The soccer season is in full swing, with the varsity boys winning most of their district games so far. The boys will play a home game tomorrow against Jarrell.

“We’re doing fairly well, we’re sitting in third place,”  head soccer coach Ryan Race said. “We’ve only lost to Liberty Hill and Salado; we’ve been crushin’ everyone else. We’ve got fantastic team chemistry. The boys are playing well, this is probably some of the best soccer I’ve seen since I’ve been here. We need to work better on defending set pieces, that’s the only way Salado has been scoring. I’m very happy to note that two of our seniors will be playing on the next level in college. I’m hoping to at least make it to the third round of the playoffs , that’s our ultimate goal. But, we have to get through the first round, and that’ll be our hardest test.”

Throughout the year, both JV and varsity teams have also experienced a successful season compared to years past and look forward to competing in the playoffs.

¨At the JV level, we won the Waco JV Cup earlier this year and right now we are sitting in second in district,¨ JV coach Carl Gehring said. “We’re currently behind Liberty Hill but we get another crack at them here on March 19th. Varsity has been a huge success with us in third but only three points behind Salado… The biggest adjustment we need to make as a JV squad is to see the field better. We play too much with our heads down and miss some good opportunities. As a varsity squad, and I’m sure Coach Race would echo this too, they just have to finish! We have the ability to blow anybody out if we put shots on frame but we seem to be errant on many shots.”

Junior Scooter Cook said the team looks good this season.

“We’ve got a lot of talent and a lot of really good starters,” Cook said. “We’ve had a lot of goals scored, so it’s a big improvement from last year. I think we’re gonna go pretty far. I think we can go to the third round of the playoffs this year. If we just keep doing what we’re doing, we could get a pretty high seat in the playoffs and go and play some easy teams in round three.”

The approach of the upcoming playoffs signals both the end and the beginning for some players. Seniors Miller Boykin and Jonathan Gutheridge will continue to play soccer into their college careers as they pursue their academic studies as well.

“This year has been a lot better than last year,” Boykin said. “We’ve had some big improvements, we’ve got a lot more talent on the team and we have a lot of young guys coming up to help us out. I’ve committed to playing soccer in college, and I’m going to be majoring in biology as I pursue biomedical science. So if my soccer career works out, then great, but if not, then I really want to go into medicine.”