Youth to be served for Morris boys soccer team

MORRIS – Last season, the Morris boys soccer team fielded a team with a wealth of experience. This year will be decidedly different, as the Redskins saw 11 seniors graduate from last year’s club, and there will be no seniors on the team this season.

“We are definitely low on numbers,” Morris coach David Valdivia said. “We graduated 11 seniors from last year’s team, and we only had nine freshmen come out at the beginning of summer workouts. Of those nine, only seven stayed. We only have 24 players in the entire program. Usually, we have about twice that many.

“I don’t know if it is because of COVID and some kids don’t want to play because of that. What I do know is that we are going to be very young this year.”

Valdivia, who enters his 11th season as the Redskins coach, is counting on a strong junior class to step into leadership roles this fall, as juniors Nick Webber, Kaden Welch and Ben Salzman will be the captains. All three saw significant action last season.

“We had a pretty good summer,” Salzman said. “We are in good condition, and we really didn’t play any bad games this summer. We are young and we will learn as we go, but we have a lot of talent.”

Valdivia said that the team played in a tournament in Romeoville during the summer.

“We finished fifth out of six teams, but we played well,” he said. “We had one game where we were down 2-0, but we came back and tied it, but we gave up a goal right after we tied it. That’s something that will happen to a young team.

“But that tournament gave us a chance to see everyone get on the field and see who works well with each other. Our motto this year is #NewBeginnings. We saw some things we need to improve on, but this is a team that will get better as the year goes on because of how young we are. We will keep learning all year and be a better team at the end of the year than we were at the beginning.”

Valdivia, who will also take over the head coaching position for the girls team in the spring, has former Morris girls standout Jordan Cummings as his assistant. He hopes to improve not only how the teams play, but how they look.

“We have this beautiful home artificial turf field,” he said. “We’ve gotta look the part, too. We are going to use the booster money to get the kids matching practice uniforms. Shorts, shirts, socks, everything.”

And although his captains are all juniors, he is looking for them to take a big part in leading the team.

“We want our leaders to hold each other accountable,” he said, “and to hold everyone on the team accountable. We are going to need to be disciplined on the field. That can make a big difference if we are going against a team that is bigger and faster than we are, which we will probably see since we are so young. We need our captains to step up and they show a lot of promise as far as that goes.”

Morris begins its season at home Monday against Manteno before hitting the road for the War on 34 Tournament on Aug. 27 and 28 in Earlville.