GRAND LEDGE — On a deep, talented, Warren De La Salle soccer team, Settimo Leone knows his role.
While three-time all-state goalkeeper Dominic Balderotta shows nerves of steel, and leading scorer and “Mr. Soccer” candidate Andrew Corder lets his goals do the talking, Leone doesn’t hesitate to be the squad’s hype man.
“We’ve got a lot of silent captains on the team, so there’s got to be someone to get everyone going, get everyone fired up. I took that role on initially and it couldn’t be better,” the senior midfielder said.
During the pre-game lineup introductions, Leone pulled back and launched an imaginary arrow toward the De La Salle student section. In the post-game awards line, he blew kisses to the crowd. But the thing that hyped up fans the most was Leone’s goal five minutes into the contest, propelling the Pilots to their third straight state soccer championship.
Leone’s early goal, combined with two in the second half by Corder, lifted De La Salle (21-3-4) to a 3-2 victory over previously undefeated St. Joseph. While seeking their first title, the Bears (23-1) came into the game with 100 goals, and had only allowed four goals all season, which would have tied the state record for the fewest given up had they won via a shutout.
But Leone stunned them by jumping on a loose ball in front of the goal and drilling it in just 5:30 into the first half.
“They’re not used to going down early. We put them away first,” he said. “They didn’t know how to react; they were arguing with each other. Props to them for getting a goal to tie it up later, but I don’t think they made a good enough run.”
As the two teams went into the break tied at 1, head coach Thaier Mukhtar urged his team to get more players involved in the offense in the second half, and that seemed to work as Corder quickly connected twice, on rebounds, to put De La Salle up 3-1.
“We knew we had to look for the second ball if we wanted to win, because they played a back four (defensive line). A ball got played to our ‘tens,’ and he cut it back across and I was wide open,” Corder said. “On the second goal, Coach always tells us to follow up shots, because those might be the best opportunities you can get. Just my luck, the goalie popped it out and I was right there to follow it, and just had an open net.”
“They were so worried about Corder that there were gaps that were going to be open for other players to make runs,” Mukhtar said. “The second goal, Marco (DiLuca) hit a shot, Corder followed in, boom — goal. Simply, both goals (Corder) scored were other players making the play, and he just followed up and buried shots in like he does. Every team we play, they’re marking Corder up with two, three, four guys. So other players had to step in, and they did, and I couldn’t be prouder of them.”
St. Joseph turned up the heat down the stretch and did get to within one goal off a corner kick by Caden Shannon with just under 10 minutes to play, but Balderotta made two more saves to squelch the Bears’ hopes.
“He’s the best goalie in the state,” Mukhtar said. “He’s a three-time all-stater, and he’s just a tremendous keeper. There isn’t another goalie I’d rather have when we have a lead late in the game. He’s the one I want back there. He’s dominant. That’s what he does.”
Even with a pair of goals to his credit, Corder credited Leone for coming up with the game-changer.
“We had every situation planned: we’d been down at halftime, we’d gone into overtime, we’d been tied with a minute left, and they hadn’t gone down once,” Corder said. “We knew if we scored first it would be a more difficult game for them. And then we scored two early in the (second) half, and I think we just kind of put them to bed.”
Despite De La Salle’s recent history of soccer success, St. Joseph was the favorite coming into the game.
“It was a great team we played, but at the end of the day, they didn’t finish their chances and we did,” Corder said. “Everyone doubted us; probably everyone in the state thought they would win, besides us and our school, but that’s the kind of team we are.”
“We took a hard loss in the beginning (of the season) to Marquette up north. A lot of teams looked at us and they were like, ‘They’re not the same anymore. De La Salle’s not the same anymore,’” Leone said. “So we kept a positive mindset, we worked every day in practice, pushed each other, and you know, it all paid off clearly.”
The Pilots became just the fourth team in state history to win three straight titles — the first to do so in Division 2/Class B — and De La Salle now has eight overall, tied for the third most among programs in the state.
“We talk about experience, we talk about how to prepare a team for this, and let’s not kid each other here — that was an awesome team, an extremely talented team, no weaknesses anywhere on the field. But you know, I felt we got a little bit disrespected, being back-to-back champs and people not giving us a chance to win,” Mukhtar said. “Everybody just raved about how great St. Joseph is — and they were great — but what about us? We’re pretty good too.”
