Junior high soccer program shows improvements

The Mexia junior high soccer program recently completed its inaugural season and the teams made great strides during the six-week campaign, according to Mexia soccer coach T.J. Sadler.

Sadler said he wanted to start a junior high program in 2020, but the shutdown of schools due to COVID-19 kept that from happening.

This year, Mexia had a seventh-grade boys team, an eighth-grade boys team and a girls combined seventh and eighth grade team. They played junior high teams from Waco.

Last year, junior high teams practiced together, but did not play in a league. This year was their first taste of league competition.

“We were only in season for six weeks, but we made a whole lot of progress on both sides,” Sadler said.

Sadler said the idea of a junior high program is to prepare players for when they get to the high school team.

“The reason I wanted to do it was to kind of break bad habits before they got to (high school),” Sadler said. “So, kind of get them into the system that I’d like to play with them. And a couple of techniques and tactics that will help them maybe practice on their own.”

The program drew about 60 students. There were about 25 on the girls team and about 20 on each of the boys teams.

One aspect of the game where the teams made the greatest strides was playing together as a team.

Sadler said in youth soccer there usually is one very good player who dominates possession of the ball and scores all the goals. Players would feed them the ball and watch them perform. It’s different at higher levels of play.

“When you get into the high school, everybody can do that,” Sadler said. “So, you can’t just let one person do the work and everybody else just watch. That was a huge stride the seventh grade made. So, training them to play as a team and not just an individual was huge.”

Another area of improvement was in the understanding of spacing.

“It’s a lot harder to make a transition from a small field to a big field,” Sadler said. “There’s just so much space and everybody wants to crowd around the ball. So, that was a huge step.”

He said both the boys and girls learned the importance of spacing.

“The girls made the same jump,” Sadler said. “Watching the first practice it was 12 girls all trying to get the ball and hitting their shins and ankles. But towards the end, they kind of started to understand the spacing of the game.”

Sadler said the eighthgrade class has a number of players who should push for playing time next year as freshmen. He compared the class to the 2020 freshmen class, which included seven players who graduated in 2023 and signed to play soccer in college.

The eighth-graders finished with a 2-2 record. They opened with losses to Waco Tennyson and George Washington Carver.

“They lost the opener, 4-2, but it was against the best team in the league, Waco Tennyson,” Sadler said. “Waco Tennyson feeds into Waco High, which always has an incredible program. They were the best team we played all year.”

After their two losses, the young Blackcats defeated Waco Harmony and Cesar Chavez.

Sadler said a great deal of excitement has been generated around the junior high program. And younger students in lower grades are looking forward to playing soccer in the next few years.

“There were sixth-graders asking teachers all during the year, ‘Can we play?’” Sadler said. “There were sixth-graders jazzed up and excited. They were really wanting to play. And there are fifth-grades that are asking about it already. It’s getting around really fast. And there are all these older brothers and sisters who now have younger brothers and sisters that are ready to be a Blackcat or a Ladycat. And it’s really fun watching them get excited to play.”

Sadler said the younger group doesn’t have many bad habits on the field to break, which allows him to focus more on the finer points of the game.

“I’m seeing the coachability aspect of some kids as we’re getting younger,” he said. “The younger group has decent examples (older players) to look at. And there’s not really many bad habits. So, it looks like it’s getting better.

“I can go straight into tactics and techniques instead of having to say, quit chasing the ball, quit crowding around. Now, they know where to be. I can focus more on big-picture stuff, the little things. I’m really happy with what we were able to accomplish over six weeks or so.”