Marquette's Mason Bocklund, left, advances the ball against a player from Cheboygan during their game played in Alpena on Saturday. (Photo courtesy Mary Sysko)

ALPENA — Apparently the competition was pretty stiff at a tournament that the Marquette Senior High School boys soccer team competed in over the weekend.

Despite going undefeated in three games — 2-0-1 to be exact — in Alpena, the Redmen finished third without having any further games to play to improve their standing.

MSHS (17-2-2) tied Traverse City Christian 1-1 in the rain, then defeated Grayling 1-0 before finishing off with a 4-1 victory over Cheboygan.

Marquette travels to Houghton for a game on Saturday.

Here are details about each game in Alpena:

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Marquette 1, Traverse City Christian 1

The teams waited until the final five minutes to break a scoreless tie as TC Christian took a 1-0 lead with about four minutes left.

Redmen senior Ezra Pickard tied it about two minutes later off a pass from junior Easton Zivnoska.

Marquette sophomore goalkeeper Edan Hautamaki faced three shots in the first half and four more in the second.

“Traverse City is ranked No. 10 in (MHSAA) Division 3 and we told (our) team even though it was a round-robin game, this would look more like the championship game,” MSHS head coach Dan Salmon said in an email. “We had several chances to score but just couldn’t find the back of the net. I felt we were the better team and controlled play most of the time.”

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Marquette 1, Grayling 0

The day’s second game also went scoreless almost until the end as MSHS leading scorer Max Dawson, a senior, scored with about four minutes to go off a pass from sophomore Mason Bocklund.

Hautamaki faced two shots in the first half, including a penalty kick, and one more after halftime.

“Edan’s save against the penalty kick kept us in the game and was the play of the game,” Salmon said. “Because of tiebreakers, we needed to score four goals to advance to the championship game, but Grayling played us tough.”

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Marquette 4, Cheboygan 1

In Marquette’s final game Saturday, the Redmen spotted the Chiefs a goal midway through the first half before Dawson tied it with about five minutes to go before the intermission with assists going to Pickard and senior Evan Sysko.

Dawson also had a hand in two of his team’s three second-half goals. He scored the first one with an assist to Pickard, then Pickard scored unassisted before sophomore Henry Wood rounded out the scoring with an assist going to Dawson.

Hautamaki faced four first-half shots and three more in the second half.

“Our defense played exceptionally well in this game and the offense put the ball in the net when we needed it,” Salmon said. “A really good team effort in the win.”

Information compiled by Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee. His email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.