The Saline Reporter
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Year's big moments, part two
Jerry Hinnen
PUBLISHED: July 3, 2008
We're continuing last week's look at the top 10 moments of the 2007-2008 high school sports season in Saline and Milan. This week, three Saline moments and two from Milan, again in no particular order.
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1. Saline makes a state championship game in baseball. When the ball left the bat of the Troy batter, I thought it had gotten through the infield. The runner on first was going to end up in scoring position. Adam Clements might not be able to finish off what had been a brilliant performance to that point. Saline might not be able to hold its 3-2 lead in the state semifinal game.
And then shortstop Mark Weist dove to his left, snared the grounder, flipped it to second baseman Josh Burd just ahead of the runner, the umpire signaled an out — and just like that, the game was over. Just like that, there was a celebrating mob on the mound and fans and parents screaming themselves hoarse. Just like that, Saline was playing for a state championship.
2. Milan and Airport share a track title. Speaking of celebration, have you ever seen two teams celebrate a title together? That's what the Milan and Airbort boys' track teams did after they split the 2008 Huron League crown, posing for giant two-team pictures in which players from both teams helped hold up the single trophy.
3. Crichton stones Troy. Saline girls' water polo goalie Sam Crichton would have been forgiven for not stopping the penalty shot awarded to Troy late in the fourth quarter of the Hornets' playoff opener against Troy.
Sure, it would have brought the Colts within a goal. Sure, a loss in that game would have ended the Hornets' season before they even reached Regionals, much less return to the state finals. But penalties are rarely saved and when they are, it's usually the result of a shooter firing too close to the goalie. The shot from Troy came in high and hard toward the upper corner.
Crichton powered up out of the pool and clawed it away anyway. Not that I've watched too much high school girls' water polo, but regardless it was the best save I've seen in the sport —and coming with the stakes as high as they were, it was the kind of special play you just don't see very often in any sport.
4. Milan's boys' soccer team downs Grosse Ile. The Big Reds had never defeated the Red Devils on a soccer field entering last fall's game on the island. The boys hadn't. The girls hadn't. That all changed when Chris Billau and Brandon Duval's goals handed Milan a 2-0 win, the Devils' first home loss in three seasons.
5. Saline eliminates the undefeated Pioneer boys' soccer team. As a soccer fan, I don't like penalty-kick shootouts. They're not soccer. The old comparison about a shootout being the equivalent of deciding a basketball game with a free-throw shooting contest isn't all that wrong.
But say this for them: The drama they create is virtually unmatched. And when the two teams in the shootout are state-ranked archrivals, one of them is undefeated, and only one of them is going to see its season continue, it's safe to say that drama gets heightened even further.
So when Saline's John Conzelmann saved Pioneer's first two shots and Matt Garza buried his penalty to clinch the win for the Hornets, I'm not sure if the palpable sense of joy and relief in Saline's stadium has ever been stronger. Shootouts fail to do a lot of things, but sticking in the memory isn't one of them.
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