Dons soccer built on hard work, defense and fun

Continued from previous week

MARSHFIELD – Before we take a closer look at this year’s squad, we need to clarify something from the previous article.

We mentioned in our Oct. 8 edition the Columbus Catholic boys’ soccer team was “still seeking that elusive trip to the WIAA State Tournament.”

Not true. The Dons did advance to the state tournament in 2006, under the direction of Mike Miller.

Columbus lost a Div. 3 State Semifinals match to Thomas More, 1-0, in overtime. Lukas Boehning had 8 saves in goal for the Dons that day.

What we meant to say was that the Dons have not yet gone to state under current coach, Jeff Edwards.

That might change this season.

“This year, we’ve got a good balance of players,” Edwards told us on Oct. 1. “We have good seniors, good juniors, a lot of sophomores contributing and they’re growing as a team as the season goes.

“We’re getting younger players in there to get some experience and it’s been a roller coaster right now, just because of injuries.

“This has been a crazy year for injuries for us. I’ve never had a team that has had so many injuries at the same time. We’ve had three games, I think, where we had four starters out, one game where we had five starters out, and they just kept fighting. We either won those games or we tied or we kept them close. Right now, we’re still down two starters and I’m hoping to get them back by playoffs. That would be a plus for us to get everybody healthy on the field playing at the same time. I think it could be a special playoff run if it happens.

“We have twenty players this year. I would like to have 22, 23 ideally.
“I’d say a lot of schools, on a varsity team, would have eighteen to twenty, and then they’d have a JV with that many. In our school, we have, say, a hundred-sixty kids total and that’s split between cross country, soccer and football, so it’s hard to get a JV team also when we have only so many boys to go around. Maybe sometime down the line we’d be fortunate enough to get thirty kids out and we could do some JV scheduling to let some freshmen get some extra experience, but having at least eighteen is nice for practicing and for games.

“I don’t want to recruit. You can get in trouble by doing that kind of thing, you know, pilfering players from other schools or other sports. A lot of it is we have fun. I mean, the kids that are playing, they like to come out and have fun and I like to have fun, but we also like to be successful, so there’s a line there between when it’s time to work and when it’s time to have fun. And the kids that we get, they’re out there for a reason and I think they’re all having a good time doing it. If we could get a few more players, that would be awesome. There’s kids every year that are on the fence of maybe trying soccer or maybe not trying soccer and going to run cross country or play football. At this school, we just want kids to do something. I mean, do three sports. That would be ideal. The more kids out for sports, the better for our school. We just want those kids to be able to have as many opportunities as they can. If I can get an athlete to come out for soccer, I can teach him the sport. I can teach them skills. That’s what I’m looking for. If I can get a good athlete to come out for soccer, the coaches and myself can teach them the game.

“There’s maybe a quarter of the team that’s playing club soccer and they play during the summer. Most of these kids are just tremendous athletes and we coach them up. We teach them tactics, we teach them skills, and then they go out there and they do that on the field. So, I’ll look at the film once, and then I’ll watch it again and make clips of things we did well, things we did wrong, and I’ll send it to the players and we learn from mistakes and we learn from successes, and I think that’s been the cornerstone of the program.”

Edwards says the old sporting adage still rings true today — defense wins championships.

“In my coaching history, I have had some really, really solid defenses, and that’s how I like to build. We build with defense and we’ve always been a counter-attacking team. We start in the back. We make sure everything is stable and set back there. You know, we’re not going to give up a lot of goals in the season and we spring forward on counter attacks and transitions and try to get goals that way,” Edwards told us. “Since I’ve started, I’ve been having some tremendous goal scorers. It helps to have kids who can put the ball in the net, but I think it starts on the back having a good defense and a nice goalie that’s an active kid and not afraid to dive.”

Edwards has that in current goalie Carter Sommer.

“Big, tall kid. He’s got long arms. He’s getting everything in the air. He’s not afraid to dive. He makes incredible saves. It’s tough to score on him,” he added.

The Columbus defense also features junior defender Ben Weiland.

“Tough, fast, takes great angles. Another kid that’s hard to get around,” said Edwards.

Midfielders include senior Brady Zimmermann and junior Cole Wallace.
Forwards are seniors Mason Edwards and Cade Jansen.

“The two of them have been scoring at a pretty good clip, so it’s nice to have two options for teams to have to mark to try to stop,” Edwards said.

“We have some juniors and sophomores playing other roles that are supportive roles, but without them none of this happens.”

That list includes juniors Xan Rodriguez and Elijah Wolf, along with sophomores David Thill, Rocco Maher and Colin Stocks.

As for the upcoming postseason, the Dons find themselves in the Arcadia Sectional this fall.

“We had been in the southern part of that sectional and now this year we’ve been moved up to the northern part of the sectional, so we have teams that we don’t normally play,” Edwards stated.

Columbus has been paired with Amery, Barron, Cumberland, Newman, Northland Lutheran, Northland Pines, Regis/McDonell Central Catholic, Three Lakes/Phelps and Washburn.

“It’ll be something new this year. I don’t know how those teams travel,” Edwards said. “I don’t know their style of play. Usually we’d only see them in a Sectional Final, if we happen to make it, so it’s a little different this season and we’ll see how that shakes out.

“[I’ve] been kind of looking at different teams’ records up there and I think we are competitive for maybe getting a one or a two seed in that part of the regional, so if we continue the way we’re going, it would be nice to have them travel to us and have home field advantage.”