(Brooksville)- One of the youngest rosters for girls prep soccer in all of Hernando County resides out of Nature Coast Technical High School.
The Sharks (1-2) are relying upon the services of nine wide-eyed freshmen, whom makeup over half of Nature Coast’s roster. It’ll be up to the freshmen to help carry the Sharks along a 2017-2018 campaign in which the club has a legitimate shot within Class 3A, District 7 and first-year head coach Brandon Chitwood likes what he’s seeing so far.
“We started off the year beating against Zephyrhills and that was a good district win,” Chitwood said. “It’s going pretty smooth right now. We are getting the kinks out of the armour right now. We knew we were going to lose a little bit of firepower from last year’s team but the good thing is we’ve got some really good freshmen.”
“They are super, super talented girls. They’re not nervous against playing against any upperclassmen girls. It’s a tough road for them to transition from the U15 level to varsity soccer.”
Chitwood comes into this season taking over for Lisa Masserio and the new Sharks’ coach served as the team’s junior varsity coach in 2016-2017. The former JV coach stated the transition to varsity hasn’t been tough because of having familiarity with girls in the program.
“I guess the biggest difference is running the whole program entirely now,” Chitwood said. “As far as coaching and understanding the girls, I think it’s easier knowing the girls from junior varsity.”
“We are right now trying to figure out our whole defensive scheme- how it can work best. One thing with freshmen is they get stretched out of position. We have one senior and four juniors and we only have a couple sophomores. We are very young. I’m hoping in a couple years we can be a very good team.”
Amongst those freshmen on the roster that are contributing early on is goalkeeper Talia Nowlan, who has already recorded a shutout in a 7-0 win over Zephyrhills. Freshman Kirsten Lavallee leads the team in goals scored, with three this season and fellow newbie Alexandrea Florkowski has notched three assists.
With all the freshmen on the roster for Nature Coast, Chitwood says the team might be a season away from seriously competing for a district championship but the girls have the ability to play with anyone in 3A-7.
“We don’t have any problems with their schooling or grades,” Chitwood added. “It’s an easy transition from the classroom to the field. They’re going to hold down their positions but the truth is they’re not going to think too much about everything going on outside of the team.”
“The girls going forward next year and the year after that, so they have the potential to be really dangerous. The biggest thing is we have to set the girls up on the right path. The girls could have a really big, big career here at Nature Coast.”