Read Full Article - West Geauga Soccer Club

B6 The Times, August 4, 2016
SPORTS
Photos by Geoff Powers
Kori Chapic, 23, instructs West Geauga Soccer Club players Holly Jeunnette (from left), Madi Wayt, Zsofi Karetka, Mallory Sah and Shannon Swinerton, last
week at the West Geauga Commons in Russell Township. A 2011 West Geauga graduate who led the Lady Wolverines’ varsity soccer program to back-to-back
Division I district titles in 2009 and 2010, Chapic is getting back to her roots after a four-year career as a starter at Penn State University.
Hometown girl returns to coach West G Soccer Club
By TONY LANGE
She can pretty much go anywhere she
wants and do whatever she wants in the sport
of soccer. She’s that good.
Back in 2007, state dynasty programs like
Walsh Jesuit – now with four straight Division
I titles and nine overall – were licking their
chops at the possibility of attracting rising
freshman Kori Chapic to join their varsity
teams.
A hometown girl, however, Chapic thought
good and hard about leaving her roots in
Russell Township.
“Idefinitelyhadalotofthoughtsabout
that – just looking at different options of private
schools and schools that are very well known
in the area for soccer,” Chapic said.
Her sisters, Kristen and Kelsey, were 2004
and 2007 graduates of West Geauga.
The year before Chapic entered high school,
the Lady Wolverines ended their varsity soccer
campaignintheDivisionIdistrictsemifinals,
while Walsh went on to win it all.
“And it came down to the core of, why
do I play soccer? Why do I do it? And it was
because I enjoy it,” she said. “And it’s more
than just a game. And I think that ultimately
was the driving factor of wanting to play for
something more than just a really good team.
You know, what can you do with a program
andhowcanyouinfluenceaprogramthatis
right here in your hometown that you grew
up watching your older sisters play on?”
Chapic went on to lead the Lady Wolverines
to a 51-15-9 record in her four years at West
Geauga, scoring 69 goals with 21 assists,
with three Chagrin Valley Conference championships, two district championships and a
DivisionIregionalfinalsappearancehersenior
season in 2010.
She also got recruited by Penn State
University, a top-10 program in the country,
whileonthehighschoolfield.Then,infour
seasons with the Nittany Lions, she started in
93 of 94 games, including the NCAA national
championship game as a college sophomore
in 2012.
After earning her architectural engineering degree from Penn State
in May, Kori Chapic, of Russell
Township, landed a full-time job in
Northeast Ohio and is helping coach
youth soccer in her spare time.
And after graduating with an architectural
engineering degree this May, Chapic, now
23, is living back in Russell, working a fulltime job in Cleveland and giving back to her
hometown as a skills trainer for the 2003
and 2004 birth-year girls in the West Geauga
Soccer Club.
“To have her working with the community
program like this is amazing,” said Bill Bryan,
who also grew up in the West Geauga Soccer
Club during the late-1980s and coached Chapic
during her high school days.
“She could be working with professional
teams,” he said of his former player. “And so
for her to be out here working with us, it’s a
testament to who she is. Kori is a hometown
kid. Some people just look to give back to
the community that gave to them, before they
think about themselves and what they can do
for themselves. And that’s who she’s always
been.”
Bryan, of Russell, began teaching history
at West Geauga in 2007 and started coaching
with the West Geauga Soccer Club in 1997.
Two years ago, he was hired as the director
of coaching.
In an effort to revamp the WGSC, which
has six age groups for boys and girls from 9
to 14 years old, Bryan’s focus now is to move
away from the parent-coaching model and
bring in players with more of a professional
licensure, like Chapic, he said.
Some of the 2003 and 2004 girls whom
Chapic will be training this fall include Holly
Jeunnette,11,ZsofiKaretka,11,MallorySah,
12, Shannon Swinerton, 12, and Madi Wayt,
12.
“I think it’s awesome,” said Jeunnette, a
rising West Geauga Middle School student.
“She’s awesome, and she can teach us so many
cool skills that we don’t already know and
teach us so many different things. It makes
me want to push harder so I can be that good
one day.”
Swinterton said, “Well, in the past, we’re
not used to being pushed as much, because
she’s more experienced, and she can show us
better and easier ways to do stuff.”
Acting as a parent-coach for the past two
seasons, Scott Wayt said Chapic brings inspiration to the players as a young, charismatic
leader who can connect well with the girls.
This fall, parent-coaches will still be involved with helping run drills during practices,
but Chapic will spearhead all the training
disciplines, he said.
“Parent-coaches are good at showing up and
volunteering their time, and we’re involved,
but we’re not all skilled soccer players,” he
said. “So to have Kori come in, as my daughter
would say, they’re super excited. It helps for a
girls’ team to have a girl coach who is skilled
and someone they can see and learn from. And
Kori is very, very good with the girls.”
If it came to a one-on-one game between
Chapic and her dad, Madi Wayt knows who
she’s putting her money on.
“My dad knows the concepts of soccer, but
he doesn’t know how to play,” the 12-year-old
said. “So, probably, the fact that Kori is an
experienced player, and we all pretty much
look up to her, because she played on really
good teams.”
Karetka said, “She’s a really good encourager that, if you practice and do your best,
that you can probably be like her, because
you know that she’s going to help you do the
best that you can.”
Sah said, “I’m personally hoping that she
knows some defensive things, because I’m
a defender. So I’m hoping she knows some
things that will help me out. And as a team, I’m
hoping she can help us with slide tackling.”
While Chapic was a big-time goal scorer
during her days at West Geauga, she played
everypositiononthefield,withtheexception
of goalkeeper, through her high school and
college careers. However, she did dabble in
some goalie duties during her youth, including
keeper clinics with Bryan.
Learning and understanding how to play
every position allowed Chapic to get in the
minds of other players to make the correct
readsonthefield,aswellasappreciatingthe
roles of her teammates, she said.
“Playing a game or a practice in someone
else’s shoes, you understand that the outside
wingers have to run a lot,” she said. “So, if
your passes aren’t accurate, they’re going to
be mad at you. Or for the defense, you know,
if you’re not tracking back, if you’re not doing
yourjobatamidfielderorforwardposition,
as a defender you understand how that really
impacts your game and really impacts the way
that you defend.”
Turn to Chapic on Page 9
August 4, 2016, The Times B9
Chapic
continued from Page 6
After playing for coaches Sean McNamara
and Keri (Currutt) Osolin in her youth, Chapic
started as a striker during her freshman and
sophomore years at West Geauga under
Osolin’s father, Denny Currutt, who has been
coaching travel soccer at West Geauga since
the early 1980s.
During Chapic’s junior season with the
Lady Wolverines in 2009, when the elder
Currutt and Bryan swapped head and assistant
coaching roles for the varsity team, she was
getting man-marked by every which defender
in Cleveland with three players converging
on her every time she touched the ball, Bryan
said.
“She was really getting beat up. I was
worried about safety to a certain extent,”
Bryan said. “And I thought, you know what,
let’s try her on defense, because I knew she
had better endurance than anybody else. So
why don’t we put her at outside back, because
we had a solid team all over the field? We can
still possess and attack without her up there.
Let’s let them do all that work, and then let’s
run her into the play late coming out of the
back.
“And boy did throw off other teams like,
‘What are you doing? Are you crazy?’ And
Vadas
I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m nuts.’ But she scored a
bunch of goals. She locked down on defense.
I mean, she wouldn’t let the ball get past her,
and we still got her into the attack and did a
lot.”
West Geauga went on to defeat Mayfield,
1-0, Shaker Heights, 2-1, and Mentor, 2-0,
in the playoffs that year, clinching the Lady
Wolverines their first district title since a
Division II banner season in 2001.
Then, during her senior campaign in 2010,
Chapic moved to center midfielder and led
the Lady Wolverines to a 19-1-2 campaign
with their lone loss coming against eventual
Division I state champion Walsh Jesuit in the
regional final.
West Geauga beat Mentor in a shootout
for the district title that year, edging the Lady
Cardinals, 5-4, in penalty kicks with then-senior
Amy Reinhard netting the fifth and deciding
goal. Chapic’s No. 4 jersey was retired following that season.
“It’s one of those things that anything is
possible,” Chapic said about conveying to
West Geauga’s youth players that they too
can follow in her footsteps of success.
“I mean, getting recruited by a big school
like Penn State usually happens through a club
program, but it happened through high school
for me,” she said. “It kind of just goes to show
that, if you put your heart into something and
your mind and you sacrifice your time and you
commit to something like that, it all pays off.”
Penn State coaches actually got wind of
Chapic through a Nittany Lion graduate who
was refereeing one of West Geauga’s high
school games.
Moving back up to striker during her first
college season in 2011, when Penn State went
21-5, Chapic was thrown in the fire during a
4-0 loss against eventual national champion
Stanford in a season opener.
“It was super intimidating,” she said. “I
probably had never felt that many nerves
before a game in my entire life, and it was
challenging. It kind of sets you back in your
place. When you come out of a small town
and you go to a bigger stage somewhere like
that, you’re just another little fish in a big
pond again. It actually does humble you down
again.”
Nonetheless, Chapic went on to have three
game-winning goals that season and earned
all-Big Ten freshman team honors.
During Chapic’s sophomore season in
2012, Penn State lost two senior defenders
to ACL injuries – Jackie Molinda and Lexi
Marton – resulting in Chapic’s move to a
full-time defender in a three-back system
that led the Nittany Lions all the way to the
College Cup national championship game in
San Diego.
“That season started off with two really,
really big hardships,” Chapic said. “We played
a three-back set the entire season long, and
that was very taxing on just the mind and just
everything all around. We got to clicking,
though, and our success that year was because
everyone worked together toward a common
goal.”
With a 15-7-1 record in 2013 and a 20-4
campaign in 2014 that concluded in the NCAA
quarterfinals, Chapic finished her college career
with 11 goals, including seven game-winners
and 15 assists.
Returning to Northeast Ohio this summer,
Chapic played for the Ambassadors Football
Club in the Women’s Premier Soccer League
with matches out of Cuyahoga Valley Christian
Academy.
And now that she’s coaching players who
are in the same program she developed her
skills from more than a decade ago, Chapic’s
soccer career is coming full circle.
“There’s something that you learn from
every different coach, a grain of sand here and
there, and you build your own sand castle to
kind of make the player that you are,” Chapic
said. “And being in that kind of position and
seeing so many different angles and aspects of
that, I’ve kind of learned from all these different
coaches and different ways that they work to
develop my own coaching techniques.”
continued from Page 8
Vadas took over the reins as signal caller from
the get-go.
“Coach Smith was just like me,” Vadas
said. “He was a football guy. He was funny.
He was joking around with me. And that’s the
kind of guy I wanted to play for.”
Through his youth, Vadas was developed
by guys like: Joe Dickinson, a former college
coach and current NFL quarterback consultant
for the Buffalo Bills; Elvis Grbac, a St. Joseph
High School graduate who started four years at
the University of Michigan and eight years in
the NFL; and Adam Behrends, a coach down
at IMG Academy who helped Vadas become
the pocket reader he is today.
“I always said it’s like a compilation of
everybody, like from watching Aaron Rodgers
on TV, Elvis Grbac standing in front of me
and literally positioning my arm to where it
needs to be,” Vadas said of his style. “Coach
Adam Behrends was definitely huge in my
development with my footwork. He really
didn’t work on my motion as much, but he was
just always constantly getting on me about my
footwork. And he still texts me to this day.”
After leading Hun to a 7-1 mark in 2014 –
the Raiders were a 2-6 program the previous
year – Vadas made the decision to return to
New Jersey as a fifth-year senior in 2015.
“It was definitely weird. I told my mom
last summer, like, I just looked at her and
said, ‘This is the first time I’m going back to
the same school since freshman year,’” Vadas
said. “I know the players. I know the system.
So it was a cool feeling. And it was kind of
funny, because I was really excited and really
glad that I was going back to the same school,
and that’s just a normal thing. There was no
starting over.”
After losing to Poly Prep Country Day, of
Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2014, Vadas and the Raiders
erased the lone blemish from that year with a
16-0 triumph during the second week of their
2015 campaign.
Then in week three, against a new opponent
in Canada Prep Football Academy, of St.
Catharine, Ontario, Vadas took a helmet-tohelmet hit that knocked him out of the first
quarter with a concussion.
Also without its right and left tackles,
including 6-foot-3, 315-pound Fred Hansard,
a big-time recruit for the class of 2017, shorthanded Hun rallied that day to a 14-9 victory
thanks to a fourth-quarter touchdown and
running back Imamu Mayfield carrying the
team.
“I knew right away it was a concussion,”
Vadas said. “We have to have film somewhere,
but I could barely walk to the sideline. I was
pretty dizzy, and then it kind of wavered. It
went away. That night I was like, I’m fine, I’m
fine. And then I woke up the next morning with
a splitting headache. It got worse throughout
the week.”
Vadas also missed week four, when Hun
Photo courtesy of The Hun School
Simon Vadas, of Hunting Valley, commits to a Division I football scholarship offer from Duquesne University during a
ceremony with The Hun School of Princeton head coach Todd Smith (left) and assistant headmaster Steven Bristol in
April in New Jersey.
defeated MAPL foe Blair Academy, of
Blairstown, N.J., 28-12, before he returned the
following week to beat up on Hill, 44-6, during
homecoming, despite having a 102-degree
fever from pneumonia.
Vadas wasn’t worried about losing his spot,
but rather he just wanted to play, he said.
“So I really only played six games this year,”
he said. “I remember thinking, I worked so
hard in the offseason that I owe it to myself
to play these eight games. That was more of
my mindset.”
Vadas and the Raiders finished the season with wins against Lawrenceville, 36-0,
Peddie, 40-13, and Mercersburg Academy, of
Pennsylvania, 62-0, to cap off an undefeated
campaign.
And while the Raiders don’t compete in the
New Jersey state playoffs, Cranford, a team
they beat in a preseason scrimmage, went 12-0
with a Division II state championship.
“It doesn’t mean anything, but it showed that
we can compete with teams like that,” Vadas
said. “So we want to play 12 games. I’m sorry
it’s not going to be when I’m there, because I
would love to compete against public schools
and kind of beat up on them since they think
we’re just some soft prep-school kids.”
While it was difficult at times to attract
the attention of college coaches amidst an
eight-game season of dominating victories,
Vadas received Division I offers from the
universities of Richmond and Delaware, as
well as a preferred walk-on opportunity at
UCLA.
It wasn’t until late in the recruiting process – after National Signing Day in early
February – that Duquesne came after him.
“They kind of came in at the last hour, and
they were like, ‘We got ahold of your film;
we want you to come up on a visit,’” Vadas
said. “So I went to go see it. It’s close to home.
That’s a big thing for me. And there was just
something about it.
“I really liked the quarterback coach. He’s a
young guy, and he was telling me stories about
(campus life). So him being personable and
likable just made me want to play for a guy
like that. I don’t want to play for somebody
who’s always going to be in my face screaming
at me. Some people like that, but I’ve never
been one for negative reinforcement.”
While Vadas is the lone incoming freshman
quarterback at Duquesne, with a fifth-year
senior signal caller in the program, he’s gearing
to redshirt his freshman campaign.
Nonetheless, to get his body physically
ready for the next level, Vadas worked with
Tim Robertson Jr., a founder of Speed Strength
Systems, in Chester Township, this summer.
Working with professional and college
athletes, Robertson also trained Ben Simmons,
the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, this summer.
Some of his football clients include Ted Ginn
Jr., Troy Smith, Charlie Frye and Joe Jurevicius,
among athletes in other sports.
“I gained about 12 pounds since March,”
Vadas said about testing out the same meal
plan that beefed up Simmons this offseason.
“Obviously, it’s hard just getting in the gym
and saying, ‘I’m going to get ripped,’” Vadas
said. “But when you have a team on your back
saying, ‘We need you. We need you to come
to camp at 175, 180,’ it makes it a lot easier.
And then you’ve got Tim telling you what
you need to do; it makes it even easier. It’s
just that Tim is a great, great, great trainer.”
While most high school graduates move
farther away from home, Vadas’ transition
to Duquesne is coming home in sense – the
campus is five hours closer to Hunting Valley
than Hun.
He plans to take business classes there and
explore his entrepreneur interests.
“I never even took an official overnight,
because I didn’t feel the need to,” he said.
“I’ve been away from home for two years.
So it doesn’t even feel like I’m going away.
“So I’ve hit that benchmark. I’ve made
it to DI football, and nobody can take that
away from me. And if you want to say I was
running, well, maybe you should try running,
too, because it worked out.”