Joey Payeur
Four years ago, Tyler Ruppenstein and Kirk Johnson were fresh-faced rookies.
The tandem watched helplessly in their first OFSAA ‘AA’ boys’ soccer tournament as the host Honourable W.C. Kennedy Collegiate Institute Clippers (Windsor) ran over, around, and through them and the rest of the black-and-gold.
The fifth-year duo said farewell to their high school careers Friday by fittingly getting the last laugh against those same Clippers.
Isaac Firth scored the lone goal with eight minutes left in the second half, while Cole Kowalski and Gavin Richardson shared the shutout between the pipes, as the Muskies won 1-0 to complete their stay at OFSAA in North Bay with a 2-2 record and fourth-place in Pool ‘A.’
“We had the biggest lopsided loss in our program’s history against them in 2011,” Muskie head coach Shane Beckett recalled about the 4-0 rout his team absorbed.
“This win shows that this program has come a long way.”
Two OFSAA wins in the same season also is a record for the Muskie boys’ soccer squad.
But the victory against the Clippers also served as a poignant setting for Beckett to watch his troops cavort gleefully on the field one last time under his watch—unbeknownst to them.
The man who has been at the helm of the Muskies since 2005, and been affiliated with the team as a player or coach in 21 of the past 26 years, revealed Sunday that he won’t be back on the sidelines next season.
“It’s a weird thing to think I’m going to be stepping away from it,” admitted Beckett, who had resigned at the end of last season following an unspecified violation of team policy by one of his players that was serious enough to convince him it was time to move on.
But the clarion call of the black-and-gold was too strong for Beckett, who committed to one more year and wound up leading Fort High to its fifth-straight NorWOSSA title and sixth in the past nine years.
“I’ve got some changes professionally happening in my life that won’t allow me to give 100 percent to the program and those boys deserve that much,” said Beckett, who left his athletic director position at Fort High last year to become a technology instructor for teachers with the Rainy River District School Board.
“I’m going to miss it a lot and my family is going to miss it a lot,” he noted.
“The decision did not come lightly.
“I knew before OFSAA that this was going to be it, but I didn’t want to take away from what the boys had accomplished by saying anything to them down there,” Beckett added.
The first day of his last OFSAA trip began with the Muskies splitting their games, including an opening loss that came back to haunt them.
The Jean Vanier Jaguars (Richmond Hill), who had beaten Fort High 2-1 at last year’s OFSAA, scored three minutes into the game and held on for a 1-0 win.
As pool play unfolded, that victory wound up being the reason the Jaguars (2-1-1) ended up in second place ahead of the Muskies, who finished one point short of a quarter-final berth.
But the Muskies regrouped that afternoon to beat the Simcoe Composite Sabres (Simcoe) 1-0.
Ruppenstein delivered the key blow—corralling a bouncing ball in the Sabres’ 18-yard box and then slamming it past Simcoe’s keeper.
“‘Rupp’ just did what he does, which is bury it in the middle of the net,” lauded Beckett.
“We carried the play after that and the win was deserved.”
Facing an already-daunting challenge of having to beat the top-ranked Ascension of Our Lord Eagles (Mississauga) in their first game Friday to stay in the running for a playoff spot, the Muskies were put on hold by heavy rains that delayed the start by four hours.
“It was a nightmare,” recalled Beckett. “We went three different times to the field.”
When the two teams finally took the pitch, Beckett said it was an even confrontation until the last 10 minutes of the first half.
“We started to figure it out and for those last 10 minutes and the whole second half, we were all over them possession-wise and territorial-wise,” he remarked.
With the game still scoreless in the waning stages of injury time at the end of the second half, a good bounce for the Eagles turned into bad luck and a 1-0 loss that eliminated Fort High from quarter-final contention.
“[The Eagles] had a free kick, and our boys did what they were supposed to do and kept it out of the 18-yard box,” Beckett recounted.
“The ball went out about 30 yards and their fullback stepped up and crushed it.
“How it got through the logjam at the top of the 18 [yard box], I haven’t a clue,” Beckett added. “But once it got through, [Richardson] didn’t have a chance.
“After the game, their coach and the referee and others came up to us and said we deserved much better than that,” noted Beckett, who faced the difficult task of rekindling his team’s doused inner fire.
“The guys were pretty down knowing we were out of the playoffs,” admitted Beckett, whose team went up against the Clippers without Ruppenstein and Ian Jodoin, two of their three starting midfielders who were too banged up from the Eagles’ game to go.
“But that’s where you have to believe other guys will step up—and they did.”
The first 15 minutes looked like a repeat of 2011, with W.C. Kennedy all over the Muskies but failing to score against Kowalski.
Fort High started to find its legs and its attack as the half wore on and were controlling the play by the second half.
But the Muskies still needed someone to bulge the twine as the clock wound down to truly feel like they ended their season on a high note.
Enter Firth, a Grade 12 veteran representative of the energetic spirit that’s carried the team all season.
“Firth looked like he was going to pass, then buried his head and drilled it,” Beckett described.
“The goalie got a hand on it but it just blew into the net.”
The final whistle elicited pandemonium as the Muskies tackled and hugged each other.
“We celebrated like we’d won a championship because we knew we had done something [Fort High] had never done before,” noted Beckett.
Ruppenstein, Johnson, and captain Derek Kaemingh—all “victory lap” players—likely will be joined by Grade 12 veterans Max Williams and Connor Bujold, and possibly more, in saying goodbye to the team, along with Beckett.
“I couldn’t be more proud of these guys,” stressed Beckett. “They have worked so hard over the last few years and bought into the program and the system.
“Derek [Kaemingh] couldn’t have been better all week and played the captain’s role to a ‘T,’” he added.
“Connor [Bujold] was absolutely lights out all week.”
But whoever fills his shoes in guiding the black-and-gold won’t be lacking for roster talent.
“They could have at least 17 and maybe more back next year,” Beckett predicted.
“There’s guys who are Grade 12s this year who are already saying they want to do the ‘victory lap,’” he noted.
