Girls soccer showed promise before 'dead period'

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the conclusion of a two-part series on Garland County soccer players who were already showing promise before the season was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

With all three of the girls soccer teams showing promise for the 2020 season, coaches and players alike were hit hard when the Arkansas Activities Association mandated a "dead period" that kept all high school athletes from practicing or competing during the heart of the season. That period is expected to be extended to the end of the school year after Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Monday that schools are to continue remote instruction through the remainder of the academic year.

Lake Hamilton girls head coach Stacey Scott was "crushed" to hear about the dead period due to the strength of this year's team.

"Actually, this probably would have been our best year in a long time," she said. "I think that's another reason I'm just crushed. We went up to the Vilonia tournament [and] came in third. That was the first hardware I think our girls program since the beginning has ever brought back."

Scott said that she has several players on the team that were showing their mettle, all over the field. Senior forward Brianna Tracy-Withers and sophomore forward Brooklyn Inscore led the team in scoring early as the Lady Wolves took a 3-3 start to the season, including a 2-2 run in the Vilonia Invitational Tournament March 5-7.

Senior defender Magaly Arvizu and junior defender Jada Gonzalez helped to lock down the backfield while junior midfielders Kaili Clark and Paige Jennings both worked on ball distribution and stepping back to defend when necessary.

"I could name several because this group is just this group," Scott explained. "It would have been a good one. ... Because [Clark and Jennings] can do anything they want. They can shoot. They've got the green light. They're mainly defense, but they've got the green light to go and shoot, which they can."

Scott said that she has had most of her players since August, for the first time.

"This is our first year that we've had an eighth period soccer, so I've had these girls all year long," she said. "And this is the first year for that, so we've been able to practice since August. We've been able to bond, become a team. Our team culture is just really amazing right now, and they just get along, and they want to help each other, and they're just special kids. ... They want to learn; they want to play, and they proved in that Vilonia tournament just exactly what they could do because we played a Thursday night, Friday and then two games on Saturday. And they fought hard to get that third place, but that's just them, their tenacity, their perseverance, their team. They love what they do, and they love each other."

Scott encouraged her players to "keep the ball on their foot" and to run during the dead period.

"We do conditioning, weight room stuff, and I sent home three days of that with them that they can do in-home that doesn't require weights but resistance training a lot and just to keep doing that," she explained. "Repeat it every three days; do it again. We're trying to stay in contact with each other ... just to keep up with each other a little bit. And all I can do is hope that they will do this, but I think they will because we were in better shape than we've ever been at this time of year, and that's because we've had the class period. So they didn't want to come back from that and be completely dead if we got to start back up."

Lakeside had several underclassmen step up this season as the Lady Rams got off to a 4-2 start.

Junior midfielder Taylor Ramirez and sophomore striker Abigail Thomas lead the team's offense with all but one of the team's 17 goals. Ramirez scored 9 goals in six games with a pair of assists while Thomas picked up 7 goals of her own.

"We've had several players step up on the girls side," said head coach Craig Moses, who is in his first year at the helm of both the boys and girls soccer teams.

Junior fullback Lauren Boston, junior sweeper Kiley Hermasillo and junior fullback Zoe Helton all showed promise on defense while the Lady Rams saw two players back in goal -- sophomore Nicole Jones and junior Maddie Trusty. The pair have allowed just 7 goals in 50 attempts with 27 saves by Jones and 16 by Trusty.

"Nicole Jones has done a great job as goalie so far," Moses said. "And then we have Madison Trusty, who has come back from volleyball and has not played in two years. She's come back; she's a junior, and she has helped out a lot as well."

Moses said that the team has shown quite a bit of promise and been very responsive to the coaching staff.

"They're really buying in to what we're preaching and what we're talking about," he said. "We've had some really good wins. We beat [2019 Class 5A quarterfinalist] Valley View, and we've beat Dardanelle, which was a good side, and our score line has been really good. ... They've been really responsive to what we've been teaching, and they've been really getting after it. So I've been very proud of them for that."

The Lady Rams have also moved to a defensive approach to the game, which Moses said has been beneficial.

"We have actually implemented a more defensive-minded game with them to try to just not get hammered," he explained. "I think we only got beat by [Pulaski Academy] 1-0. We really had a couple good opportunities to score. The last last two years, they got beat 24-0. I don't take moral victories very good, but I think on them at that point in time they needed that. They needed to see that they can do it because I know after that PA game, they're like, 'We could beat this bunch,' and that's not me saying that. It was them."

Hot Springs was fortunate to return the majority of its team after a season where there were no seniors on the team, but while the Lady Trojans sported 10 seniors on this year's squad, it was still a battle.

"We had no seniors last year, so we had a pretty much full returning team," said head coach Heidi Springsteen. "That was really encouraging. We haven't gotten to play together as a full team very much because a lot of my players are [international baccalaureate] students, and I only get to have them after school on certain days. Some of them work. So it was gonna take a little time to see us kind of come together and jell. It always does.

"But we were starting to finish up front. ... I know we scored in our [junior varsity] matches and in our varsity matches, so that was very encouraging to the girls because we had pretty much just started doing that at the end of our season last year."

The Lady Trojans three senior captains -- Mayra Altamirano, Nataly Yanez and Ya'Anna Green -- had all stepped into their leadership roles, Springsteen said.

"Those three have done such a good job, just keeping the unity in our team, and the girls just really having fun," she explained. "We've been practicing during athletics from August until now, not every kid, because some don't even get into the class until January and then some we only see after school, but those girls has just been awesome leaders and several of the other girls have stepped up as well. They've just been a really cohesive, fun, fun group to coach this year. So we're all disappointed at where we're at at this point, but we'll take what we can get and we'll go from there."

Springsteen said that while the players have been disappointed by the way the season is turning out, they have been trying to stay active.

"They're trying to stay active, and a lot of them have jobs," she said. "So they are working in their jobs still, most of them, because they have to, but they're very disappointed. ... But at least everybody's in the same boat. It's not like just one team is going through this."

Springsteen also has been trying to keep the players' spirits up during the dead period as well.

"One day when I knew there was going to be a lot of rain, I put on [Google Classroom] -- just kind of a fun dance video thing that they could do that really gets you a good sweat. I don't know if they did it or not; I kind of sent a laughing face with that one. ... I'm trying to be compassionate because I know for them that first week was just what is going on and disappointing, but I'm encouraging them to stay active."

Sports on 04/08/2020

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