Washington boys soccer season starts today

Spring is finally in the air and there is no snow in the forecast which means the soccer ball is ready to roll.

Washington High School starts its boys soccer season with a match today at Highland.

'The snow is off the field thankfully and we are ready to get started,” Washington head coach Sally Hart said.

There are 22 out for the team which means a lot of new faces with seven of them freshmen. There are six sophomores and six juniors.

'We have a lot of fresh faces with a lot of skill,” the coach said. 'It is going to be a different look than last year. I think we will have a really competitive team.”

Seniors are Garrett Ikerd, Caleb Suchan, and Ben Baughman, who will defend the goal.

'Ben has really upped his game,” Hart said. 'He started on the field last year but ended in goal.”

As always in high school sports, finding replacements for those who have graduated is crucial.

'We had some really talented guys graduate,” said Hart, who starts her fith year coaching the Demons, fourth as the head coach.

The Demons also had 22 on last year's roster but graduated Thomas Zimmer, Abdullah Talal, Sean Zimmer, Tony Torres, Julio Salgado Hernandez and Brandon Stephanie.

'I think that our bench will fill in some of those roles,” Hart said.

Hart and the Demons are already getting a feel for competition.

'We had a scrimmage against Newton and tried a couple of different formations,” she said. 'We are still trying to settle on which one will be best. We are going to dial that in and see how it works in our game against Highland (today).”

The Demons had an 8-3 record through the first 11 games of the season last year, but lost four of the last five to finish 9-7. 'We had some of our really strong leaders get injured late in the season,” Hart said. 'Because of that I am trying to incorporate some more conditioning throughout the season. Hopefully that will prevent some of what happened last season.”

The Demons lost 3-2 at home to Southeast Conference rival Fairfield in the second game of the season, but fell 8-1 at Fairfield in the third to last game of the year. The Demons were 4-4 in league play.

'I think we have some tough competition this year,” Hart said. 'Our conference is never an easy one. I think it is going to be a good season.”

One goal Hart has for the team is a bit of a personal one.

'It is always a goal to beat Mount Pleasant because that is my alma mater. I want to get that W and I hope to lead these guys into being able to do that.”

Hart said the strenght of the team may be its speed.

'I think we are faster than we were last year. I think we have a nice core group. We have some juniors and sophomores that got to play a lot last year and got a lot of experience.”

However over half of the squad is underclassmen, so a weakness may be the amount of new faces.

'Getting the team chemistry built up may be a little bit of an obstacle,” Hart said. 'That kind of thing takes time. Hopefully some of the work they put in during the off-season, like playing indoor soccer together will combat some of that.”

If there is one thing the team must overcome to be successful it will be 'maintaining our focus during all 80 minutes of a game,” Hart said. 'If you get complacent or comfortable then you lose your focus and that is when the other team has a counterattack. So we must maintain our focus all the way through each match.

'We are just going to take it one game at a time. If we look too far in advance, we will lose our focus and that's one thing we cannot afford to do.”