Montague girls soccer finally hoists trophy, beats Fremont for district title

WHITEHALL — After two years of near-misses in the district finals, this time Montague's senior class was not going to be denied.

Scoring star Ava Pelton pulled off a spectacular second-half goal and keeper Addison Pranger, a fellow senior, made several terrific saves throughout Friday's district final against Fremont, delivering the Wildcats their first district championship in program history, 3-2.

Montague (14-8) joined the boys team from last fall in finally adding a district entry to the girls soccer championship banner in the new gym, which coach Chris Aebig showed his team as motivation prior to the season. The team advanced to Wednesday's regional semifinal in Big Rapids against No. 10-ranked Traverse City St. Francis with the win.

The Wildcats invoked the spirits of Troy Moran - the late former Montague principal and father of injured Wildcat Elle - and late former youth-league teammate Ava Vanderstelt prior to the game. Aebig wore the Vanderstelt warmup shirt from earlier this season under his Montague polo, brought in Ava's mom, Bridget Knapp, to deliver a pregame pep talk, and even tucked a sticker worn in support of Elle's younger sister Reagan last year into his sock cap.

"We had higher powers on the field with us," Aebig said.

Divine intervention or not, something special happened for Montague five minutes after halftime. Pelton, already with a goal and an assist on the night, fielded the ball some 30 yards from the net. With a defender on her back, somehow, all in one motion, she wheeled around and used her left leg to launch a perfect shot that sailed over the Packers' keeper and into the net for the final goal of the game.

Teammate Lilly Rice was first to Pelton, who said she basically blacked out as she hoisted Rice into a hug and was swarmed by other teammates.

"I was just thinking, 'I need to put this in. I need to put this in. I need to get us up by one,'" Pelton said of her mindset as she fired the shot. "As soon as I got it, my vision went blurry."

Montague still had to keep Fremont from equalizing for nearly 35 minutes, which seemed a tall order given how much pressure the Packers had put on the Montague defense to that point. On top of the two goals it had scored, Fremont had forced Pranger to make several impressive saves and had hit the crossbar twice within a few seconds late in the first half.

However, a funny thing happened after Pelton's go-ahead goal; suddenly Montague, despite the emotional high of the score, dialed right back in and began answering Fremont surge for surge.

"Our coach always says, 'It's 0-0,'" senior Kiley Miller said. "If it's 0-0, then you have to fight to survive, and if you're up by one, then you're not going to be fighting to survive."

"We absolutely outlasted them," Aebig said. "In all of our game preps that we watched, Fremont comes out on fire early, and then they kind of slow down a little bit...We knew if we could slow down and outlast through that first 5-10 minutes that the game was going to tilt in our favor."

True to form, Fremont came out firing early, but Montague was able to keep any truly dangerous shots from flying. Then the Wildcats got the ball to Pelton, who used her tremendous ability in ball possession to set up Rice for a goal less than seven minutes into play.

Fremont came back with another surge, taking advantage of heavy traffic in front of the net to score an equalizer, then going ahead 2-1 while senior sweeper Abby Dyer was briefly off with an injury (she returned to play a moment later).

Pelton again made magic happen with 16 minutes left in the half, though, taking an assist from Allyson Balder and managing to sneak the ball into the far corner of the net despite not seeming to have an angle to do so. Then she topped herself with the aforementioned go-ahead score.

As time ran out, two different massive Montague group hugs formed on the field before ultimately coming together for one epic celebration that felt like it included the whole Montague community.

Certainly Aebig attempted to credit as many in the Wildcat community as possible for the district triumph, including assistant coaches Scott Liskey, Deron Hunter, David Hernandez and Aebig's son, former Wildcat star Christopher, known by the team as "Coach Wayne."

In addition, trainer Jess DeBruin earned a shout-out for helping Montague deal with the many injuries it's fought throughout the season; the team, Aebig said, is as healthy as it's been all season minus the unfortunate loss of Elle Moran to injury.

"Jess is one of our MVPs," Aebig said. "I don't know what kind of magic spell she put on those girls, but she did such a good job getting them back (to) health...It's everybody putting a little bit in to make things like this happen."

At some point, Montague would have to recenter and prepare to battle the Gladiators, but the party certainly wasn't going to end Friday night.

"We've been waiting for this moment forever - literally forever," Pranger said. "To finally achieve it, it honestly feels like a dream. It doesn't feel real."