\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Andrew Holtan<\/p>\n
The Brookings Register<\/p>\n
BROOKINGS \u2014 The soccer season is already in full swing, but there\u2019s still a lot of matches ahead for the Bobcat boys.<\/p>\n
Brookings so far is 1-2-1 through four games this season. The Bobcats beat Spearfish 4-0 in their season opener and then played Pierre to a 1-1 draw. They then lost to Tea Area and O\u2019Gorman each by a score of 2-1.<\/p>\n
The Bobcats are a senior laden group with nine players in their final year of high school. Brookings head coach Reece Weber said having that experience will help a lot and he\u2019s hoping it translates into success.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have nine seniors and eight of them played significant minutes last year. So, we\u2019re starting seven seniors right now, which is pretty important for us to have that leadership and have seven guys that have been involved in the varsity team for a couple years. I\u2019m hoping that the experience from them will pay off this season and that they can help the young guys out in their first year of varsity,\u201d Weber said.<\/p>\n
Brookings has two senior captains in Forrest Giard and Jasper Lee. Giard is the captain of the offense as a midfielder and Lee captains the defense as a center back.<\/p>\n
\u201cForrest Giard is a team captain and has been starting on varsity for the past two years. He\u2019ll be important for us playing in the midfield, scoring goals, playing on the ball and helping us control games. Jasper Lee is also a captain who has been starting on varsity for three years at center back. He\u2019s going to be big for us defensively as far as getting us organized and having that experience there on the back line,\u201d Weber said.<\/p>\n
Despite the number of seniors, Weber did mention that there are players from other classes that will make an impact for the Bobcats this season, including a team captain.<\/p>\n
\u201cGriffin Bachman is our junior captain and he saw significant time last year on varsity, which is good,\u201d Weber said. \u201cHe\u2019ll be important to us in the midfield this year. Caylon Peters will be important to us coming off of the bench. Wyatt Cooley and Kyler Soost are both freshmen and they\u2019re going to be playing important roles on the varsity team in the midfield. [Soost] scored a goal in his first ever varsity game, which is pretty cool.<\/p>\n
\u201cEric Anderson will help us out as a junior and Connor Shelden is a sophomore that had a goal and three assists in the first two games, so he\u2019s going to be important for us as well. We have players in every class that are going to contribute this year, which is exciting and bodes well for the future as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weber is in his third season as the head coach of the Bobcat boys\u2019 soccer team. He is also the executive director of the SoDak Spurs Soccer Club, which is based in Brookings.<\/p>\n
Weber noted that the rise in popularity of soccer in Brookings has helped the varsity team, especially since a lot of the players on the high school varsity team also play year round for the Spurs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think with every passing year, as soccer is growing in Brookings with the SoDak Spurs Soccer Club growing bigger, we\u2019re seeing kids that are playing soccer more consistently for longer,\u201d Weber said. \u201cLike for example, the freshmen will have been with the Spurs program for the longest and they\u2019ll have that experience of playing year round and playing consistently when they come in [to the high school program] that maybe the seniors three years ago didn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that will be important for us going forward and I\u2019ve definitely seen some changes as we\u2019ve moved forward. For me, in my third year, it\u2019s important to have players like [Giard and Lee] who have started for me since my first year as a coach when they were sophomores. Having that consistency helps the team be more stable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brookings has not won a playoff game since the 2017 season. Last year the Bobcats were 5-8-2 and lost to Rapid City Stevens in the first round. Despite the lack of success in recent years, Weber thinks this team has the potential to break through and have success in the postseason. He said that begins with being able to play a first round game in Brookings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always encourage the boys to set loftier goals. As a team we agreed on two goals for this season. The first one is to host the first round of playoffs. That hasn\u2019t been done in awhile, so that\u2019s an important one for me. The other one is to win the conference. I think that\u2019s something that we can achieve this year because I think that this group has the talent, the drive and the energy to do it. Those are loftier goals but I think this team is capable of getting it done,\u201d Weber said.<\/p>\n
Brookings hosts Watertown on Thursday at 4 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Andrew Holtan The Brookings Register BROOKINGS \u2014 The soccer season is already in full swing, but there\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[26482,57323,57322,49,48,57324,1048,5595,57326,884,57327,561,30228,82,57325],"class_list":["post-98669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-bobcats","tag-brookings","tag-brookings-register","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-community-updates","tag-events","tag-jackrabbits","tag-local-information","tag-local-news","tag-sdsu","tag-soccer","tag-south-dakota","tag-sports","tag-sports-coverage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}