FRUITPORT — Reeths-Puffer entered Thursday's district final against No. 1-ranked and unbeaten Fruitport confident. Sure, the Trojans had gotten the best of them in the regular season, but only by two goals, and R-P was missing a couple of key players that day. They were as prepared and ready to play, said coach Kody Harrell, as they've been all season.
However, less than two minutes after kickoff, Fruitport's 6-5 forward Isaac Vandermolen outjumped his opponents on a corner kick and scored. The Rockets played well in many ways the rest of the way, but they could never recover from that gut punch, losing 4-1 to end their season.
"I think you're always a little stunned," Harrell said of the first goal. "All the right energy was there pregame, all the right focus, a lot
of attention to detail, a lot of extra film the last couple days.
"It's tough when you go down early because they're a very gritty defensive team. So to have to play (from) a minute and a
half into the game, down a goal already against an already tough
defensive team that's hard to score on in general, that makes it a little challenging."
The Rockets (11-9-1) actually equaled Fruitport in shots on goal - each team had 10 - but the Trojans' chances were of very high quality. Late in the first half, the home team scored its second goal when Carter Gregor was able to field a pass cleanly, whirl around and fire a gorgeous 30-yard shot that keeper Gavin Wright had no chance to stop.
"The shot itself is
a great shot but we can't let the ball hit the ground there," Harrell said. "We've got
to win that ball out of the air. We kind of backed off a little bit
because we're respecting Jorge (Burgos-Yack)'s speed. When we respected
his speed, that kind of opened up a little space for (Gregor), who got
on it."
Burgos-Yack ended up being responsible for R-P's third goal late in the first half, though teammate Hudson Hazekamp created the possibility, with another impressive long shot. Wright made an equally remarkable save, but Burgos-Yack raced in to collect the rebound for an easy goal.
The Rockets kept the pressure on Fruitport at times during the game, and forced Trojan keeper Connor Werschem to make a couple of good saves in his own right, but it wasn't until the final minutes that Owen Ritsema gave R-P a bright spot with a goal of his own.
Reeths-Puffer's Saif Abunayla (left) brushes off Fruitport's Jyles Smith to gain possession of the ball during Thursday's district final. The Rockets lost, 4-1.
Harrell said the Trojans stuck to their game plan very well and that made them very difficult to score on.
"They
did a much better job at sticking to their principles than we did
sticking to ours," Harrell said. "Knowing what you know about this team, in the back of
our heads, we thought we'd have to score more than once to win this
game."
Harrell expressed pride in his team's performance throughout the season. R-P got off to a red-hot start, then had a midseason lull - Harell said looking back, the Rockets may not have been aggressive enough in coming after its new O-K Green Conference opponents - but finished playing as well as it had since early in the year.
There's plenty to look forward to. R-P will lose several impressive seniors from this team - both Nick and Nate Clemens, the keeper Wright and Trent Hanks most notably - but has a strong core of players to build around and plenty of reasons for excitement among the younger and incoming players.
"We think that we're district championship worthy, so that's going to sting for a little while," Harrell said. "I
think we are one of the better teams in the district. It's
no mistake that we're here playing tonight. I also think it's just
some of those little details that we've got to fine-tune, and we'll spend
the offseason continuing to work on those little details and continue
to get some of these young guys more and more experience."
