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08/31/2020 12:00 AMThe Valley Regional girls’ soccer team had an outstanding year in 2019. The Warriors posted a record of 11-7-3 that included a trip to the Shoreline Conference Tournament final and a win in the Class M State Tournament. Last year, was Head Coach Lauren MacDonald’s first campaign in her role, and she helped push Valley to a five-win improvement over its prior outing.
Valley’s jump of five wins on its overall record will be impossible in 2020—given that the Warriors will most likely play somewhere around 11 games—but Coach MacDonald feels that a trip back to the Shoreline Conference Tournament is well within reach.
“I definitely think another trip to Shorelines is something we’re capable of achieving,” said MacDonald. “We lost eight seniors, but we have a strong underclassmen group of players. I’m confident we can have a successful season like we did last year.”
Coach MacDonald will be looking for leadership from her senior captains Maddie Costello and Hannah Jenkins. While MacDonald has the final say on which of her players will be captain, she finds it’s important to give her players a vote on the captains, as well. Both the coach and players were in sync on the choice.
“For my captain process I always have the girls vote. It was pretty unanimous that it would be Maddie and Hannah, and I agreed with that as well,” said MacDonald. “I think they will both feed off each other. Hannah is a bit more vocal, but Maddie has developed as a leader over the past three seasons, too. I think the two of them will be a cohesive unit and will lead by example and vocally.”
The only other senior expected to play for the Warriors is a transfer student from Old Saybrook High School named Dylan Adams. Luckily, Coach MacDonald already has some familiarity with coaching Adams in at Old Saybrook Middle School, but that still was a long time ago.
“With Dylan, it’s kind of going to be like seeing her play for the first time. I coached her when she was in 8th grade,” said MacDonald. “I haven’t seen her play since middle school. I know she’s a solid player though, so it will be nice to have her on the team.”
The Warriors will be looking to replace their goalie Lexi DellaRocco from last year, but MacDonald trusts that Valley’s back-up keeper, Liz Allen, is up to the task.
“We have our returning back up goalie Liz Allen,” said MacDonald. “She’s very skilled and very confident in the goal. Even though we will miss Lexi back there, Liz is going to do a great job.”
Coach MacDonald expects a number of juniors to help cover the minutes lost from the graduated seniors that made up a lot of the starters last year. Juniors in Ellie Cost, Bitzy Klomp, Caroline Hutchinson, Sophia Surber, and Taryn Frazier.
“Caroline will be on the back line with Maddie and Hannah. Maddie knows that she will be all over the field mostly. Bitzy is a midfield-forward and so is Ellie,” said MacDonald. “Ellie had a huge for us in the Shoreline final. I expect her to be a scoring threat in her left foot. Luckily we have some of the midfield from last year returning there this year with Sophia Surber and Taryn Frazier, who are skilled players.”
Coach MacDonald hopes that she can catch lightning in a bottle from some younger players this season, like she did last year.
“We had a lot of sophomores make an impact on the team last year, and we’ll expect them to be able to do the same this year,” MacDonald said. “I have to see what their confidence level is this year. They were pretty confident out there as freshman though, which was great.”
Coach MacDonald believes her tallest task this year will be putting together new rotations and formations on the field. As of now, she believes that there are enough holdovers from last season to employ some of the same strategies.
“The biggest challenge will just be forming our approach and finding what works best for us,” said MacDonald. “They are all skilled and talented, but it depends on what the best formation is for us.”
This week will be the first week that Coach MacDonald will get a chance to see her players since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and she knows that there are big challenges ahead for all teams. The first thing that she wants her squad to focus on is conditioning.
“We haven’t been able to do anything but send them workouts and virtual things. We did some yoga, I sent them a weekly workout, but that’s all I was allowed to do with them,” said MacDonald. “What we’ve been doing is having practice plans ahead of time, so they can have a guideline. That way we don’t work them too much. They are all deconditioned since the winter. I’ll be sending in weekly plans and adjusting depending on the circumstances.”
Even though this campaign will be far different than anyone anticipated, Coach MacDonald and the Warriors are just happy to get some semblance of a season. Everyone is ready to get on the pitch and compete.
“They are all so excited. It’s nice to be back in soccer season despite the conditions. We’re just going to make the best of it and do what we can. It’s not ideal. We like to play teams more than once, but it will definitely up the ante a bit,” said MacDonald. “It’s something to look forward after this whole 2020 year. My goal right now is to give them the best season we can, but we want to put the girls and family first. If someone doesn’t want to play for whatever reason, we won’t hold that against them. As much as we want to win, it’s more important that we just have a season. It’s about the safety of our loved ones as well.”