Dawson Springs won't play varsity schedule

Friday, August 01, 2008

This fall, local residents hoping to take in a Dawson Springs High School girls’ soccer game will have just one option — the junior varsity team. That’s because there will be no varsity squad this year.

Dawson Springs graduated seven seniors from last season’s team and now does not have the adequate numbers to field a varsity crew.

“Basically, we just don’t have enough to field a varsity team,” Dawson Springs Athletic Director Kent Workman said. “We don’t have a lot of incoming juniors and seniors that participate in soccer.

“We kind of get things in waves, a natural cycle. You’re still going to lose students as they move up and as they mature and their interests change.”

After former varsity coach, Greg LaGrange, stepped down to spend time with his family at the conclusion of last season, Workman had to find a coach to keep the soccer program alive, even if just at the JV level.

Workman hired Jim Hillerich, who coached at Caldwell County for eight years.

Hillerich, a Dawson Springs resident, took the job because he wanted to give the girls a chance to play at the high-school level.

“I know if a team dies for a while it’s going to be impossible to get it back together,” he said.

As school starts today, Hillerich has 16 girls committed to the JV team. Juniors Beth Ann Dickens and Emilee Workman, Kent’s daughter, have opted to play on the boys’ varsity team instead.

“They’re the only two that showed interest at a varsity level this spring, so we kind of left the decision up to them, ‘either you won’t be able to play (varsity) or you can play with the boys,’ so they chose to play with the boys,” Workman said.

Although the young members of the JV team do not have any upperclassmen to look up to, some are so young they do not realize the impact, Hillerich said.

The lack of a varsity team proves difficult for scheduling competitors as well.

“My hardest job right now — one of them — is finding enough games,” Hillerich said. “Just having JV, I have to piggyback on a lot of things... because the officials there aren’t going to come just for one JV game.”

Instead of playing single JV games, Hillerich is forced to schedule his team to play in tournaments. Currently, the last scheduled date is Sept. 18, and he said he hopes to play 12 or 13 games.

With last season’s graduation of so many senior soccer players, the idea of not fielding a varsity team in 2008 was not something that caught the athletic program off guard.

“Just before (LaGrange) left, that’s basically when we first realized that we were in trouble as far as a varsity team,” Workman said. “He was seeing the numbers from last year and he told me, ‘Kent, I just don’t see the numbers unless we have new girls coming out at the varsity level next year.’ ”

While some of the girls may be disappointed they will have to wait another season or possibly more to play at varsity level, Hillerich has received positive feedback from the parents.

“They’ve said that their kids enjoy it, they like it,” he said. “They’re doing more than they did last year or the year before. I think that has to do with when you have a varsity and a JV team, if you don’t have a second coach who can break the groups into two and work with some closer, then they don’t pay attention.”

Now, with a smaller group of players, Hillerich spends his time during practice working on fundamentals and even pairing up with the youngest players to guide improvement.

As a JV coach, increased player development, not victories, is what he hopes to accomplish.

“I’m personally not worrying — and I did not worry about it when I was at Caldwell — whether our JV team won games, what our JV record was,” he said. “It was a matter of getting everyone minutes and seeing how they improved.”

Dawson Springs may be without a varsity team for a season or two, but when it returns, the Lady Panthers will have a strong nucleus of seasoned veterans.

“We’ve got a lot of enthusiastic girls coming out at this point,” Workman said. “It’s just going to take us some time to rebuild. We’re just looking to strengthen those numbers. I would like to see us get back to the varsity level next year. Like I said, I just don’t know at this point if we’re going to be able to do that.”