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  • Douglas Tesner

    Suttons Bay NMCA Burt Lake

  • Douglas Tesner

    Suttons Bay NMCA Burt Lake
October 30, 2009

Norse take regional title

Suttons Bay has won three titles in five years

BY JAMES COOK

TRAVERSE CITY -- The front of Suttons Bay's dugout will be getting a little face lift in the off-season.

The Norse put placards on the front signifying each district and regional championship the team has won. The school has already run out of space, so for each title the team wins, another one has to come off.

The Norsemen added a regional championship -- their third in five seasons -- to the roster on Thursday with a 3-0 victory over Burt Lake Northern Michigan Christian to their earlier district crown, so two will be bumped from the shelter.

"It's a great tradition to keep," fourth-year Suttons Bay coach Randy U'Ren said. "Not only to have great teams, but good kids. We're hoping to just be able to load this thing with district and regional championships and maybe a state championship thrown in, too."

It's an odd year, so it's evidently the year for a Norsemen regional title. Suttons Bay has won it in 2005, 2007 and now 2009.

And a big part of this year's title was the return of Ryan Manning.

The senior, who left the soccer team in order to kick for the Norse football squad as a sophomore and junior, came back and is the team's leading scorer, adding a goal and an assist on Thursday to give him 20 goals and 12 assists on the season.

"To get your leading scorer back after being gone for two years, he meant a ton to us," U'Ren said. "He needed part of the season to get his soccer legs back under him. He needed to get his touch back on the ball and get used to playing with our guys again. But, boy, a guy with his size, speed and powerful shot, it was a difference-maker for us this year."

Manning also wanted to concentrate more on baseball, where he was an all-conference and all-district performer who set the school record for triples in a season.

"Baseball is my main sport, so I decided to focus on that," Manning said. "This year, I just figured it's my last year, so I should just have some fun.

"I've never played a sport where we've gotten this far in the playoffs. It's a really great experience."

It was Manning who put the Norse up in the 16th minute, scoring off an Evan Glowicki assist.

"Evan had a really great shot and luckily the goalie popped it out and I got a good foot on it and luckily it sank," Manning said.

Just over 30 seconds after a big Jared Orban save, Manning helped set up Garrett Bassett for the game's second score at the second half's 11-minute mark.

"I just barely nicked it," Manning said. "I got just enough of it to get it over to Garrett and he put it in."

Danny Holmes rounded out the scoring with a turn-and-rip goal that trickled off NMCA goalie Josh Fosmore's fingers and into the upper reaches of the net for a 3-0 advantage. Bassett drew an assist on the score.

A big key for the seventh-ranked Suttons Bay (17-6-2) was being able to keep the high-scoring Burt Lake duo of Paul and Aaron Chatfield off the scoreboard.

"We knew they put up a lot of goals," U'Ren said. "We saw them play the other night and knew 2 (Aaron Chatfield) and 23 (Paul Chatfield) were great, solid players. That helped to see that so we could get our guys focused on those players and know that for 80 minutes we have to be in their shorts. If we gave them any room, they'd be able to score on us. That was big for us to be able to shut them down. If they would have broken through early and scored the first goal, who knows how the game would have turned out?"

"We'd get down to their end quite frequently, and we couldn't get past their back four defenders," NMCA coach Rusty Chatfield said. "They were one step better, one step older, one step bigger."

It wouldn't be a stretch to see these two teams in the title game again next year.

While Suttons Bay has eight seniors, the team has a good amount of talent coming back, and NMCA (21-5) has just three seniors on its team and generated almost all of its offense from underclassmen, led by sophomore Paul Chatfield, freshman Aaron Chatfield, and sophomore David Thompson.

"We expect more of the same the next three years," Rusty Chatfield said.

Suttons Bay will play the winner of today's Region 13 final between Muskegon No. 2-ranked Western Michigan Christian and No. 4 Hudsonville Freedom Baptist. Muskegon WMC won both regular-season matchups with Hudsonville Baptist this season.

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