Perryville boys soccer coach Jerry Fulton hasn’t had much time off this summer.
Fulton, the veteran coach of both the Pirate boys and girls soccer programs had a few weeks spanning the end of the girls state final four run and the start of summer workouts for the boys.
“It’s what we want,” Fulton said. “That means the girls’ season went very well.”
The boys program has begun their “open fields” this summer, which happen twice per week.
Fulton just wants the boys to get a ball back on their feet during the evening workouts.
“We want them to touch the ball,” he said. “We want to know where all their skill levels are, especially, the new players.”
Perryville has had somewhere between 25-30 players each session, including a few girls fresh off the spring season. About 10 of them have been incoming freshmen.
“One night I think we had 10 girls, which totally amazed me, but a majority of them have been boys,” Fulton said. “If we can get 10 freshmen every year, it will only help the program.”
The program will have to retool after a 23-4 season in the fall that saw the Pirates finish second in Class 2, falling to Whitfield.
The program graduated six seniors including their top three goal scorers (Dayton Strattman, Bryce Brewer, Stratton Kaempfe) and several top defenders (goalkeeper Ty Baudendistel, Riley Hagan, Dillon Schlimpert). Fulton knows to ask a new crop of players with new roles to accomplish something like going to state are impossible expectations.
“We want to be solid,” he said. “If we can make another run that would be wonderful, but would be a lot of pressure on these kids because we have a long season before any of that postseason stuff happens. We want to come back, play well and focus on the things we also do at the beginning of the season, which are to win conference and districts and go from there.”
Perryville returns two seniors in top returning goal scorer Carson Adams (10 goals, 18 assists) and Jarrett Anderson.
“Those guys have really stepped up,” Fulton said. “They understand they are the seniors and have really tried to take on that leadership role.”
Perryville has really focused more on ball skills and footwork at the beginning of the summer, but as the summer wears on, they will try to scrimmage more often.
“We weren’t scrimmaging much when it was 100 degrees out there,” Fulton said. “Once it gets cooler, we will start that.”
Fulton said his players have really hounded him to go full field scrimmaging instead of practicing skillwork.
“Everybody loves scrimmaging more than doing drills. These ae kids,” Fulton said. “What makes us better at the scrimmaging are the drills that we do before that. I call these drills a ‘necessary evil, because if we can’t handle the ball, we can’t fend off another team.”
Perryville are using these open fields to prepare for the Varsity Showcase that will take place July 14-16.
“After that we should know what kind of team we are,” Fulton said.
