Boys soccer team looking forward to new year

The soccer season for Washington is about to begin and the entire team is ready to get back on the field.

?We had quite a few guys continuously show up to the open gym in the winter,? says coach Sally Hart. ?That set us up really well for the beginning of the season. They?ve been putting in a lot of hard work.

?Our first game is at Highland Friday, March 31. They are excited and I?m excited as well. It should be a pretty good season. We only graduated two seniors, so we have a lot of guys returning.

?We had a lot of sophomores who played varsity last year; if you look at the roster, it may look young, but they?ve had a lot of experience as freshmen.?

There are newcomers to the team as well. ?We do have some freshmen,? Hart says. ?We also have a foreign exchange student joining us this year. This is also the first year we?ve had a sharing agreement with Pekin.

?We have one player from there, freshman Levi Rohr. He?s been looking pretty good and mixing well with the team. They all seem to be working together and that?s one thing we really need.?

During the offseason, when the players would work out in the open gym, they would concentrate on the game itself.

?The open gyms are pretty interesting,? Hart says, ?because I can?t give any instruction. It?s entirely up to them in what they do. Some of our leaders stepped up and had some scrimmages.

?They worked on short passes, because inside there isn?t a lot of space. They also work on ball control and communicating. One thing we really needed to work on from last year is talking more on the field.?

As the year begins, it?s easy to pick up from where the team ended last year.

?Since we only graduated two, it?s pretty easy to move forward with some of the players we had in the past. But, we do have some freshmen who will be playing varsity this year. It?s a little bit of starting new as well as going forward.

?The guys from last year have some pretty good chemistry on the field when it comes to give and go passes as well as passes in the air, but the freshmen are fitting right in.

?Highland will be our first real test of the year. We?ve played against ourselves, but not another program yet.?

When speaking of the game against Highland Friday, March 31, how well will it go?

?I think it will go well,? Hart says. ?We might have some first-game jitters, but they will, too. It will be a nice fresh start for us, then coming up Monday and Tuesday we have back-to-back games here, one of which is against Keokuk in a conference game.

?Last year we didn?t win any of our conference games, so hopefully Monday we can keep a winning streak going and notch up our first conference win in two years.?

Looking at the conference schedule, Washington has a tough one.

?In the past, Fort Madison and Fairfield have the No. 1 and No. 2 scorers in the state regardless of class and both of those guys graduated. So, you can say it will be easier, but those two are very talented programs. Just because they lost those two seniors, it would be foolish to look over them.?

Does that mean those two schools will be Washington?s toughest games?

?I think so,? Hart says. ?We lost to Mt. Pleasant in overtime last year, which was very frustrating, but I think the guys are excited and I think a lot of that positive energy is what we need to carry through the season to be successful.

?They?ve been taking everything serious, so they are ready to go. We have three captains this year: Kyle Anderson, John Dillon and Thomas Zimmer. They?ve been pushing themselves and pushing each other. I think the team is ready to take it up a notch from last year.?

As far as any long-range goals for the season, the team has only one.

?I would love a state appearance,? Hart says, ?but first, I want to have a winning record. That is something we need to look at first. We don?t need to put the cart in front of the horse.

?A couple of years ago, we were co-conference champs and it would be really nice to win that outright. But as of now, we want the winning record; it?s just one step at a time, one goal at a time.?