story by MaryMichael Hough, photos by Katie Hornbeck

Freshman varsity soccer player Grace Kitts watched the soccer ball soar through the air as the announcer, who had been counting down from ten, reached one. She stopped running as girls in black jerseys began to celebrate, hugging one another all around her. Kitts glanced at the Blue Springs South High School scoreboard one last time. 2-1 with no time left on the clock. It was over. STA had just lost to Eureka High School in the 2013 Missouri State High School Soccer final.

Almost a year later, now a sophomore, Kitts refers to the State game as “an open wound.”

“We were just so excited that maybe we didn’t go into [the game] with the right mindset,” Kitts said. “I think also trying to come from behind we all just got frazzled.”

According to junior Caroline Strader, the team has put last year’s loss in the final behind them and is now looking forward to a successful season.

Despite losing five seniors from the class of 2013, the team is confident in the strengths they have found in their new freshman teammates, who, according to Kitts, “fit into the lineup really well.”

“We lost a lot of our defensive players [from last year], but we gained a lot of freshmen that are more offensive so this year the team is definitely stronger on offense,” senior Lizzie Luallin said.

According to Kitts, the team is not making any “drastic changes” to training methods, but they are focusing on different skills such as “playing in tighter spaces.”

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Luallin and senior Christina DeZeeuw agree with Kitts that the changes are minor and add that the team has been doing more conditioning than last year.

“We’ve been doing a lot more running at practices because I think that we were a little out of shape last year and that kind of hurt us,” Luallin said.

According to DeZeeuw, the team has also been practicing shooting on their new goalies after last year’s goalie Janie Thompson graduated.

Kitts, Strader, Luallin and DeZeeuw all agree that the team’s goal this year is to make it to State again.

“Last year we didn’t go into the game with as much State experience and we were new to the pressure, but we definitely know what to expect now,” Kitts said.

According to DeZeeuw the team needs to have “good team chemistry” in order to make it to the State championship game.

According to Strader, the team needs to work hard and “always think ahead.”

“We can’t ever really take a break especially on easy games,” Strader said. “We need to treat them with as much importance as we would the State final.”

Luallin agrees with DeZeeuw and Kitts, but also believes it’s going to take “motivation and positivity.”

According to Kitts, Strader, Luallin and DeZeeuw, teams such as St.Thomas Aquinas High School, Blue Valley West High School, Blue Valley Northwest High School and St. Joseph’s Academy from St. Louis will all be big competition this year. When it comes to Eureka, the team does not know what to expect.

“[Eureka] will always be a good team, but we will definitely want to work hard to beat them this year to get some sort of closure [for last year’s State final],” Kitts said.