Northville's Weber Stands Tall in a Crowd
April 25, 2012
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Mallory Weber has seen plenty of creative defenses during her four seasons on Northville’s varsity soccer team.
Most of the time, she’s shadowed by two defenders. Sometimes, she’ll draw three. But the most memorable effort came from just one defender last season against rival Novi.
“She followed me everywhere. I went out of bounds, she followed me out of bounds,” Weber remembered Wednesday. “It was pretty quick. I’d stop. She’d stop. She was like on a leash with me.”
Welcome to life as a two-time all-state forward who next season will play for the reigning Big Ten regular-season champion, and this week receives a Second Half High 5 for helping key her team's outstanding start.
Northville is 5-0-2 coming off Tuesday’s 8-0 win over South Lyon, in which Weber scored two goals and had an assist to push her season totals to nine and five, respectively.
She didn’t score in last week’s win over Novi – the Mustangs' first over the Wildcats since 2009 – but that hardly means she didn’t factor in what might be considered the team’s best victory of the last two seasons. Novi had won 40 straight games, including last season’s MHSAA Division 1 Final.
“Novi had her double-teamed at all times and sometimes triple-teamed. This obviously opens up the field for others to execute,” Northville coach Eric Brucker said. “Mallory is the workhorse and on-field leader. Other coaches within our league have pulled Mallory aside after postgame handshakes to voice their admiration for her on-the-field direction.
“She is a great example of trying to do the most for her team – every game, all 80 minutes. The players around her feed off her energy.”
Extra attention from opponents became noticeable to her last season, but didn’t slow Weber as she earned a second-straight all-state first-team selection. She’s picked up some moves to create her own space – usually, she’ll play the ball back, spin off and try to come back to the ball in an effort to gain a few steps.
But she also realizes how much opponents are changing their defenses to account for her – and how much that can benefit a Mustangs team that returned nearly intact from a year ago.
With little opportunity to look up when she got the ball against Novi, Weber was able to one-touch pass to teammates because they’ve grown accustomed to where each other will be positioned.
Among those getting plenty of great looks up front is sophomore Jamie Cheslik, who has six goals and seven assists and scored the game-winner against Novi. Brucker called her the “catalyst,” another who creates plenty of havoc and scoring opportunities.
Weber was not considered that player yet when she got serious about soccer at age 10. She’d played in recreational leagues, but didn’t make the top team in her club that first season – which paid off in the long run because of how hard she worked to become better. But the middle of the next season, she was promoted. And she joined the Mustangs' top team in her first season of high school.
Although Northville has two MHSAA championship game appearances since 2004, all three of Weber’s seasons have ended with losses in arguably the toughest District in the state (which this season includes three teams currently ranked among the top seven in Division 1).
But the Novi win could be the spark for a run Weber has been waiting to lead.
“It’s what I’ve been waiting for each year. We’re on the same page, and it would be great to go out like that on a good note, and good for the program,” Weber said. “We’ve finally come together, and that (win) gave us the confidence we’ll need in the playoffs.”
Click for more about Weber and this week's other High 5s.
PHOTO: Northville's Mallory Weber (14) works the ball upfield while being shadowed by a defender. (Photo courtesy of Shelly Bush Photography.)
Au Gres-Sims' Record-Setting Scorer Ming Pacing Standish-Sterling's Historic Strides
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
May 15, 2025
It wasn’t that there was an empty space in the Standish-Sterling athletics trophy case awaiting the opportunity to show off the latest hardware won by the girls soccer team.
There wasn’t a space reserved for the program at all.
But this year’s Panthers, led by record-setting goal-scorer Analeis Ming, are changing all of that in a dramatic way.
“We didn’t have many fans come the first couple years, but we’ve started winning and have a lot more people coming to games,” Ming said. “We finally got our first trophy, then we got two more, so we had to make space for our trophies. There wasn’t anywhere to put them.”
Standish, which has a soccer co-op with Au Gres-Sims, is 19-2 this season heading into its final game of the regular season. The Panthers have already clinched a Jack Pine Conference championship, their first-ever conference title in their first year in the league.
Coach Kacey Bentley, who has been in charge since 2017, said the most wins he’d previously had in a season was six, which came a year ago. The Panthers’ win total during his time as coach was 26 heading into this season.
“There’s no banner in the gym for soccer for boys or girls,” Bentley said. “There wasn’t much of anything else there, so this is a whole new feeling for us. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop for a long time, but no, we’re just really good, which is nice.”
At the heart of that turnaround is Ming, a junior from Au Gres, who has re-written the Standish record book as a scorer.
Ming has 57 goals through 21 games, breaking her own previous record for goals in a season, which was 30. She’s also surpassed the boys mark for goals in a season – that team also is a co-op between the two schools – which was 52.
As a team, the Panthers girls had 49 goals a year ago, making this the second-straight year Ming’s goal-scoring total has eclipsed the team’s from the previous year.
Her 102 career goals is tops among girls in the program, and she’s nine shy of the boys record.
If she doesn’t score again this spring, which is unlikely, she’d sit 17th on the all-time MHSAA list for goals in a season. But if she hits 60, she’d become just the ninth player in state history to accomplish the feat.
“It means a lot, but it’s really all about your team,” Ming said. “Most of my goals are assisted. But it’s nice to be recognized coming from a smaller school.’
Leading that assist parade is her sister, Charlotte, who is completing her freshman season. Charlotte Ming has a team-leading 23 assists, which broke Analeis’ previous school record of nine set a year ago.
“It’s a lot of non-verbal communication,” Analeis Ming said of the on-field connection with her sister. “We kind of just know. So it’s not like, ‘Hey, pass it now!’ She’s already passing it, and I’m going for it.”
Charlotte, who also has matched her sister’s freshman year goal tally of 15, is one of three Panthers to eclipse that previous assist record this season, as Analeis has 12 and senior midfielder Lily Thurlow has 11. Senior midfielder Ariel Johnson is just one away at eight.
“For this year, it’s our midfield,” Bentley said. “It’s there, and it’s consistent. It started a bit last year, the girls were experienced, and the majority of them are seniors this year, outside of Charlotte. It’s a sense of accomplishment: ‘We’re doing this (making a pass) and we know the probability of a goal is very high.’ The celebrations after the goals, it doesn’t matter if it’s her fifth or her first, they all get excited for it.”
When you have a (near) 60-goal scorer, of course, there are more assists to go around. But in order to score that often, it takes more than just skill and athleticism.
“It’s probably her tenacity,” Bentley said of Analeis Ming. “She’ll take on three players if she has to – I tell her not to, but she’ll do it, and she’ll get through the girls. It works. She makes the right touches to get around and she has it, then you have to deal with the velocity of that shot.”
Ming has spent much of her life around the sport, as her dad, Chris Ming, has coached at the club and high school level. She played for him in the Thundercats organization in New Baltimore, even moving up a year to play on a boys team that Chris was coaching.
“I think I see the field well,” she said. “I have good vision, and I’m able to see that the ball is going to go there, so I need to be here. I’ve been playing my whole life, and I watch soccer all the time. So watching it, and observing it, you start to see that.”
Teams have attempted, and mostly failed, to corral Ming this season, throwing more attention and bodies her way. It’s something she’s likely to see more of in the postseason as the competition continues to get more difficult. But with the best varsity team she’s ever been part of around her, the Panthers are ready for the challenge.
“It definitely helps, because we have more options,” she said. “Say I’m getting man-marked the entire night, I know it’s not the end of the world, because we have other outlets for scoring. We had one game where I didn’t score, but I had two assists and Charlotte had two goals. We’re seeing a lot more scoring this year from our team as a whole.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Standish-Sterling’s Analeis Ming (11) considers her options while controlling possession. (Middle) Standish-Sterling’s soccer players from Au Gres-Sims, from left: Analeis Ming, Ariel Johnson, Selah Anthony, Charlotte Ming and Kendall Bartlett. (Photos by Bill Morgan.)