then tried to slip it by her,” said Manning, who plans to continue playing soccer at Northwestern. “I couldn’t slip it by her, so I kind of tried to poke it past her. It didn’t really work out, but it came right back at me and I put it in.
“Unity Christian came out a lot stronger than us in the second half. I felt like they kind of put us on our heels, and it took us a hard time to adjust.”
Unity Christian goalkeeper Abby Veeneman had four saves as the Crusaders held their opponent to fewer than two goals for the 22nd time in the 24-game season.
“I was a little worried when we were behind, but I have a lot of confidence in my team that we can come back,” said Veeneman, who plans to next go to Australia to do mission work with a youth group. “Our team knows how to defend well. They communicate, and they work good together.”
It was a tough defeat for Country Day, which was chasing its sixth MHSAA championship and first since 2004, which came against Unity Christian in the title game.
“Unity is an excellent team – an excellent team – and they’re the better team than we are,” Country Day coach Bob Bukari said. ”They have more weapons, they’re well coached, they’re well organized, they are strong in goal, they’re strong defensively.
“… Unity deserved the victory without a doubt. We hit the crossbar, and we could have scored a second goal in the first half that would have changed the whole complexity of the game. But we didn’t put our chances away, and they buried theirs.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Unity Christian's Aubrey Schierbeek (22) pushes the ball ahead while Country Day's Libby Ronchetto (11) pursues. (Middle) Schierbeek and Bethany Balcer celebrate during Saturday's Division 3 Final.
Record-Setting Viney Gained Lifelong Confidence at Marine City
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
July 17, 2024
Olivia Viney didn’t have to look far for inspiration while taking on the challenge of applying to veterinary school.
The 2015 Marine City graduate and record-setting placekicker simply drew from her own experience as a high school athlete.
“It just really taught me that I could do hard things,” Viney said. “I was very involved when I was in school. I did soccer, theater, travel soccer and then football. Especially with football, I learned that if I put my mind to it, I can do it. That helped me to excel in undergrad. When it came time to get accepted to vet school, it was like, ‘This is what I have to do,’ and I did it. That was very confidence-building. It taught me that I really can do hard things.”
Viney, who graduated from Saginaw Valley State University in 2019 and Michigan State Veterinary School in 2023, is now working as an associate veterinarian at Deporre Veterinary Hospital in West Bloomfield.
Accomplishing her goals is nothing new to Viney, and not at all a surprise to those who watched her come through the Mariners athletic program.
“She was very serious, she was focused and she was dialed in,” said Dave Frendt, who coached Viney in both football and soccer at Marine City. “She knew what she wanted to accomplish, and she set out to do that. She was a fierce competitor and very driven. She was a good leader in that way where she was kind of feisty, but the team would follow that.”
Viney was an all-state soccer player for the Mariners, leading them to a pair of District titles and a Macomb Area Conference Gold title during her four years as a varsity player. It’s the sport she grew up playing, but the one she was most known for after graduation was football. American football.
The 5-foot-1-ish center attacking midfielder found herself in the MHSAA football record book after hitting all seven of her extra point attempts in the Mariners’ 2013 Division 4 Final victory against Grand Rapids South Christian.
“I think it makes sense,” she said. “There were lots of great soccer players, even that I played with. Great players that had gone through school, so I don’t think it’s weird that people remember me for that. When I talk with people, they’ll connect the dots – ‘Oh, you played football.’
“I was more accomplished as a soccer player and had more accolades. But I’m prouder of my football accomplishments, because it was really setting a pathway for girls that wanted to get into that. It’s so much more common now, or accepted. Even though it’s been almost 11 years since we won at Ford Field, I’m so proud of high school Olivia and what she did, the courage she had. She wasn’t scared of anything.”
Viney joined Marine City’s football program as a sophomore, playing on the junior varsity squad. While she was there only to kick, she was all in when it came to practicing.
“Coach (Joe) Fregetto made me do tackling drills and drills in the mud – I really did earn my spot on the team,” Viney said. “I think it was mostly because he didn’t know what to do with me, so I guess just do everything that the guys do.”
She handled varsity kicking duties the next two years, setting the school record in 2013 for most extra points made during a single season – a record that still stands. Former Mariners coach Ron Glodich said that Viney actually never missed an extra point that season, as the four failed attempts were never even kicked.
It was her performance in the Division 4 Final that gained her statewide acclaim, as she hit 7 of 7 attempts, tying a record for most extra points made in a Finals game. It stood until a pair of kickers hit eight in 2022.
One record that never will be broken, however, is Viney becoming the first female to score a point at the Finals.
“Everything was so surreal, I was so nervous,” Viney said. “One of my most vivid memories was that day, or maybe the day before, Coach Glodich said, ‘Just so you know, when you get to the field, the goal posts are two feet narrower on each side. But that doesn’t matter if you kick it in the middle.’
“We got there and watched the team before us so we could get used to it, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, they’re so narrow.’ … Seeing myself up on the big screen was kind of almost a little embarrassing, because I knew people were talking about me being the girl. But once we were in the game, it was a lot like any other game. I was just waiting for my turn to go on the field and do my job.”
Viney later was featured in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces in the Crowd” – ironically, right below current U.S. Women’s National Team forward Mallory Pugh – but she wasn’t looked at any differently by her teammates, and she wouldn’t have wanted to be.
“That team was all about sacrifice for the team,” Frendt said. “For them to realize, ‘None of us can do what she does, so we better embrace it, because no one else can do it.’ They really made her feel like part of the team. They wanted to protect her, too. But she was tough. She wasn’t going to take anything.”
Viney went to SVSU to study biology and played for its club soccer team. During her time there, she volunteered at an animal shelter and made the decision she wanted to help animals in her career. She works in general practice at Deporre, and would eventually like to work in shelter medicine.
She and her husband Matt, who were married in May, live with their three dogs. She’s not far from home, and in the spring of 2023 she visited Frendt’s college and career readiness class to speak with students at her alma mater. Her presentation and the attention to detail and hard work she put into it, Frendt said, blew his students away. Not that it surprised him.
“That’s poured into her life after sports,” he said of her work ethic. “She just kept plugging away. She’s awesome.”
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PHOTOS (Top) Marine City’s Olivia Viney kicks at the 2013 11-Player Football Finals, also during her spring soccer season, and cares for one of her patients as an associate veterinarian. (Middle) Viney graduated from MSU’s Veterinary School in 2023. (Photos courtesy of Olivia Viney.)