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Maroon Devils Owen Craig (left) and Kyle Nguyen vie for the ball during practice.
Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
Loud stomping echoed through the Swain County Middle School gym on Thursday, Aug. 3 as the Maroon Devils soccer team ran hard on the floor.
They were playing a game called 50-50 Ball, which involves two players making a run as the coach throws the ball toward them, then they fight for the ball to try and push the other player out of the way.
Because the day was rainy with a light drizzle going on, new coach Kyndall Cochran had moved practice to the inside of the middle school gym instead of holding it outdoors like they normally would.
Cochran said the practices have been going well. She said the team was “improving a lot” and had been working on their connections as a team. She said aside from 50-50 ball, the practice last week included working on formations and offense.
Ultimately she said the goal was to keep making steady improvements.
“We want to take one game at a time, make small improvements, and let them become better soccer players. We want to work on the technical side of how to flow on the field. Not just kick, but learning to trust each other on the field,” she said.
Assistant Coach Driver Blythe said despite the team being somewhat young, with a lot of up-and-coming students after several seniors have graduated recently, they were a strong team.
“This is my third year assistant coaching, and there’s more developing talent in this team than in the past few years,” he said. “This is a young team, but there are a lot of seniors and juniors stepping up. There’s a good bit of freshman and sophomores really pushing to why they should be the next starters.”
Senior team member Owen Craig said one of their goals was to win championship again, which they didn’t do last year.
“We’re looking to come back as conference champions,” he said. “We didn’t get it last year, but before that we got it two times in a row.”
He said the team had some camaraderie going and he felt good about the future: “One of our strengths is teamwork. There’s not any bullying on our team. We have a lot of young talent. We want to improve some of our foot work, passing, stuff like that.”
The team’s first scheduled game is Monday, Aug. 14 against North Buncombe.