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Greencastle, North Putnam soccer use summer sessions to help maintain top spots in WIC standings
While only Greencastle and North Putnam field soccer teams in Putnam County, three of the four squads took up three of the top four spots in the WIC during the 2022 campaigns.
Keeping that trend going is at the forefront of all the teams, whether it’s maintain the top spot in both the boys and girls standings, which Greencastle managed to do last year, or whether North Putnam can find a way to take the title off the Tiger Cubs, a goal the Cougar boys will be looking to achieve this year.
Getting a leg up during the summer is vital and it was no surprise to see Greencastle’s girls scrimmage 11-v-11 during a session this week.
“Our sessions have been really good,” Greencastle girls’ soccer head coach Scott Monnett said. “We’ve had around 22-24 girls for the most part, so there’s been a lot of commitment from the girls to come out and get better.
“I’ve talked to them about how competitive we are going to be, not only on the field but on the roster and the girls have bought into the idea that if they’re not out, someone else is going to be and going to challenge them.”
Having only lost three seniors from the prior year, Monnett said there was already a very strong base to work with newcomers only adding to the depth pool.
“I was very comfortable with the squad we have coming back,” Monnett noted. “I hate losing great people like the three seniors we had last year but from a talent standpoint, with the numbers we have, I feel we’re more talented than at any time since I’ve been here.”
The same could be said for North Putnam’s boys, who were only a loss to Greencastle away from being WIC champs themselves.
“A lot of things this summer have been status quo with only two seniors graduating helping,” Cougar boys’ head coach Kyle Morgan noted. “We had a pretty successful season last year and the question this summer is how we continue to build off that while keeping our identity and aim towards conference and sectional titles.”
“We’ve practiced two-to-three times a week going back to the second week of June. We’ve also lifted after every session and things have been going pretty good.
“We’ve had good numbers out each time, got done with a team camp and it’s been a positive summer,” Morgan added.
Getting out and about has also been a way for both teams to improve with Greencastle being invited to take part in an invitational at Franklin Central while North Putnam attended a team camp at Anderson University, allowing it to play teams from the opposite side of the state.
“We had the opportunity to play in the Flashes Invitational in place of another team and we didn’t know what to expect with some of the bigger schools there,” Monnett said. “We played extremely well, thrusting some of our underclassmen into starting roles and they did well as we tied Providence and Columbus East.
“We also scrimmaged Mooresville, which was fast and gave us a different look. We learned some things we can do defensively and some things we have to think about.”
“There weren’t any local teams but we did get to see New Castle, Franklin County and Garrett while at Anderson,” Morgan added. “It’s a bit of a hodgepodge of teams there and it’s a little closer for those teams that are in the north.
“That said, it was a positive experience for all the guys there.”
For both coaches, the practices during the summer have been like others but both pointed to their upperclassmen as reasons why both teams had continued to improve year after year and why they were able to get so much done during the summer.
“We’ve done a lot of conditioning, a lot of distance and speed work,” Monnett said about what type of work had been going on during the summer months. “We have some wrinkles to throw in with a new formation, mainly because of the talent we have and true soccer players we have, girls who know roles and positions well.
“I had the benefit of coaching our incoming freshmen in the spring, so extra time with them has allowed us to instill things early on. That said, I’ve also left a lot up to our girls as we have a great senior class and they have taken it upon themselves to make sure they’re getting together with the other girls off the field to build up the camaraderie and the culture, which is important for us.”
“Our five seniors are all guys who are four-year players and played in middle school,” Morgan noted. “It’s been great to have that continuity, to have guys who know how we operate, what our expectations are and it’s huge to have a group of leaders who are working with our new guys.
“We have a decent size group of freshmen, about five or six, which is good for North Putnam. Having the seniors we have, teaching the younger guys up to speed, is awesome; instead of having two coaches, it’s like we’ve got seven coaches out there.
“We’re proud of all five guys but also our juniors, who have played for three years now, are building on what they’ve done,” Morgan added. “As coaches, we’re finding new ways to challenge the guys, new ways for them to grow and find new concepts and challenges to overcome.
“We can’t get stagnant if we want to meet the goals we have, so we’ve worked through a little bit of everything this summer.”