With the start of the school year comes the start of the new soccer season. With this soccer season also comes a new head coach. It seems that so far this coach has some different approaches for team sizes, including making only three cuts.
“If anything, [team arrangements] was too fair,” sophomore Kevi Dhakal said. “It gives the team less meaning because now we have 22 people and everybody gets less playtime. It’s significantly less significant.”
This is Dhakal’s second year on the soccer team, and he saw a strong contrast in the number of players cut in comparison to last year. Dhakal feels like the cuts and team placement could have been done better.
The more people on one team, the less playtime each individual player on a team has, which Dhakal said is not preferable to returning players.
“We had to drop 17 new incoming freshmen [last year],” Dhakal said.
Despite the change in team arrangements, Dhakal said the new coach has been managing the team well. The team has had events outside of practices and games and has had no trouble bonding and cooperating with new teammates.
“We already had a team dinner, bringing the team together,” Dhakal said. “The morale is high and the practices are serious but also fun.”
Sophomore Liam Duckworth offers a different perspective. Being previously cut from the soccer team in the past year, and then making it this current school year, gave Duckworth a unique experience with soccer on the high school team.
“I think [team arrangements] were pretty fair, as far as they could possibly be with a couple of coaches and like hundreds of kids,” Duckworth said.
Although he did not make the soccer team last year, Duckworth played club soccer at a high level.
“I would hope to be on a better team, but you have to make good with what you have,” Duckworth said. “I’m on C-team, so I’m going to do good with that.”
Dhakal and Duckworth shared the same opinion on how this new coach is handling things.
“He’s managed [the teams] well,” Duckworth said. “Every team has GroupMe’s set up with all the schedules, so I think it’s doing pretty well.”
No matter how well a person performs in a tryout, no spot is guaranteed. Both Duckworth and Dhakal claim to be very strong players; however, Duckworth said “the coach doesn’t always see that.”
“There’s over 100 kids and only three coaches,” Duckworth said. “They can only see so much.”
