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Prep notes: Pioneer Adema mourned

04/21/2013, 11:32pm CDT
By ERIC ANDERSON

Wisconsin has lost another of its soccer pioneers.

John Adema, a native of the Netherlands who was integral in the sport's development in the northeast part of the state, passed away April 13 in Neenah. He was 76.

Adema played a role in nearly every level of the game in his long career.

He played for Sheboygan Sports Club and the Fox Valley Bombers; coached college men's teams at St. Norbert and Marian, high school teams at New Holstein, Stockbridge, Cedar Grove-Belgium and Kiel – last fall was his 15th season as the school's boys coach – and in the U.S. Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program; started youth clubs in New Holstein and Kiel; and was a referee.

The longest-tenured coach at St. Norbert, Adema compiled a 74-64-9 record in nine seasons at the NCAA Division III school in De Pere. He ranks seventh in Midwest Conference history with 59 league wins and 10th in overall wins, and was the conference coach of the year in 1994. A decade earlier, he earned the same honor from the Lake Michigan Conference for his work at Marian in Fond du Lac, a program he started just a year before.

Adema was inducted into the Wisconsin Adult Soccer Association Hall of Fame in 1989 and the Lakeshore Sports Hall of Fame in Manitowoc in 2007.

  • Two state conferences announced changes to their girls soccer competition structure last week, halving the number of matches that will be counted in their league standings. Teams in the Packerland and Eastern Wisconsin conferences normally play each other twice each year, but the number of canceled and postponed games in the first month of the season due to the wet weather forced the leagues to switch to a single round-robin this year.
  • Wisconsin's newest girls soccer team played its inaugural match Thursday, as host Nekoosa lost to a Wautoma Varsity Reserve/JV team 10-0 on a rainy, windy, cold day. The Papermakers are set to play two years as a club team and then will have the option of gaining WIAA status, according to the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune.
  • Soccer continues to be the fifth-most popular prep sport in Wisconsin, with participation in both boys and girls soccer remaining relatively stable during the 2011-12 school year. The National Federation of High Schools released its annual participation report last week, and the Wisconsin Sports Network posted a thorough review of the state's numbers for the past decade. For boys, the top sports in the state are football, basketball, track and field and baseball; volleyball leads the way for girls, followed by track and field, basketball and softball. Wisconsin ranks 14th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia for total prep sports participation, and the state's totals are 17th nationally in both boys and girls soccer – South Dakota is the only state that doesn't sponsor the sport. Overall, soccer is fifth in participants (411,757) and seventh in schools (11,600) among boys sports and fourth in participants (370,975) and sixth in schools (11,127) for girls. Here are Wisconsin's soccer participation totals over the past 10 years, courtesy of WSN.

Boys soccer

Year    Teams    Players    Avg/Team
2002-03     235     9,086     38.7
2003-04     239     9,310     39.0
2004-05     240     9,279     38.7
2005-06     247     9,247     37.4
2006-07     249     9,731     39.1
2007-08     253     10,035     39.7
2008-09     256     9,836     38.4
2009-10     260     10,001     38.5
2010-11     259     10,112     39.0
2011-12     263     9,318     35.4

Girls soccer

Year    Teams    Players    Avg/Team
2002-03     219     8,017     36.6
2003-04     226     8,695     38.5
2004-05     232     8,524     36.7
2005-06     241     8,254     34.2
2006-07     243     8,647     35.6
2007-08     240     9,934     41.4
2008-09     249     9,613     38.6
2009-10     249     9,487     38.1
2010-11     250     8,938     35.8
2011-12     251     9,364     37.3

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