STARKVILLE — Starkville Academy first-year soccer coach James Hawkins has set his team’s primary goal as making the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools playoffs.
Hawkins feels like his squad is talented and deep enough to make that goal a reality.
The team was scheduled to open its season opens at 4 p.m. Tuesday (today) against Clarksdale Lee Academy at the Starkville Sportsplex. But Starkville Academy Athletic Director Glenn Schmidt said Monday redistricting by the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools due to the addition of three new schools forced the game to be canceled.
“The expectations are pretty high for this team,” said Hawkins, who assisted Cole Andrews last season. “They have a lot of experience. Each and every game I expect them to put forth max and effort and hopefully make it pretty deep into the playoffs.
“(The transition) has been pretty smooth. They know me from last year, how I coach, what kind of style, what kind of tactics I enforce and they know me pretty well from just being on soccer fields in general, so it’s been a very smooth transition.”
Starkville Academy qualified for the 2013 playoffs but failed to make postseason a year ago.
Hawkins feels the Lady Volunteers will be ready to take the next step with another year of seasoning.
“The biggest strength is talent,” Hawkins said. “We’re pretty balanced both offensively and defensively in and in the middle of the field. The younger girls that are coming up played at higher levels of soccer when they were growing up. They kept the same skills and learning abilities.
“I think my philosophy (is similar to Andrews) in that we want our teams to be more than a team. We want to be a part of a bigger family and have each other’s backs. That’s one of the reasons why we assisted each other. We both agreed how we wanted our players to come out of the game, what’s going to make them better in the long run.”
Senior midfielder Maris Moorhead is eager to see her team’s hard work during the offseason put to the test Tuesday. She and Jacey Williams are the team’s only seniors.
“(Coach Hawkins) has gotten really close with us and has taught us a lot of skills,” Moorhead said. “He would take charge is some circumstances last year. We feel with him, so it hasn’t really been a huge difference.
“For the younger girls, it has been easier because they are not having to learn a new way of doing things. We have a lot of really good juniors and the seniors are trying to lead, so we are excited to get started.”
Hawkins feels like the depth and potential of the junior class will be important to the squad’s chances.
“Jacey and Maris have a lot of talent,” Hawkins said. “They’ve shown a lot of growth. They didn’t get a chance like the younger girls did in a club system, but growth wise they have as much potential as you can see from any player growing up.
“The junior class is filled with high-skilled players. You pick any name out and guarantee she’s going to be high quality.”
Williams is looking forward to the season. She feels like Hawkins is more of an offensive-oriented coach and feels like her squad will attack more.
“Coach Andrews was mainly focused on defense last year and coach Hawkins was mainly focused on offense, so it made for a good combination,” Williams said. “A lot of the girls got to work with him because we transitioned back and forth between positions. It’s been really exciting for him to be our head coach.
“We’ve only had maybe five practices before our first match, but we will be ready because we are doing a lot of the same things that we did last year.”
Williams feels like the right tone has been set and this team should be focused on the playoffs.
“I don’t expect anything less than the best,” Williams said. “We’ve all been playing together for a while. (Maris and I) are the two seniors. We’ve been looking forward to this top position as captains for a while. We want to lead the team. I think we’re going to be really good this year.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Scott Walters on Twitter @dispatchscott
Scott was sports editor for The Dispatch.
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