The Vicksburg varsity soccer team blanked Sturgis 5-0 in its most recent Wolverine Conference matchup on home turf. Vicksburg’s record now stands at 5-5-1 in the early part of the season.
“They really have responded to a lot of the things we’ve been doing in practice,” new Head Coach Phillip Koch said.
The Bulldogs played stingy defense all evening, making things easier on the goalkeeper. The Trojans got visibly frustrated as the evening wore on and Vicksburg’s precision passing kept the game in check.
“That’s something that we’ve been really hammering,” Koch said. “Ball control, getting wide, switching sides, and it really clicked tonight for them.”
Judah McClelland opened the scoring for the Bulldogs with a shot that bounced off the Sturgis goalie’s hand but still found the back of the net. Ethan Brandau assisted in the play. McClelland scored his second goal of the evening a little bit after that to make the score 2-0.
Jack Barclay widened the lead to 3-0, and Jaime Castellano scored two more goals in the second half to put the game out of reach. Castellano’s second goal came on a spectacular solo possession from about midfield before blasting a rocket shot past the Trojans goalie. Koch praised his team for how they passed and distributed the ball all evening.
“They were very unselfish with the ball, which allowed us to incorporate some of our younger players, and it allows us to continue to develop and get deeper as a team,” Koch said.
This is Koch’s first year at Vicksburg, and he has almost a decade of experience in coaching soccer in travel leagues and AYSO. Thus far, he has been pleased with the experience.
“This is my first experience with high school and I couldn’t be happier, this is a really great group of guys, very mature, very unselfish, great chemistry, and I couldn’t be prouder of this group,” Koch said.
Some of the Bulldogs’ tougher matchups in the Wolverine Conference are still yet to be played. Koch expects Edwardsburg, who is 9-1, to be one of the toughest challenges of the year.
“Obviously Edwardsburg is having a really good year, they’ve got a lot of great veterans on that team and they returned a lot of experience from last year.” Koch said he hopes his team plays them hard when they host the Eddies in early October.
