Tschirhart earns Lenawee County Boys Soccer Player of the Year
CLINTON — Any time an athlete changes teams, there usually is an adjustment period where both sides get acclimated to the other.
For Clinton’s Ryan Tschirhart, there really was not much of one going from the Lenawee Christian boys soccer team to Clinton’s after his family moved to Clinton in between the 2020 and 2021 school years.
“It was something I expected to be very, very difficult," he said. "I figured it would be a really tough transition leaving everything I knew because I was at LCS from kindergarten through 10th grade. I figured It would be a difficult transition, but from the moment I stepped foot in Clinton, I was accepted by the coaching staff, my teammates and everyone.”
Stepping into his first full-time starting role in high school on the newly-renamed Redwolves in 2021 in the Lenawee County Athletic Association, Tschirhart found himself as a front-line scoring threat for head coach Marla Erickson, as teams had to gameplan to stop Tschirhart.
“(Ryan) was phenomenal. Coming in from LCS to play for Clinton, we play different and have a different style (than LCS), but he just really gelled with the team and they accepted him like family,” Erickson said, “which is how I build my program. He took them in that way too and they synced well. He knows that he needs Brandon Mannlein, his defenders, midfielders and outside forwards to actually play, so he’s a good team player.”
Despite teams having to try and slow him down, for the majority of the season it did not much work, as he was the only player to clear the 20-goal plateau in Lenawee County in 2021, tallying 30 goals for the Redwolves in their 19 games played this season.
For his efforts in 2021, Tschirhart has been named this year’s Lenawee County Boys Soccer Player of the Year, as selected by The Daily Telegram’s sports staff.
“It’s incredible because there are so many deserving people that it could have gone any way,” Tschirhart said. “There’s so much great talent in this county, a ton of great people. I knew playing in the LCAA was going to be difficult and there wouldn’t be any easy games or guaranteed wins.”
Entering this year, Tschirhart had to deal with a quad injury, but once he got going, the talent he had shown through.
He scored multiple goals in games against Blissfield, Columbia Central, Ida, Leslie, Monroe Jefferson, Onsted, Three Rivers and Ypsilanti Arbor Prep, with his most impressive performance of the year coming in the regular season finale against the Wildcats which ended in a 5-3 win for the Redwolves.
Tschirhart scored all five goals for a season-best performance, including a hat trick in the first 10 minutes and had four goals in the first half before adding an insurance goal in the second half to make it 5-0 before Clinton held off an Onsted rally late.
With a season under his belt with Clinton as a full-time starter, along with the team he has around him coming back, the potential for another strong season for both Tschirhart and the Redwolves is a very realistic possibility.
“We’re gaining a lot of guys back that are key to our success and I’m really excited to see how our freshmen develop,” Tschirhart said. “I think that having this year playing together and playing together at a high level will, overall, really benefit us next year and hopefully, we’ll be able to make a run. We all would’ve hoped to have had a little bit more success this year given the success we had in the regular season, but it’s just something that we learned from, and it’s going to push us to be more motivated for next season.”
All-County Teams
First Team
Ryan Tschirhart, Clinton
Brennen Goodrow, Onsted
Jacob Buchanan, Onsted
Aiden Smith, Adrian
Joey Spagnoli, Adrian
Jack Stamats, LCS
Cameron Kendall, Adrian
Sam Erickson, Clinton
Jacob McKelvey, LCS
Ryan Somsel, Tecumseh
TJ Rutter, LCS
Second Team
Alex Brevoort, Blissfield
Merrik Gibson, Clinton
Cooper Adams, LCS
Alex Slaviero, Onsted
Samson Schaffner, Clinton
Wyatt, Malinczak, Onsted
Lincoln Lipinski, Onsted
Christian Orta, LCS
Max Hampel, Clinton
Brady McKelvey, LCS
Brandon Mannlein, Clinton
Honorable Mention
Brady Hanosh, Adrian
Gary Kemerer, Adrian
Bryce Holland, Blissfield
Asher Fernandes, LCS
Carter Smith, LCS
Jaxon Niese, LCS
Jaxson Vincent, Onsted
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Clinton's Tschirhart earns Lenawee County Boys Soccer Player of the Year
