{"id":626687,"date":"2026-04-25T00:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T00:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/626687\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T00:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T00:47:11","slug":"for-the-marian-girls-soccer-team-its-hammer-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/626687\/","title":{"rendered":"For the Marian girls\u2019 soccer team, it\u2019s Hammer Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

BLOOMFIELD HILLS \u2014 Does Bloomfield Hills Marian have all the tools for another soccer state championship?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, they have a sledgehammer \u2014 and they haven\u2019t hesitated to put it to use. The Mustangs (7-1-0 after Thursday\u2019s match) are ranked fourth in the state, and have pounded most of their opponents this spring.<\/p>\n

After every match, the first thing coach Danny Price does is call the girls together and present a player-of-the game reward. It\u2019s not a certificate, a medal, or even a cupcake \u2014 it\u2019s a long-handled, steel-headed, honest-to-goodness heavy mallet. The player receiving the award gets to keep it until the Mustangs\u2019 next event.<\/p>\n

Price chose Emma Wyciskalla following a 6-0 win April 21 at Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook. Wyciskalla scored the first goal of the match, and got the team rolling with her inspired play.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was good today,\u201d Price said. \u201cThat first goal just showed her quality, really. She\u2019s just a dangerous player in those wide areas. She had a great first touch on a difficult field. She had 21 goals as a freshman last year, and she\u2019s come into the season as a sophomore scoring the same goals and providing the assists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cToday I thought she was very good in one-v-one isolation moments with the defender on the outside,\u201d Price added. \u201cShe did everything I asked her to do from wide areas.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\"Marian\u2019s
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Marian\u2019s Giselle Gniatczyk fights a defender for a 50\/50 ball during the second half of the Mustangs\u2019 6-0 win on Cranbrook\u2019s lower field April 21.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is Price has had several choices each game day as the Mustangs continue to play well. For example, Marian\u2019s dominant win over Cranbrook pitted the two teams together that played for the 2025 Catholic League championship. The Mustangs proved dominant on the Cranes\u2019 home field, scoring four times in the first half and allowing the Cranes very few offensive opportunities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t speak to other programs, honestly,\u201d Price said. \u201cWe know what players graduated from other programs last year, but the great thing about this program is we keep re-loading with great payers that come in as freshmen. Our JV program is 16 players strong; they\u2019re all freshmen, bar one, and they all play club soccer. We just continue to re-load after every year. We lose four or five seniors but we re-load with four or five good travel players.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just really great to experience what we have. We usually do very well in the Catholic League, I\u2019d say. I\u2019m glad we finished it off today,\u201d said junior captain Nia Bordogna. \u201cHonestly, there\u2019s no drop-off on our team. Yeah, we do have a smaller team compared to other high school teams like Cranbook and other schools that we play, but it\u2019s a small group of girls that are really good together. There\u2019s no drop-off if we make subs or if someone\u2019s having an off-game.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year\u2019s squad has a lot of all-around talent,\u201d added four-year team member and senior captain Lily Robinson. \u201cIn the past we\u2019ve been strong in a couple aspects of the game \u2014 we\u2019ve been strong defensively or strong in midfield \u2014 but this year, we really have all-around grit and talent and just the willingness to work hard, which is going to help us go really far I think.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\"Junior
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Junior captain Nia Bordogna pops a cross pass from the right corner late in the game as defending league champion Marian defeated Catholic League nemesis Cranbrook.<\/p>\n

Winning is ingrained in the Marian program. Not only have the Mustangs captured the Catholic League crown five times in the past 10 years, but they have nine state titles, which ranks third best among all schools statewide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Mustangs have a 53-10-6 record since Price succeeded the retired Barry Brodsky following the 2022 season. However, it\u2019s been five seasons since Marian has claimed the state championship, and the team thinks it\u2019s time for another.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve set some goals and standards. We had a presentation that really outlined who we are as a program and who we want to be,\u201d Price said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really discuss our goals, but we did say that we want to be in the state finals and we want to retain our Catholic League title \u2014 that\u2019s the standards we have in this program. We don\u2019t talk about it game-to-game; we just play game-to-game.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, six of the team\u2019s seven wins have come by six goals or more. Besides Cranbrook, Marian has defeated Warren Regina (a state finalist in 2025), Waterford Kettering, Dearborn, Fenton, Williamston and Mason. The only blemish has been a 1-0 defeat to Detroit Country Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the most important thing is that they\u2019re all collectively working together,\u201d Price said. \u201cWe had a great pre-season. That\u2019s 44 goals and we\u2019ve conceded 2 in (our first) 7 games, it\u2019s a good way to start the season. We\u2019re doing some great things right now, we\u2019re still taking it game-by-game, we\u2019re still taking it day-by-day. I\u2019m super-proud of them, and they\u2019re continuing to go from strength to strength.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\"Lily
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Lily Robinson, a four-year member of the Marian varsity and one of four team captains, puts the ball in play via a corner kick.<\/p>\n

Besides, many of the players feel they have something to prove after taking an early exit from the state tournament last year, at the hands of Farmington Hills Mercy in the district round.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year was tough to deal with, and it definitely put things in perspective a lot, which is something I actually think we\u2019re benefitting from this year,\u201d Robinson said, \u201cso just knowing everything can be taken away in a second, it just makes us work that much harder.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it hurt at the time, but I don\u2019t think it sends a message of, ‘Let\u2019s go back with revenge on the mind,’\u201d Price said. \u201cRight now we\u2019re super-hyper-focused on performance, and super-hyper-focused on delivering on that performance, and the results will take care of themselves.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BLOOMFIELD HILLS \u2014 Does Bloomfield Hills Marian have all the tools for another soccer state championship?\u00a0 Well, they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-626687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}