Sean C. Morgan
This year’s girls soccer team is young but has a lot of talent, and it’s Coach Ramiro Santana’s job to bring it out this year after losing most of his seasoned players to graduation after three straight years of making the playoffs.
He lost 15 varsity players, nine of them starters, he said.
The team returns three seniors, Sabrina Davis, Alana Long and Demi Stratman, who was a swing player last year. Returning juniors include Katie Virtue, Courtney Kent, Haley Kent, Katy Currey and Natalie Currey. The Currey twins, one of three sets on the team this year, mostly played junior varsity, but they moved to varsity for the playoffs.
New seniors include Hannah Kelley and Sandeep Grewal.
“We’ve got 34 girls right now,” Santana said. “I expect six to eight more, somewhere between 36 and 40.”
Whatever the number, he expects to have plenty of girls to field a full JV and full varsity team, he said. “We’ll probably end up with like 20 and 20 each team.”
That’s the best turnout yet, he said, but he’s got to pick out the 13 new players for the varsity team.
Last year’s team lost in the first round of playoffs against Philomath, which has been the top team in the state and faced Sisters in the championship game last year.
The departed seniors represented the last of Santana’s first SHHS team. That team included eight juniors and eight freshmen who posted the Huskies’ first winning season in the sport four years ago.
“We were comfortable,” Santana said. Now his focus has to change.
“This year, I’m going to have a lot of girls playing both sides,” he said. “It’s a very young group. We’re young. We need a lot of experience.”
He said he’ll need to get a look at all of them, and they’ll need varsity experience, so they’ll move back and forth between the teams, he said. “I don’t know what to expect right now at this point.
“We’re full of surprises. We lost a lot of speed. We have talent, but we’re very timid. The girls are young. They’re not aggressive.”
Developing the necessary aggression will be the challenge this year, he said. “When you have a young team, you’re going to struggle with that for a season. We have talent, but we have to work on it. We have to coach it. We have to get that talent out.”
The Huskies are focused on passing and dribbling in particular right now, he said, and the competition starting Thursday will help get them where they need to go.
The experienced core is getting a boost from the Kent sisters and Long, who are coming back a lot stronger, Santana said.
Virtue will be the team’s main weapon, he said. She can play goal, defense, midfield and forward, and he expects her to score.
“I can put her anywhere on the field. There’s a lot of pressure on her shoulders because of what she can do.”
It’s a similar situation with Davis, he said. She will be the starting goalie, but he expects her to split goal time down the middle with Haley Kent and to put her to work on the field.
Davis is a defender, Santana said. “I will say she is the heart of the team. When we put her as defender, she moves the team around and makes the team succeed.”
Sisters, Junction City and Cottage Grove will prove the biggest obstacles in league play, Santana said. Sisters lost players and has a new coach, but it’s still strong.
He expects Junction City to be the powerhouse, because everybody’s back, although Junction City has a new coach.
“It’s a strong league, so for us to compete against these three is going to be a struggle,” Santana said. He feels like the Huskies can run with the rest of the pack, and even against the tougher teams.
“We’re going to give them heck. We’re going to be competitive. They’ll need to be able to play pretty good to beat us.”
Roberto Garcia returns to coach the junior varsity this year. Randy Stewart is not returning to assist with varsity, and Santana would like a new volunteer assistant coach if anyone is interested.
“I’m excited,” Santana said. “Very nervous. Very positive the way it could be done. It’s a great group of girls. This is a buildup year.”
But with a big talented freshman class sticking to it, he expects the team will be “very good” next year, he said. The girls just need the experience and aggressiveness that comes with it.
The precise composition of the varsity team is in flux right now.
As of Monday, Sept. 3, the team included freshmen Sarah Dunkley, Maddee Hawken, Sara Helfrich, Aidan Morgan, Lilly Parker, Isabelle Stratman, Mackenzie Virtue, Allison Wickline and Ashley Wickline; sophomores Lily Barton, Brenna Boccardo, Cassidy Coulter, Emily McGuire, Frances Nerison, Phoebe Olsen, Karson Rodgers and Aspen Szubart; juniors Lacey Carranza, Kara Clemant, Katy Currey, Natalie Currey, Auna Davis, Krystal Hernandez, Jessica Hoover, Courtney Kent, Haley Kent, Ciera Paredes, Mikaela Steiner and Katie Virtue; and seniors Sabrina Davis, Hannah Kelley, Alana Long, Demi Stratman and Sandeep Grewal.