TRUCK FIRE – Firefighters knock down a fire in a Ford Explorer truck in Arrowhead Trailer Park in the 1200 block of Sawmill Creek Road Saturday evening. One person received fire-related injuries and was taken to the hospital, Sitka Fire Department Chief Craig Warren said, and the truck was considered a total loss. The cause of the fire is under investigation, Warren said. The fire hall received the call about the fire at 5:33 p.m., and one fire engine with eight firefighters and an ambulance were dispatched, he said. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)

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Daily Sitka Sentinel

Soccer Season Ends, Longtime Coach Retires

By KLAS STOLPE

Sentinel Staff Writer

JUNEAU– To understand the impact retiring Sitka High School soccer coach Eric Van Cise has had on Southeast Alaska pitches, one only had to see who was on the sidelines of the Wolves’ final game of the season Friday at Adair Kennedy Field in Juneau.

Gary Lehnhart, who has won multiple state titles with Juneau-Douglas and his state qualifying Crimson Bears’ varsity soccer team stood back from the action as the coed Sitka team warmed up to play the more advanced JDHS junior varsity boys.

Eric Van Cise. (Sentinel Photo by Klas Stolpe)

“They play hard and we love playing them,” Lehnhart said. “And he is part of the reason we love playing them, because he sets the right tone with his players and they give a great effort. We are going to miss him. It is too bad, but I get it, too. It is an uphill battle.”

Lehnhart knows it’s hard to build a program. Even in Juneau, with year-round youth opportunities and instruction, club teams and competitive adult play, the sport isn’t a bleacher-filling event.

“He’s meant a ton, especially from a Sitka standpoint. He has proven it with his time and his commitment,” Lehnhart said. “To try to build a program in a small community is not easy. We know, and we have a bigger community and a big high school. You have to get the numbers, and the only way to get the numbers is to convince the kids that you are going to have a viable program that is going to be around for a while, so that when they come in as freshmen they make a commitment to four years and they know that it is going to be around and they will have travel opportunities. It’s one of those things that you can’t even start just a little bit. You have to go all out.”

The referees call both team captains onto the field.

Juneau JV coach Alex Newton watches the Wolves’ excitement of being on a pristine pitch.

“A challenge in Sitka is found at the field. You look at the baseball field and you look at the soccer field and you can tell where the priority is in the community. I think that is a big piece as far as getting athletes to commit to the program and be invested in it, but Eric always has a couple athletes that give us challenges and, actually for our JV’s, it is one of our best games of the season. It’s fun, really fun,” he said.

For the Sitka players it is the match of the year,  80 minutes against the state’s future champions.

Coach Van Cise says the game is about them.

“No matter what the scoreboard shows, I want you to keep a really good attitude. Send your passes at appropriate speeds, don’t get buried, do your best. I am challenging you to just make it count. Just ignore what is on the board and have a good time,” he said.

For the seniors, it is a memory to draw upon when summer lags, an accomplishment to check in a college application, a smile to greet a fellow Wolves player years down the road.

Jordan Diego, Ethan Pike, and Ben Holmgren speak in the huddle about the end of four years – of starting young, leaving it on the field, having fun and hoping the underclasses find that same spirit.

They say not to let this game be their entire season, summer or career. “Let it be the last one for us seniors, but for you guys never hang your heads. Just play.”

For senior captain and coach’s son Leif Van Cise it is a time to honor his father.

With 14 minutes elapsed in the game Leif scores on a crowded jam at the JDHS net for a lead that holds up through the half.

Leif was a striker growing up, the starting keeper his freshman and sophomore years, midfielder last year, and now a striker again.

JDHS’ classic skills, bench depth, and 75-degree heat put the Wolves down 4-1 late in the second half.

Coach Van Cise smiled proudly as his Wolves shouted encouragement to each other and played with a determination he had not seen before. 

“I could care less the score,” he said. “They were doing what I asked and everyone was lit up.”

Just five minutes remained when Leif took a hard ball to the gut defending as center mid, stumbled at the Wolves’ 30 and slowly gained his feet.

The ball and he found themselves together at the 40 and began a journey past four Juneau defenders.

“He encountered one after another and each time I thought this is not going to turn out good. But through them he went, grabbing the shagged ball and still moving,” the coach said.  

The JDHS keeper was out of the box looking to engage, a tactic that led to a collision earlier in the game.

The defenders were catching up and Leif chipped a shot from 25 yards out that avoided the herculean effort of the keeper’s extended body and nestled into the safety of the back net.

Coach Van Cise said it was the play of the year.

“It was the most hard core, determined run that had many impossible barriers that he just out of fierce determination overcame. Not only had he just been injured, he, like nearly all his teammates, had been playing the whole game on the 75-degree heat pitch. For me, when that ball found the net, I went ballistic. Not because he is my son, it’s because it put the cap and seal on what this team has been for six years. It was the greatest gift to see how hard my team played that final game. Every single player had their best game and I was beyond proud of them all. I will cherish that memory for my life,” he said.

For Van Cise, who is leaving coaching to devote more time to work, there are other memories for a coach who was never trained or been to a camp or workshop. 

He had been coaching Community Schools indoor/outdoor soccer for 10 years and answered an advertisement for SHS boys and girls coach in 2013.

In the interview with then-Athletic Director Mike Vieira he was told “You are it. No one else applied.”

He was an “interested dad,” one son, Tristan, was a sophomore, Leif in middle school, and the JV and varsity roster averaged 18 players and played back-to-back games Fridays and Saturdays against 4A schools. Double digit blowouts were the norm.

In 2014, they asked opponents to play the varsity games first, so they could put their best cleats forward. Since an average player runs about six miles a game, his Wolves were grinding down.

In 2015, games were dropped to the JV level and the girls squad had mostly graduated so they formed the state’s only coed team and averaged four girls to 14 boys from 2015 to 2017.

In 2015, they garnished their first few wins and went 6-6 in 2016 and 5-3-2 in 2017. 

The Wolves went 0-7 in 2018, but they almost had no team.

A 75 percent loss of players to graduation and moves left just four seniors returning and three developing players interested. 

A January 31 deadline to field a full team loomed when a surge of interested sophomores, freshman, and exchange students signed up. At the start of the ASAA season on Feb. 28, 11 boys and 9 girls were Sitka Wolves, and three out of four, or 75 percent, were new to soccer.

Susan Ross, assistant principal of co-curricular activities for Sitka High School, said Van Cise has been instrumental in keeping the soccer program alive.

“He has not only spent hours at practices and traveling with his team but many days you could find him out working on the fields with the city crew making sure the surface was safe and lined for games. His commitment and love of the sport showed on and off the field. He will be missed,” she said.

Under Van Cise, the Wolves were known to give 100 percent, even in crushing defeats. They never turned on each other. They carried injured opposing players off the field, they ‘fessed up to officials when their infractions were not seen or whistled.

Van Cise said he is not a soccer coach as much as a coach in life skills.

“Having a teenage, co-ed team my players learn and retain that there are no gender barriers - period. Which translates into what real life should be,” he said.

“Courtesy, respect, honesty and sportsmanship are the four cornerstones that I require at all times. In five years no one will care who scored what goal, they will care if you are a person that makes the world advance, not retreat as a species.”

Last Friday, when the final seconds of a career went to zero and coach Van Cise shook opponents’ hands and thanked referees and brought the Wolves into a tearful circle, JDHS coach Lehnhart, arguably the guru of soccer in the state, seemed to brush something from his eye and gently toed the turf with his shoe.

“He is one of the nicest human beings that either one of us has ever met and regardless of the soccer part of it, he is just a gentleman. He has only positive things to say. He thanks us for anything that we do, even if it is really nothing. We are going to miss him. He is a quality human being no question,” he said.

There are not a lot of spots to kick at on the Juneau turf, but Sitka’s Lower Moller Field appears as vacant farm land.

“We play on a dirt field that ranges from muck to dust to just right in surface,” Van Cise said. “It is only smooth after it has been rolled, then the first run through with cleats fixes that into the lump terrain we call home. The teams we visit have pristine artificial turf. My players love it and who knows where our skill sets would be if we had that pitch each day. Having said that, all my teams over the six years love their dirt field. Maybe in part because they carry a bit of it home each day and find more over the years in interesting places.”

Van Cise let his players celebrate on Juneau’s sunny turf long after the Gatorade and water had run out.

He watched his players and remembered those sweet soccer moments.

Such as in 2016, then sophomore Ethan Pike called for a slow ball drop from freshman Bryce DeWinter, who laid a perfect rolling ball that Pike one-touched into the air from 40 yards out and it went past the opponents’ keeper for a game winner.

In 2017 they played undefeated JDHS on their turf, losing a close 2-1 game on Friday, then breaking the Crimson Bears streak with a 2-2 tie on Saturday with Pike and Jordan Diego finding the net.

Earlier this season his four seniors each touched the ball in one sweet run down the pitch. Ben Holmgren secured it in the air, pushed to Diego, on to Pike and then his son Leif touched it in the goal.

Leif Van Cise said he feels lucky to have grown up watching his father’s hours of planning sessions, and to have played for his father throughout his high school career. He said it allowed them to share honest feedback and helped both improve.

“The biggest lesson that I took away from him as my coach and father was to always take the high road. No phrase could ever display the foundation that our team is built on any better,” he said.

“The message he’s always pushed is to stay positive and persevere. That mentality has stuck with our team and as a result we’ve witnessed ourselves have stellar comebacks, score amazing goals, have positive seasons and take historic victories over teams who never once thought they could be defeated by ‘that co-ed team from Sitka.’”

Coach Van Cise wants next year’s players committed by Christmas.

He knows there are many talented women and men in Sitka, younger and keener on soccer than he was and he hopes one or more are willing to step up.

The job requires patience and flexibility as a vast majority of the team are students who are engaged in many simultaneous activities during soccer and are new to the sport. 

“I believe that sport activities can be transcending to our youth in a healthy way,” he said. “Even if the wins are slim, it is the life skills we can teach them in the game of soccer that makes it all worthwhile.”

Coach Van Cise started across the JDHS pitch for the last time.

He paused.

He thought of his old high school era Club Team Coach, who was from Brazil.

“He always told us, ‘The only time you look down on someone is when you are reaching down to give them a hand up.’”

Coach Van Cise and the Sitka Wolves co-ed soccer team packed up their cleats and left the turf.

 

 

 

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20 YEARS AGO

March 2004

Businesses using the Centennial Hall parking lot testified Tuesday against a proposal to charge them rent in addition to the $200 annual permit fee. City Administrator Hugh Bevan made the proposal in response to the Assembly’s direction to Centennial Hall manager Don Kluting to try to close the $340,000 gap between building revenues and operational costs.


50 YEARS AGO

March 1974

Alaska Native Brotherhood Grand President William S. Paul Sr. will be special guest and speaker at the local ANB, Alaska Native Sisterhood Founders Day program Monday at the ANB Hall.

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