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Photo
by George Starks - The Greenville boys soccer team goes through a
shooting drill during
a recent practice. Thirty shots on goal per game is the goal for the
team in 2011.
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Wave soccer has new
theme
By George Starks
GREENVILLE - Kick… kick… kick!
Wayne Gretzky once said, “you can’t win if you don’t shoot.”
A statement that holds true not only in hockey but in several other
sports, including soccer.
“Our goal as a team is to take at least 30 shots on goal every game. If
10 percent of those go in, we‘re good,,“ said assistant coach Rob
Maher. “In the past, we never wanted to shoot until we got right up on
the goal and we can’t win games with that attitude.
With numbers down at Greenville in all sports programs, soccer has been
hit hard in that department.
The Wave will sport a young team with just four seniors on the roster.
“We are down,” Maher admitted. “We have a bunch of juniors and
sophomores that have gelled and they communicate well. Our problem is
just four seniors and four freshman and only two of the freshman (Dylan
Knoop and Gunner Fustos) have experience. We have a freshman exchange
student coming from Germany but he hasn’t arrived yet. We just don’t
have the numbers coming out like we used to. Our feeder program, DCSA,
(Darke County Soccer Association) is down right now and we need to get
those numbers up. We think we have a strong group coming in two years
and our numbers should be back up but right now, we have to deal with
what we have numbers wise.”
With just the four lone seniors, leadership roles are heavy on them but
according to Maher, they are taking the responsibility to heart.
“Our seniors came up through the DCSA program and have come together,”
Maher stated. “We graduated nine off of last years team but these four
learned a lot from them.”
With such a young team, wins and losses will not be as important as
getting the underclassmen the playing time and experience they need.
With the experience, the wins will come.
“Our goal as a team this year is to go .500 on the season and in the
GWOC (Greater Western Ohio Conference),” Maher stressed. “If we can go
.500 this year, then we feel like we will have a successful season. Our
last two seasons have been losing seasons so a .500 season is what we
are shooting for.”
According to Maher, Troy, Miamisburg and Vandaila are the teams to beat
in the GWOC this season but there’s another team Maher says Greenville
always has problems with.
“We think Troy is the best team in the conference,” Maher said. “The
one team we want to beat is Eaton. They are not in our conference but
we always seem to have problems with them. On paper, we are even but
the game’s not played on paper. We had them in a scrimmage a couple of
weeks ago at Englewood and they beat us. Eaton always plays us tough.”
Greenville will open the season at home with Wapakaneta on Aug. 30.
Junior varsity is slated to start at 5:30.
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