Girls Soccer: building up for revenge

PUSHING+THE+PRESSURE%3A+Freshman+Abbi+Copp+puts+the+pressure+on+the+defense+as+she+pushes+the+ball+up+field+as+coach+Snyder+looks+on.

Giovanni Machado

PUSHING THE PRESSURE: Freshman Abbi Copp puts the pressure on the defense as she pushes the ball up field as coach Snyder looks on.

Giovanni Machado, Staff Writer

Over the last six years, Creek has always made to the playoffs, and has won one league title. This year, the expectations are not different.

“Our normal expectation is to make the playoffs, and we’d like to go deep,” Head Coach Jim Schneider said.

To do this, the coaches have to take hard decisions.

“We got to make this team the best team as possible,” Gamelin said.

Unlike other teams, the girl’s soccer usually has players from all grade levels.

There are only four seniors on varsity this year.

“Usually we have about three to five freshmen that make it to the varsity team each year,” said Schneider.

Of course, high expectations come along with high quality, and quality is something that Coach Schneider and his assistant David Gamelin always seek. And this idea of making the team the best team, is one of the main facts that makes Creek a top soccer teams in the state; however, sometimes it leads to cuts.

“We try to create as many spots as possible for kids to play, keeping in mind that we can’t carry teams of 25 players, and we can’t have enough playing time for such a big team,” said Schneider.

“It is a very difficult and painful process, and we take it really serious,” said Gamelin.

This season has seen more player cuts than any other season under Schneider’s coaching.

“We’ve had a couple of years that we had no cuts, and we’ve had years that we’ve had three to four cuts, and this year we had six, which hasn’t happen for a very long time.” said Schneider.

In order to make Creek the best team possible, Coach Schneider has also implemented other tactics that not all schools do.

“We record the games so we can evaluate how individual players and groupings of players are performing,” he said “After every game Coach Gamelin and I select 5-6 film clips we feel will provide valuable feedback for the girls.”

Most of professional, and college soccer teams do the same thing, however, not all schools do the same as Creek, and second Coach Schneider, that puts Creek one step ahead the adversaries.

“The advantage is the girls have the chance to receive video instruction much like college players do.”

Another aspect of a great team, is a great captain or captains. Juniors Sophie Grimm and Ellie Gill, believe that the captain spot gives them another kind of responsibility.

“[The other players] look up to you a little bit more, but it is great to have a leadership role,” said Grimm.

“It is a little different to, but we all [players] are still the same,” said Gill.

Even though Grimm and Gill made the team as Juniors, the cuts were not easy for them.

“It was a little stressful, because there were girls all the time coming to us and saying ‘Are we going to make the team?’, because they look up to us, and it was a little stressful to us, we felt bad,” said Gill.

Now, the try out part of the season is over, and the players are now focusing on the season. Creek’s record was 6 wins, and 2 losses on April 11th. And as the coaches, the captains have high expectations for the rest of the season as well.

“I think that we are going to click at this season. We are doing good!” said Gill

“We are really excited to the season, and we expect everyone the come to our games,” said Grimm.

Last year Creek was one of the favorite teams to win the league as well, but unfortunately, didn’t achieve their goals.

“Last season, we have never got beat, but we lost on a penalty kick shootout, and that was our only loss,” said Gamelin.

“We performed brilliantly and were undefeated. Unfortunately, we played an average game in the second round of the playoffs and got eliminated from the tournament.” said Schneider.

But in sports, you can’t keep your head down because of a loss, you put your head up, and think about the next season, and now our team is getting prepared to achieve the main goal for the season.

“For this year we have the same goal as last season, win the league, and winning state would be fantastic,” said Gamelin.

The best way of getting to the top is to love what you are doing, and that is something that Coach Schneider and Coach Gamelin demonstrate with pride.

“Coach Gamelin and I feel really blessed to be a part of these girl life, to be able to coach them, and spend so much time with them, and every day is a good day for us in coaching these girls,” said Schneider.