It’s been an exhilarating season to be a sports fan in Leelanau County. From soccer to football to cross country, the fall season brought deep playoff runs, state title chances, and thrills aplenty for local high school teams. With most sports now done for the fall, The Leelanau Ticker sits down with two local coaches – Rob Sirrine, head coach of the state-championship-winning Leland boys soccer team; and George Drown, who led Glen Lake’s boys cross country team to a runner-up finish in Division 4 – to get their reflections on the season and their hopes for next year.

Leland soccer and the road to a state title

Leland’s boys soccer team played seven games this summer before school started on September 8; they lost four of them and tied another two. On paper at least, The Comets hardly looked like a state title prospect.

Sirrine knew better.

“The beginning of the year, our record was not great,” Sirrine says. “But if you looked at the quality of the teams that we played, there was a different story to be read there. We played Elk Rapids, and they’re ranked third in D3. We played Traverse City St. Francis twice, and they're ranked in D2. We played De La Salle, and they won the whole thing in D2. If you look at our schedule from the season, our opponents’ win percentage was the third highest out of any soccer team in any division in the state. And by playing the best teams we could, our guys just continued to improve.”

By the end of September, with the playoffs just a week off, Leland had a record of seven wins, eight losses, and two ties. Once October hit, though, the Comets found their groove and won nine games straight – including the D4 state title game against Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett.

The deciding factor in that championship match was a penalty kick shootout, to resolve a score that remained deadlocked at 1-1 even after overtime. It was an outcome Sirrine had been training his players for: “At the end of every practice, starting as we go into the playoffs, we’ll do penalty kicks,” he says. “We actually have a list of the top 10 PK takers, and the guys that are consistently making those goals move up the list.”

One of those kickers was senior Howie Kropp, a player probably more accustomed to blocking penalty kicks than taking them.

“Howie was our backup goalkeeper the last three years, and I asked him at the beginning of the season if he wanted to play on the field, because he’s a pretty good field player, too,” Sirrine says. “And so we got him some minutes this season – he probably played 15-20 minutes a game – but he couldn't get a goal. He was getting annoyed with himself, and I told him, ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to get an important one. I just have a feeling.’ And then, probably a week before the final, as I was running through the PK shooting list, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be crazy if, in a big game, we went to a PK shootout, and Howie had the fifth shot, and he won it for us?’”

That’s exactly what happened. With the Comets up 4-2 in the shootout, Kropp took his shot and found the back of the net to notch his first goal of the season – and a state championship title, to boot.

Will the Comets be back in title contention a year from now? With nine outgoing seniors and a small junior class, Sirrine tells The Ticker that a good bit of rebuilding will be necessary. “But some players have already asked me, ‘Hey, when do drop-ins start,’” he says. “So that’s a good sign, because it means they’re already ready to get playing indoors and start prepping for next year.”

Glen Lake cross country’s best season ever

By every metric, this fall was a new high-water mark for high school boys cross country at Glen Lake Community School. For the first time in 25 years, the Lakers clinched conference and regional titles, and they followed those victories with a runner-up finish at the D4 state finals earlier this month. Despite those big end-of-season successes, though, Glen Lake’s most impressive accomplishment of the season came weeks earlier. 

The largest high school cross country meet in the state of Michigan is the Portage Invitational, which draws over 6,000 runners from across the state each October. With races for each division – and most of the heavyweight teams from each in attendance – the meet often serves as a bellwether for November’s state championship races.

At this fall’s Portage Invite on October 4, the Lakers put five runners in the top 25 to win the D4 race, decisively beating Hillsdale Academy (the defending state champs four years running) and edging out perennial contenders Holland Cavalry Christian by two points.

Those same three teams were also the top three at the D4 state finals last weekend, though this time, Holland Cavalry came out on top.

“I’d say we had two guys from our top seven who had off days [at the finals], and that’s all it takes,” Drown says. “I don’t think there’s anything we could have done differently. State titles are hard to win, and sometimes, it doesn’t go your way. But at the same time, to be second in the state for a program that really hasn’t had that pedigree ever before, I think that's a great achievement for Glen Lake cross country. I think those guys should be proud, and I think they are proud.”

The Lakers will have a second crack at the state title next fall. And unlike Sirrine’s Leland soccer squad, Drown has very little rebuilding to do for next season.

“We lose Liam McCaw; he’s a senior and was in our top seven, but the other six return. And our top two guys on state finals day, Spencer McNitt and Christian Feeney, they’re both freshmen and they both ended up all-state,” Drown says.

Also back is Abraham Feeney, Christian’s older brother, who went back and forth with McNitt as the Lakers’ top runner for the first half of the season, before a minor injury slowed his pace at states.

“The Feeneys also have a younger brother, who is going to be a freshman next year,” Drown adds. “Right now, I think he might pick soccer [as his fall sport], but he’s a great runner, too. So, it’s up to us to win him over and get him to buy in, because I think he has potential to come in and contribute right away.”