Coaches Corner for April 9th: Ollie Johnston, Boone Girls Soccer

With us on Coach's Corner here on KWBG, gonna talk some Boom Girls soccer today. Ollie Johnston joining us, Torrey Dorrs. We'll be hitting the field at some point.

Mother Nature has not been very friendly yet to them, but at least I know we have a little bit of rain in the forecast on Thursday, hoping that that match against Carlisle will be underway.

And Ollie, you guys have had a chance to be out on the field and busy here for the last couple of weeks. I gotta imagine the girls are ready to go, aren't they? Yeah, no, the girls are certainly ready to go. We've got a lot of new girls this year.

We've had a scrimmage against Indianola, the end of March and that's kind of the first week that we had practiced.

And I know a lot of them love just getting out there and it was against the strong Indianola team, but yeah, the girls have put in a lot of effort over the past couple of weeks and we're ready to get the season going with our games.

I was gonna say, I know we get to a point, Ollie, and I know you coaches love practicing, but it gets to a point where the girls are tired of practice, aren't they, coach? They wanna see what do we have, what do we need to work on, what are we good at?

And I think Carlisle will be a nice test on Thursday. Yeah, I think that practice is good.

When it comes to high school, I always like the idea of having a couple of games and being able to have like a few practices to kind of work on the things that we've seen to kind of fix them so that you need that balance.

But at the moment, like I say, we had a scrimmage against Indianola, I think it was like March 27th and we get to play a game since and it's eight point. So yeah, the girls are ready to start playing and so am I. What are some strengths?

Ollie, look at this team, obviously, I know numbers is gonna be one of them and that was something that you told me, actually, we talked about this off air, you told me this during our first interview is that you wanna grow the program and we're definitely on an uptick there.

So there's something you can check off your box, but give me some strengths. What are we noticing right now from this girls team so far?

Yeah, we do have the numbers, which has helped with some rotation and kind of filling in the gaps that we needed with a lot of the retinas, keeping their spots from last year and just kind of adding some freshmen for that and figuring out those moving from JV to Varsity.

But one of the things that we really got from the Indianola game was how strong we are defensively. We were very organized, we were able to stop a strong, again, a very strong Indianola team breaking through and scoring lots of goals on us.

And that was part of my thinking behind setting up this scrimmage. I wanted us to not scrimmage against the team that was necessarily on our level or lower ability.

I wanted to be against a stronger team because that will help us grow against the likes of Carlyle, Bonger and those kind of teams that we've not had success against over the past few years.

But I really do think if we can figure out some defensive work, then that's gonna really help us get results against those teams. All right, so what have we been working on, Ollie? I know you said we've got a lot of new faces and some fresh faces.

I'm sure we've got some girls that probably have never played soccer, but for the most part, they're just new to your program and new to high school soccer. So tell me about how that's kind of been working so far.

Yeah, so because of the increase in numbers, I do like having all of the girls together for as much or for as many activities as I can. And it's nice to see everybody.

We get lots of technical repetitions in, passing the ball, dribbling, moving the ball around, and getting kind of game the shock.

But it's been really good watching some of the freshmen and then the new girls that, I mean, when I say new, I mean, there are some girls that have never played soccer before.

And it's great just watching them grow because over two weeks, you can really see the ones that are coachable and the ones that can just pick it up quite easy. I love watching their progress.

And then our kind of more varsity team, we've been able to really work on, like I say, some defensive tactics, some set pieces. I was really hoping the Green County game would have been played last night.

Fortunately, like you mentioned earlier, it got cooled off because of the low temperatures. But the Indian Ocean Games gave us a really good opportunity to work or show our defensive work.

I'm really looking forward to another game helping us kind of show what we've been working on attacking wise and showing that we can really put what we're practicing in our practice sessions into games. Well, and you've got a heck of a busy week next week too.

And that's not me looking past Carlisle on Thursday, but boy coach, we've got three on the schedule for next week. Obviously we hope the weather is going to be good for us, but North Polk, Ballard and Perry, all coming up next week, Ollie.

We're going to learn a lot about this girl's soccer team real quick. Yep, yep, it's three games in a week is always tough. I'm glad that we get a training session in between. So Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the games next week. But yep, North Polk is always a real test.

And it's not just a test on our ability, but it's a test on our character. One of the things that I noticed in the history of Goon, before I came, the soccer girls were getting ten-oed a couple of times every season.

And that was one of the things that I wanted to change in our culture. And that mentality of, oh, we're seven goals down, like we might as well just give up while we're playing. And we really haven't experienced many ten-o's at all.

Unfortunately, last year we did get ten-o'd by North Polk. So I'm looking to see an improvement on that. I'd love to get a goal or two against them. But it's definitely gonna be a good, kind of measurable thing to see how we get on against North Polk.

And then Ballad and Parry, definitely winnable games. We tied with both of those teams last year. And with them getting rid of PKs and over time, they finished ties.

So this year we're looking at showing that improvement from last year and trying to get a win against Ballad and Parry. Ollie, as always, thank you so much for some time. Look forward to getting the scores and hearing from how the girls are doing.

And we'll talk to you again here in a couple of weeks. Yep, looking forward to it, and I'll speak to you soon. You bet. Ollie Johnson again joining us. Boone Girls Soccer here on Coach's Corner.