No stars, but soccer team is quality
Published 5:00 pm Saturday, March 6, 2004
Perhaps things are as they should be once again on the soccer field at South Whidbey High School.
All at once, the faces on the Falcon boys soccer team look familiar and not so familiar this season. Gone are the last of the power players who helped propel the team to a state championship game in 2000. Back is the head coach who took them there.
Though it might be comforting to have last year’s North Cascades Conference leading scorer and graduate Adam Jaffe back on the team, Mark Helpenstell said he is looking forward to coaching a team that plays a little closer to the averages. On the sidelines again after a one-season hiatus in 2003, Helpenstell said the soccer team that hits the field this spring has everything it takes to be a championship team, but that “everything” is spread out more evenly: There are no standout stars here.
After gaining a reputation over the past few years as a team that used a single star forward and a stalwart defense to win games, the Falcons start 2004 with talent residing in almost two dozen players expected to play at the varsity level. A few are familiar to South Whidbey soccer fans — senior Roy Ishii and juniors Kevin Dunigan, Ben Walker and Josh Helpenstell among them — but most have been doing limited duty off the bench or on the JV team waiting for their chance.
Cagey as he always is in predicting how his team will fare, Helpenstell said this week that the Falcons have the talent to be one of the top teams in the NCC and a possible state qualifier. If they are all that, he said, it will have a good deal to do with the months of off-season pickup play the team has done.
“I got a bunch of guys who just plain like playing together,” he said.
Enjoying that time out front for the Falcons will be Buckman, Helpenstell, Dunigan, Walker and Connor Adams. Expected to fill the team’s forward and midfield positions, this quintet will, in their coach’s estimation, share scoring duties evenly. None have been double-digit scorers for the team in the past, meaning none of them will make likely targets for opposing defenses.
Running the South Whidbey backfield will be Ishii and Tore Jones, two players who did get extensive playing time last season. With help from junior Nash Compton, this defensive unit will likely reprise their 2003 performance as a notoriously stingy bunch when it comes to giving up goals.
The team’s last defense will be sophomores Devin Thomson and Alex McGlenn. The pair will take the place of graduate Joe Gunn in goal.
Expecting especially challenging play from teams from Lakewood and Sultan, the Falcons will be looking to improve on the 13-7 record they amassed in 2003, as well as a playoff performance in which they fell one win short of an appearance in the state 2A soccer tournament. To do it, they just need to make up for the 30-plus goals scored by Jaffe last season.
“We have to figure out how to get enough balls in the back of the net,” Helpenstell said.
