With added talent and new coaches, Hillsdale’s club soccer teams look forward to fun and successful seasons.
Tryouts for the men’s team were held on August 29 and 30, and the women’s were last week. Both teams had strong turnouts, with 25 perspective players coming to tryout for the men’s team and 28 for the women’s.
For the men’s team, junior captain Michael Koziara said the most exciting addition to the team is the new coach.
“His name is Andrew Hill and this is the first time that we’ve had a formal coach of the program who is there at practices, there at games, and able to make sure we maintain the high quality of soccer that we want to,” Koziara said.
This is also the first year that the men’s team will participate in the College Club League, which means they will face off with club soccer teams in the southeastern Michigan area.
The women’s team is part of the Women’s Midwest Alliance Soccer Conference (WMASC).
“We just joined a league last spring, so this is our first season,” junior co-captain of the women’s team Larissa Yashko said. “We’ll be playing teams like Michigan State.”
Both teams have traveling rosters with alternates who will get to play at home games.
About 18 girls will be traveling for the women’s team with seven or eight on standby.
“Obviously, if we can take more girls, we’ll take more girls. But the way it works is that we have to carpool to get there because we can’t have any school vehicles,” Yashko said. “So we’ll be caravanning up there, which is a little more difficult.”
The men’s team is in a similar position. There are 20 athletes on the men’s traveling team and five on reserve.
“What we ended up deciding to do, for the first time ever, is carry a rostered team and then have alternates, or reserves, for when injuries occur or when we need additional people to come out and play,” Koziara said. “We’ll be taking cars out to every game and of course the coach will be coming as well. So as we have openings, hopefully we’ll get some of the reserve players in.”
The freshman class is strongly represented on both teams.
“We have five freshmen on the rostered team this year,” Koziara said. “All of them are definitely bringing something new to the program.”
Women’s head coach Shawn Smith was also impressed with the freshmen class.
“There are way too many [freshmen] to notice. We’ve got the best year of incoming freshmen that we’ve ever had. Every practice I’m impressed by someone else,” Smith said.
Koziara encourages students to come support both teams’ games.
“We get a lot of energy at home games from the student section, so we want to see them out at all the games,” Koziara said. “We want to hear them out being rowdy, having a fun time because that really spurs us on and keeps us going.”
The first women’s home game is against the University of Michigan on Sept. 21st at 12:00 p.m. on the IM fields. The men will also be having their first home game that day against U of M at 2:00 p.m