Adrianna Kattoo Emerges From the Shadows
Birmingham Marian’s Adrianna Kattoo (14) keeps her eyes on the ball during the Catholic League Bishop Division championship game against Warren Regina.
By Steve Stein
Adrianna “Adri” Kattoo was never in the starting lineup for the Birmingham Marian High School girls’ soccer team before this season. She never played forward for the Mustangs before; she was a center-back on defense.
But the senior needed to be in the Marian starting lineup this season. And she needed to play forward.
It was part of a lineup shuffling necessitated by an almost unbelievable string of bad luck. Five Marian starters were sidelined for the season because of the same injury — a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament).
What did Kattoo do in her new role? She was the team’s leading scorer with 17 goals. (She had scored just one goal previously for Marian, at the end of a lopsided game.) And she had eight assists.
Adrianna Kattoo’s school portrait.
After the season, Kattoo was named to the Michigan High School Soccer Coaches Association’s Division 2 First Team All-State Squad. Remarkable.
“Beyond remarkable,” said Marian coach Reid Friedrichs. “It was something special. Adri scored our first and last goals of the season, and plenty in between.”
Kattoo scored Marian’s opening goal in its season opener vs. Walled Lake Central. It came off a corner kick. “I couldn’t believe it when it happened,” she said. “I thought, ‘Is this real?’” It was.
She scored Marian’s second goal against WL Central. Friedrichs said it was part intuition, and part Kattoo’s soccer skills and intellect that led him to move Kattoo to forward. “She was good with the ball, and she had a good left-footed shot,” he said. “And, just as importantly, she was a good learner.”
Kattoo was happy to help her team. She didn’t have many opportunities to do that before this season, playing about 5-10 minutes a half as a junior and about 100 minutes total as a sophomore. The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out her freshman season.
“The toughest part of the position change was transitioning from stopping plays to making plays,” Kattoo said. “And have faith that I could win the one-on-one battles. I’ve always been a hard worker, so I wasn’t worried about that. I learned a lot from watching game film during the season.”
Going into the season, perennial power Marian had played in the last five Division 2 state championship games, winning four of them. Kattoo was a member of a state championship team as a sophomore, and a state runner-up team as a junior.
The Mustangs (15-2-2) didn’t make it to the promised land this season. They lost 3-2 in a penalty-kick shootout to eventual state champion Grosse Pointe North in the regional semifinals. It was the only time Marian went into overtime or had a shootout in the state playoffs during Kattoo’s time there.
Despite the tough loss to a team that was in Division 1 before this season, it was a fantastic year for Marian, especially considering the injuries and its young roster. Kattoo was one of only five seniors. “It would have been great to play in another state championship game. But if anyone could have done it with all those injuries, it would have been Marian,” she said.
Kattoo’s shining moment of the season was the Catholic League Bishop Division championship game.
“Best day of my life,” she said. She scored both Marian goals in the Mustangs’ 2-1 win over arch-rival Warren Regina, including the game-winner with 10:38 remaining on a laser shot from seven yards out.
Moments after the final whistle, Kattoo was mobbed by her teammates as Marian celebrated its 19th Catholic League championship. It was the third game of the season between the two teams. Marian scored just one goal against Regina in the first two meetings but had a scoreless tie and a 1-0 win to show for it.
Kattoo was a member of Marian’s leadership team, made up of the five seniors. “Adri was going to be one of our leaders even if she didn’t play much this season because of the way she treats others and exemplifies Marian soccer,” Friedrichs said.
Kattoo also was a star in the classroom at Marian. She graduated with a 3.9 grade-point average and was one of the school’s Ambassadors for all four years. Ambassadors help new students transition into the school.
Kattoo currently lives in West Bloomfield with parents Patrick and Gardenia and her brother Jordan, 14, who will be a freshman at Birmingham Brother Rice High School in the fall, and her brother Roman, 9, who will be a fourth grader at St. Regis Catholic School in Bloomfield Hills.
Her soccer playing days behind her, Kattoo’s next stop is Michigan State University, where she will focus on her studies. Friedrichs is headed to East Lansing, too. The former MSU soccer star will be an assistant coach for the Spartans’ men’s soccer team.