By Ron Rop
LocalSportsJournal.com

NORTON SHORES – It took a little time for the North Muskegon Norsemen to get rolling on Tuesday night in their Division 4 district semifinal soccer game.

But once the Norsemen started clicking, it was lights out with a 5-0 victory over the Pentwater Falcons.  The game was played at Western Michigan Christian High School.

Photo/David Reid

North Muskegon will face the host Warriors at 6:45 p.m. Thursday night with a district title up for grabs.

On Tuesday, North Muskegon led 1-0 at the half against a young Falcon team that has no seniors and includes five eighth graders on their roster. They had just two subs available for the game.

North Muskegon’s first half goal was scored by Cole Johnson, who redirected a pass by Serj Pastor and into the net.
In the second half, the offense started clicking for the Norsemen, who scored just 3:20 into the half after a corner kick by Jack Bahorski was knocked into the net by Pastor.

“It just took us a minute to get our engine going,” said North Muskegon coach Jeremy Tjapkes. “Once we got settled in … we were trying to play into space instead of to feet. Once we  played to feet, the game became easier for us.”

The lead grew to 3-0 with 16:32 remaining in the game when the ball bounced over the head of Falcon keeper Kaleb Brown and Thomas Hogan knocked it into the net.

Two minutes later, Curtis Vandervelde pushed the ball into the net and it was 4-0.

Pastor beat Brown to the ball and rolled in a shot from 18 yards out and that capped the game’s scoring with 12:48 remaining.

“They are a young, scrappy team,” Tjapkes said of the Falcons. “I’ll give them props, they don’t have any subs and they played their hearts out. We saw that on film going in.”

North Muskegon (10-10-4) now face the top-ranked team in Division 4 in Western Michigan Christian.

“We’ll have to do a better job of matching their storm coming out,” said Tjapkes, whose team dropped a 4-0 decision to the Warriors in the season opener. “Weather the storm and just play our game.”

Chck out more photos from the action coutresy of David Reid.