Senior Jared Litty (Hudsonville/ Hudsonville) scored two goals and sophomore Michael Holwerda (Grand Rapids/ Grand Rapids Christian) picked up a goal and an assist as Calvin downed Adrian 4-0 to clinch the MIAA Championship. The league title is Calvin's first since 2004 and 18th overall. Calvin advances to the NCAA tournament, the seventh time in school history.
After opening the year with a 1-3-1 record, Calvin (13-4-2 overall) has gone 12-1-1 including an 11-0-1 mark over its last 12.
"It's exciting," Hughes said. "These kids have worked extremely hard. This year with our start we weren't getting the results [we wanted]. The upper classman on this team have really shown the way and I'm real proud of their efforts and they deserve to represent the MIAA [in the NCAA tournament]."
Litty, one of those upperclassman, put in two goals in his final regular season game at Zuidema field. Litty was a freshman on Calvin's last MIAA championship team in 2004.
"As a senior, it's a dream come true," he said. "This is our goal every year and it's been a couple years for me and hopefully we're not done."
Litty is part of Calvin's league best offense that increased its season total to 41 goals in league play with four goals against Adrian.
"We've got a lot of weapons up there," Litty said. "With six or seven guys with the ability to play the positions up top when everyone's on it's fun to watch, fun to play in."
One of those weapons is Holwerda who opened up the scoring in the 14th minute with his team leading ninth goal of the season. Holwerda rebounded his own shot and rocketed a left footed shot from the right corner of the box to put Calvin up 1-0. As part of Calvin's prolific offense, three other players sit just behind him with eight goals this season: freshman Scott Hooker(Hudsonville/ Unity Christian), senior Nick Capisciolto (Hudsonville/ Unity Christian) and Litty.
All of those scoring leaders got involved this afternoon. After opening up the scoring in the first half, Holwerda opened up the scoring in the second half feeding sophomore Luke Holtrop (Hudsonville/ Unity Christian) in the 64th minute. Holtrop, the stopper on Calvin's defense, came up to rip the cross into the back of the net for his fourth goal for the season. Litty's goals came in the 67th minute and then ten minutes later in the 77th minute. On the first goal, Hooker fed a cross into the box that Litty tapped into the net and on the second goal, Capisciolto assisted him by flipping goal keeper Darrin Cline's (Grandville/ Grandville) punt into the box, leading Litty to a break away goal.
"It's just a confidence thing in soccer," Hughes said. "One person triggers and after they've triggered the door is open [for our offense]. "
Since the previous meeting with Adrian, which Calvin won 6-1, the offense has been electric with the Knights scoring over five goals in four of seven games since then.
"I think we are confident," Hughes said. "We have to be peaking at this point and I think we are."
Calvin certainly appeared confident in the second half outshooting the Bulldogs 19-2 and scoring three times.
"It was just a matter of time until the doors were going to open," Hughes said. "We just wanted to play relentless and put a lot of pressure all over the field on their team. [We wanted to] force mistakes and then let our possession game take over and pick and chose shots. We could have had several more shots but we were taking our time and trying to find the back of the net."
Despite wrapping up the MIAA title, Hughes doesn't want to look past Saturday's conference finale at Tri-State. "We're going in hard. We need to go down and finish off the MIAA even though the championship is wrapped up right now."
Calvin plays at 2pm on Saturday
