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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.
 
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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