(Avoca) Head coach Beth Herbst and assistant Taylor Krohn will lead the AHSTW girls soccer team this spring.
The coaching staff lists several key returners from last year. “Grace Porter (defense), Isabel Luna (defense), Allie Anzalone (defense), Ellie Peterson (midfield), Ella Langer (midfield), Saydi Paulsen (forward), Miranda Akers (utility), Claire Mertz (utility), Kloe Brannan (utility), Sienna Christian (utility), and Jordan Bartunek (utility).
The team graduated three seniors, that were all important multi-year starters. “Our biggest need will be offense. We lost our only scorer from last season, and we really need someone to step up who isn’t afraid to shoot the ball. We had several girls who worked hard in the offseason to get more experience and I’m excited to see them step up and hopefully fill that role. Ella Langer, Ellie Peterson, and Saydi Paulsen have the most offensive experience coming in for us and are going to be asked to do a lot this year. We have several underclassmen that were more defensive last year that we may ask to move into an offensive role. In addition, we lost two important defensive players who were also multi-year starters, but we have lots of experience coming back on the defensive side and have a lot of freshman that I’m really excited about.”
Team goals include improving week to week. “We have a super tough schedule with lots of teams who are going to be state ranked. I want us to go out and compete with them and play full games. We are super young again this year in terms of age and experience playing soccer. We need to play as many minutes against quality opponents as possible to continue to up our level of play. I’d also love to see us shoot the ball more. Last year we struggled with taking shots and that showed in our low number of goals. I really want the offensive side of the ball to get comfortable taking shots from distance as well as close up so we can hopefully get more goals.”
They’ll put an emphasis on passing. “We’re going to work on passing to feet every single day. Last year we struggled with this to start the season and really started to get better the last couple of weeks. I want us to get back to where we were at the end of last year before our first week of games.”
