Lifetime of soccer together will come to end at the final four for Perryville seniors

Six seniors on the Perryville soccer team have a special bond to the game and each other that many teams don't.

The seniors, who have been playing together since kindergarten, have helped lead Perryville to its first final four appearance. The Pirates will play in a Class 2 semifinal against St. Pius X of Kansas City on Friday in Blue Springs, Missouri.

They've experienced winning before, but in their 13th season as a team, the seniors are in a position to win a championship they've been dreaming of for a long time.

"We won a lot as we were younger and we're still carrying over that tradition," senior captain Matt Moran said. "It just feels good to still be playing together and to have the same friendships that we've always had. We're on the cusp of making history for this school. For us personally, this is a moment we won't forget and we want to go out on top."

Moran, Luke Dobbelare, Luke Schlichting, Michael Volansky, Trevor Martin and Collin Stief started playing on the same Perryville youth soccer team around the ages of 4 and 5.

At that time, The Perryville Soccer Complex, where the Pirates currently play their home games was not built. Instead, the Thunder, as they were known back then, played their home games at Perryville City Park.

"Obviously I remember playing together, but I think of those early seasons as a time where we made a lot of memories and had fun," Schlichting said.

One of his favorite memories happened during their first season when fellow captain Moran learned that goalie was not the position for him.

"I remember when we were in either first or second grade right before practice and Matt was in goal. One of our teammates kicked the ball as hard as he could and Matt reached up with his hand to try and stop it," Schlichting said while trying to hold back a laugh. "It hit his arm, his arm hit the post and his arm broke. For the rest of the season Matt had to play with a cast wrapped in bubble wrap and we never let him forget it."

Since then, Moran has moved on to a more suitable position at midfield, but he said it's the memories and years of playing together that have led to the strong team chemistry the Pirates have today.

"You can definitely tell that the friendship carries over from the soccer field, just in basic life, just every day at school, and that's what's really helped our chemistry," Moran said. "It's definitely been building our whole lives. We've been winning our whole lives and you can just tell that the chemistry has gotten better and better, and now it's through the roof. Now we're doing great things that we're going to remember forever."

Perryville players pose for a photo, Monday, Nov. 10, 2014. (Laura Simon)

Around fourth grade, the seniors said they started to get competitive. At a weekend tournament in Cape Girardeau, they experienced their first shootout victory. Dobbelare said that game has always stuck out as a key moment in his mind.

"I had the game-winning save and these two guys [Moran and Schlichting] each scored goals. I just remember that being one of my favorite memories," Dobbelare said. "I think for me personally it was like, 'Wow this is really fun and we are a good team, we need to keep this going,' and we did."

Schlichting's father, Alan Schlichting, coached the seniors through their eighth grade season. Schlichting said it was fun to have his dad as a coach, but at times it was tough being the coach's son.

"My dad was always big on getting 15 minutes a day," Schlichting said. "Every day he would say, 'Just give 15 minutes of soccer.' After that I could do whatever, but I always had to do it. Most people when they go home they get a break from it, but not me. When I go home I always get to hear more about it from my dad. But looking back he was very instrumental in making me the player I am today."

The other seniors said that Alan still has an impact on their game today. Volansky said he still gets coaching advice the man he refers to as "Coach Alan" every time he sees him.

"He was the first coach I ever had, so I think I started trusting him when I was pretty young, and it never really changed," Volansky said.

Perryville juniors Kyle Wood and Eann Bergman have also been playing together since they were young. At age 4, Wood and Bergman began playing in the same Perryville youth league as the six seniors. Juniors Conner Stark and Ryan and Nathan Noland joined the junior team three years later.

Bergman said that in nearly every weekend tournament his team, the Stingers, would meet the Thunder in the championship game.

"We always had to play them. We would always meet them in the championship game and they always beat us," Bergman said. "Us younger kids would always be in the lower division and they were ahead of us obviously. We took them to PKs a few times and it was always close, but they always had the upper hand."

The rivalry between the two teams heated up until the they merged in 2010 to become the Riot.

During that time, the seniors welcomed the juniors and became an even better unit together.

Perryville coach Jerry Fulton said when the now juniors joined the team in 2012 as freshman, the transition was smooth.

Perryville players pose for a photo, Monday, Nov. 10, 2014. (Laura Simon)

"It was amazing. I mean anytime you can get 19 young men to get along and work hard at the same goal is an amazing feat in my book," Fulton said. "Especially when you're talking about 14 to 18 year olds. There's a huge difference in maturity between a 14 year old and an 18 year old, but these guys have managed to border the age gap, and they all get along really well."

Schlichting said he had never met Fulton before he joined Perryville as a freshman, but he remembers seeing him at a game during his eighth grade season.

"My dad came up to me and pointed him out and said, 'That's going to be your coach next year,'" Schlichting said. "After he told me that I think I played one of my better games and we won by like three or four to nothing."

Fulton said he scouted the seniors a few times during their eighth grade season and was impressed with what he saw.

"We would go check them out like we do every year just to see the kind of talent we would be getting next year," Fulton said about the six seniors.

Dobbelare, the reigning Semoball Awards player of the year, has emerged as the top goalie in the area since taking over the starting role in the summer before his sophomore season. He said assistant coach Matt Spinner helped him transition from being a good goalie to a great one.

"Before I got to high school I had no formal goalie training," Dobbelare said. "Spinner pretty much took me from the ground up, and he's pretty much made me what I am today. I've had no other coaches sit down with me and tell me, 'This is what you need to do to become a better goalie,' and he did."

Dobbelare broke the school record for shutouts with 18 last year. This year, the senior broke it again after securing his 19th shutout in a 1-0 quarterfinal win over John Burroughs.

"Our guys and my coaching staff were saying, 'Coach, I don't know, we don't think he's ready,'" Fulton said, recalling whether or not he would make Dobbelare the starting goalie. "In Day 2 of a showcase that summer he played the best I had ever seen him play and continued that throughout the showcase. That made my mind up that Luke was my keeper, and he's been my keeper ever since."

The seniors said that the most important thing that they've learned from Fulton is that they need to play with heart in every game.

The Pirates have needed a lot of heart this season, especially in their recent sectional and quarterfinal games.

In a sectional against Bayless, Perryville was down 1-0 with 20 minutes to play.

"That could have been it right there," Schlichting said. "I looked at Matt on the field one time and said, 'We're going to get a goal,' and we scored. We've been down in some big games before this season and come back from deficits to show that we have that heart coach Fulton preaches."

Schlichting scored a game-tying goal late in the second half, before Pablo Mattingly and Moran each added goals to send the Pirates to a quarterfinal.

Perryville would only need a late goal to get past John Burroughs to advance to the final four.

Volansky has already committed to play soccer at Missouri Baptist University, but the rest of the senior class is unsure about where or if they will play next year.

One thing they do know for sure is that this weekend -- win or lose -- will mark the final two games they will play together.

"Honestly, I haven't known any other soccer team except for these guys. It's going to be bittersweet," Martin said. "Bitter because it will be the last time we're all on the pitch together, and sweet because we all have so many memories that we can look back on. We can see just how successful we were for 13 years of our life, and it's good that we can have that and share that forever."

The memories have been made and the Perryville seniors will always have them. But before they say goodbye to a spectacular career of playing together, they're going to focus on winning Perryville's first state championship.

"It's going to be a sad moment, but at some point in your life you get to be able to look back and say, 'Wow I was a part of that,'" Schlichting said. "This weekend we have the chance to do something that no other Perryville team will have done or may ever do again. We just have to relax, play our game and go out and get what we've had our sights set on for a long time."