The La Center Wildcats soccer team finds themselves competitive with the top of the 1A Trico League teams after the first year of fielding a junior varsity team since 2019, said head coach Kyler Burris.
Last week, on Wednesday, April 16, the Wildcats gained a win and experience for their younger players in an 8-0 victory against 2B league member Onalaska High School. They followed the win with a 3-0 loss over Fort Vancouver High School on Friday, April 18. The Wildcats stood at 6-2-2 in the Trico League after last week. Last year, they finished just 3-7 in league play.
“We sat fourth the last few years and this year, drawing a couple of them, we’re looking to kind of push forward,”
Burris said of his squad’s league performance.
One of the key factors to this year has been the installment of a JV squad in order to develop the younger players and build a pipeline for the program.
“It’s been really exciting to be able to build and kind of look towards the future,” Burris said of having a JV team. “As far as the league goes, this is one of the first times in a while where we’ve been competitive with those top groups; really chasing the White Salmon’s, the Seton’s or King’s Way’s up at the top, right?”
The progression for the JV squad this year has been huge, Burris said. Currently the varsity squad has juniors and seniors that did not have time on a JV program to gain experience from.
“They’ve only ever known having to really kind of slog it out at that varsity level but it’s really cool just to watch the players that haven’t played at all or played at a very minimal level to continue to develop and get better as they go,” he said. “The JV match today, they played Ridgefield early in the year and lost 2-1, today they came back out and they beat them 4-0. So it’s just always happy to see the turn around and guys having fun when they can get better.”
Four year varsity player, Logan Smith, protecting the goal, has been a key player for the Wildcats, Burris said, as well as center back Callum Bradley and forward Ian Johnson have been crucial for the offensive attack.
To get over the hump and compete for a top league spot, Burris said the key is to stay unpredictable.
“I think really continuing to be creative in the attack, that final third, something we’re looking to unlock,” Burris said is key to compete for the top. “We have a few new guys that are trying to gel in the system and see how we can keep working to find the back of the net more. And, to stay composed and hold out those longer matches. We were up 1-0 early on White Salmon for a long time but just couldn’t find the back of the net again.”
