Having reached the pinnacle of the high school coaching world after only two seasons as head coach of the Crown Point High School boys soccer team, Mike Bazin’s next goal is to make sure Crown Point remains as a name to be reckoned with on the Northwest Indiana soccer scene.
“From a program perspective we want to make sure we continue to build,” said Bazin, a native of Valparaiso. “Everyone wants to be part of a program that is competitive every year.”
The Bulldogs have been more than competitive as of late, recently completing a 21-0-1 2013 season in which they brought home the school’s second boys soccer state championship in three years.
“It has been amazing to have the players we have had,” Bazin said. “They have created this atmosphere of competition and success. Hopefully that is passed on to the younger players.”
If Crown Point is going to contend for a third title in four years in 2014, the cast of characters will indeed be different. The Bulldogs graduate seven seniors this year, including three of their top scorers.
“We are going to have to have some of our younger players step up,” Bazin said. “There will always be the ‘sky’s the limit’ approach with some practical goals in mind. We play in an amazing soccer conference (Duneland Athletic Conference) that is one of the best in state. You need a quality team and a couple of good things to go your way when it matters. We can only hope things go our way again.”
While the championship ride in 2013 was expected since the Bulldogs went through the regular season undefeated, the run two years ago was a pleasant surprise.
In Bazin’s last season as an assistant coach for Crown Point under predecessor J.R. Rosenbaum, the Bulldogs lost seven games, but hit their stride at the perfect time.
“It really was a tale of two different seasons,” Bazin recalls. “That year (2011) we lost seven regular season games and pulled out a remarkable run in postseason. We had an amazing goalkeeper on the team. During our last three games, we did not score in regular time and won all in PK shootouts.”
Bazin credits the team’s experience during the 2011 season as an edge for the players that remained on the 2013 championship team.
He also credits the success of his first two seasons as head coach (34-2-4 overall record) to Rosenbaum, whose last game as head coach was the 2011 title clincher in Indianapolis.
“I feel like there’s no way this team would be successful had I not studied under him,” Bazin said. “I have so much respect for him for leaving me in such a good position to take over the team.”
But Bazin’s success on the soccer field dates back far before his coaching days. During the early 2000s, he was a stellar athlete for the Valparaiso High School team, learning the game under legendary coach Danny Jeftich, who has been at the realm of the Vikings’ program for two decades, which is longer than the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) has officially recognized soccer as a sport.
“The program that Coach Jeftich has built has such a great reputation,” Bazin said. “Anywhere we went, the target was always on our back. If a team knew they couldn’t beat you, they could at least try to take something away like scoring a goal.”
And much of Jeftich’s style has been passed along to Bazin’s teams at Crown Point.
“I learned from him about never taking a lackadaisical approach, that you need to bring 100 percent every year,” Bazin said. “We continued that mindset this year, that there is always something to work on. I have a ton of respect for Coach Jeftich, and can only hope we can build that kind of tradition at Crown Point.”
Bazin said that since he has been with Crown Point soccer in 2008, competing against Jeftich and Valpo always has a “personal significance” to him.
That matchup’s significance was never more evident than during the Bulldogs’ 2013 championship run when the two Duneland stalwarts paired off in a skirmish that would more or less determine the DAC champion.
“We were both ranked in the top five of the state. The whole region was buzzing around this game,” Bazin said.
Tied 1-1 after regulation and a scoreless overtime period, 12 penalty kick shooters were needed for each team to finally determine a winner. A diving save by Crown Point on Valpo’s seventh sudden-death shooter finally clinched the victory.
“It was ridiculous, everyone was going crazy when we won,” Bazin recalls. “It played up to all the hype and surely was something no one on the field that day had ever experienced. Even the refs were conferring with coaches on how to proceed at one point.”
And if the personal significance of defeating his former coach in a vital conference match that turned into an epic classic wasn’t enough, Bazin’s wife went into labor that night and gave birth to the family’s third child, a daughter, the following afternoon.
“We usually play our DAC games on Wednesday, but this was moved to Thursday because of rain and my wife was due on Friday,” Bazin said. “She ended up going into labor later that night. It was quite a whirlwind.”
In addition to turning Crown Point into a force on the soccer field, Bazin, a Purdue grad who played one year of college soccer at D-II University of Missouri-Rolla, teaches Advanced Placement Government and Sociology at the High School. He also participates in local soccer clubs and helps train goalkeepers.
But his main focus is on life in Crown Point, and raising three children all under the age of five that “can be quite a handful,” he says.