Bigfork to open soccer season Tuesday at home

With a week-and-half of two-a-day practices behind them, the Bigfork boys and girls soccer teams are preparing to take on their first competitors of the 2011 season, and they’re doing so with a lot of new faces on the field.

The Valkyries have their largest team since second-year head coach Charlie Appleby started working with the team as an assistant coach four years ago. There are 17 girls currently on the roster, including eight newcomers — only two of whom are freshmen. The additional players will come in handy as the Vals try to fill the void of the five seniors they lost to graduation in June, as well as the absence of junior Kenna Hauns, who transferred to Glacier High School midway through last year.

In addition to the flurry of new players on the team from the sophomore and junior classes, the girls will also be getting back Emily Stephens, a junior who has been unable to play soccer the past two years due to an ACL injury.

After multiple years of having barely enough girls to field a team, having the additional bodies will put a new twist on the game for Appleby and his girls..

“In case of injury, when someone is in need of a break, being able to sub is going to actually be a different experience for me as a coach,” Appleby said. “It’s been pretty easy for me as a coach. I’ve just had to put them in and let them play because we haven’t had any subs. Now I can actually move girls around and put some tactics together. To be honest though, soccer is one of those games that if you’re in shape, you should be able to play the whole game. They should be able to run for 80 minutes. I don’t want them to think that just because they can have a sub that they should be always needing one. Really it’s been most helpful in practice where I can have a full contingent of offense play against a whole contingent of defense in game-like scenarios.”

However, the catch is that the majority of his players are new to high school soccer, as well as Bigfork’s program, which poses some obstacles.

“With losing six starters, and with three players that returned who were not starters, I find that time seems to go by so much quicker when I’m trying to explain things to the group,” Appleby said. “It’s a huge difference from last year where we didn’t have any new players and everyone on the team had been in the program and it was just business as usual. That being said, I have two amazing assistant coaches that have really been helping me out. Charlie Ball and Carly Hilley have really stepped up and made it so I can split the girls into three groups and we can really get a lot of work done. They have helped out with a lot of my coaching duties this year. “

Adding to the mix of adjustments on the field will be the transition between goalies. Alex Dillon, a junior, was a part-time goalie last year and although she is back on the team again this year, both she and Appleby would prefer she played on the field rather than in the goal. Instead, Appleby and his assistant coaches — second-year assistant Charlie Ball, who is the freshman English teacher at Bigfork, and first-year assistant Carly Hilley, a 2007 graduate of Bigfork — are working with Jazzmyn Musser to develop her for the goalie position. Musser, a junior, transferred to Bigfork from Charlo last spring.

With so many factors up in the air, it is tough for Appleby to say whether he thinks his girls will again find themselves in the state playoffs as they did last year.

“I think this year is another chance, but it’s also a rebuilding year,” Appleby said. “We lost three All-Conference and one All-State player to graduation, and we lost our keeper again for the third-straight year. So we’re starting over in a lot of ways, which we have to keep in mind when we’re talking about comparing records and going to state. I’d love to say that we’re going to state, but I’m even more excited to say that we have 17 girls on the team who are all really excited to be on the team, and hopefully are going to have a lot of fun this year.”

There is some consistency on this year’s team, though, and it is found in a small, but solid, group of seniors.

Seniors Miranda Miller and McKinze Shults have been on the team since their freshman year, and classmate Sara Keenan joined her sophomore year.

“I think we’re easily going to have three strong team captains this year,” Appleby said. “ I’ve already seen them step up and take on a lot of responsibility, even more so than my five awesome seniors I had last year.”

A fourth senior, Jeannie Schenck, is new to the team this year.

Vikings soccer

The leadership role on the boys team, on the other hand, is up for grabs.

The youthful boys team has 16 players on its roster currently, and seven of them are freshman. After hosting 22 players last year, the Vikings lost five seniors to graduation, as well as several boys who are still students at Bigfork who opted to not return to play this year, and sophomore Bryce Hagler transferred to Flathead High School.

Head coach Keith Koslosky and his assistants Mike Daniels and Kyle Koslosky aren’t discouraged by the age of their players though, as the boys make up for it in other ways.

“This could be the largest group with skills and knowledge of the game going into the season since I started coaching here six years ago,” Koslosky said, later adding that they are one of the most physically fit groups overall that he’s had. “With that said, our conference is still dominated with teams stacked with upperclassmen.”

With only one senior on the team, Caleb Mathwig, Koslosky will look to some of his slightly younger players to lead the team.

“Currently, (sophomore) Anthony Fopp and (junior) Steven Lyon have come to the forefront,” Koslosky said.

Sophomore Bryce MacCallum could also step up eventually. However, MacCallum broke his arm over the summer and has not been released by doctors to play yet.

Fellow sophomore Dillon Hilling will step into a full-time goalkeeper position after serving as a backup last year.

“Dillon has really come a long way and improved his skill and his mindset,” Koslosky said.

As Koslosky gets into his second week of practice with his team, he said he is excited for the season ahead.

“Time will tell. It will be interesting,” Koslosky said. “They will learn a lot. They’re a good group of kids. I have really enjoyed being around them this first week.”

Season openers

The Vikes and Vals soccer teams have the honor of hosting the first home games of any Bigfork team this season.

The Bigfork boys take on the Columbia Falls Wildcats at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 30 at Carlyle Johnson Field. The Bigfork girls host the Wildkats at 5:30 p.m. at the same location.