I spent some time talking and interviewing several players on the team to see what they had to say about an unfortunate 5 – 9 season.

To sum up the SPASH Boys Soccer teams’ recent season, #2 junior player, Andrew Falkavage stated that the season was “catastrophically bad.” Although Andrew had the second most goals on the year coming in at 6 goals across 14 games, he as well as several other players know that they need to step it up in order to win conference next year which is the main goal right now among the team.

Team Struggles 

#4 junior player, Deacon Yang told me “I feel like our chemistry off the field was really good and we have a really strong brotherhood as a team but for some reason when it came to the game, we just couldn’t execute to the best of our abilities.” Ian Anderson, junior player #5 can back this up. “We choked a lot in games, had a lot of talent but couldn’t quite execute,” said Anderson. “There were several missed opportunities this season that we absolutely should’ve capitalized on but unfortunately didn’t.” There weren’t just team struggles this year, there were personal ones as well. 

Personal Struggles

Shade Kaiser touched on how his season went. “As a player I definitely improved but personally I definitely had other seasons where I benefited more from the sport itself in the way where I didn’t learn as much this year as I have in prior years.” Kaiser expects a lot from himself as an athlete as well as a student and a person and is always wanting to succeed. Next season looks bright for him. I was curious about just how much soccer meant to Kaiser who has been playing almost his whole life.  “As long as I can remember, soccer has been my life, my passion, and my joy. It keeps me mentally ready for anything on and off the field. It motivates me to get better at not only the game itself but other parts of my life as well,” said Kaiser. 

Team Changes

There were definitely some ups and downs throughout the season which is my main motivation to write this article. There seemed to be a common theme of being unable to capitalize on opportunities to score and keep moving the ball downfield. Top-scoring player Ben Omernick leaving this year definitely doesn’t help the team by any means. “It will be a big loss to our team losing such a great player but hopefully we can pull some strings and the boys will be buzzing in no time,” said Deacon Yang. and according to SPASH Soccer superfans, Delilah Abundiz and Hanna Stremkowski, “There’s too many individual players and they didn’t play as a team enough as they should have.” Hanna Stremkowksi added to this by highlighting that there needs to be more communication and more selflessness out on the field. To elaborate on this unfortunate lack of teamwork and togetherness, Deacon Yang stayed positive about the situation and stated “I think as long as we are all in as a team and practice as one, we’ll be quite successful next season.” Teammate Ian Anderson also contributed to this by saying that the team will be playing plenty of indoor soccer this off-season in order to hone their skills and become better players. Just because you have a rough game or a rough season doesn’t mean you can’t bounce back and come back with more drive to succeed.