For a program still in its infancy, the Marietta High School boys’ soccer team has had a whopper of a season, winning all of its games – a feat that any team in any sport aspires to.
“Our first game of the season was on the road against Atoka, and there’s no better way to say it that to say that we just gutted it out and won it 2-1,” said Head Coach Jon Ross.
During the first games of the season, several student athletes were still competing in basketball and powerlifting and weren’t available to the soccer team yet.
After Atoka, the team headed to Ardmore and won again. Then on to Durant for yet another win.
“Finally, we got all of our kids from basketball and powerlifting, and we began to really put the pieces together,” Ross said. “Our kids started to mesh and that’s when we knew we had something good going.”
According to Ross, the team began to gel. Defense and passing got better, communication on the field got better – basically everything got better, and the wins kept on coming.
“After we got all of our kids out, we went back to Atoka. It’s hard to beat the same team twice in one season, but we ended up beating them again, this time 2-0,” Ross commented. “It was a great game for us.”
And the team continued to improve moving into their last game of the season, this one against Madill.
“They are good, really good,” explained Ross. “Our kids know theirs, and soccer is big for them, but we went out and beat them, and that was a great win for us.”
In only the second season for the program, the Indians are still not a part of any post-season play, although they might wish they were.
“For this year and next, we won’t have district play because that’s the way our program is set up. We have one more year and then we will apply for a district,” Ross stated.
District or non-district play aside, Ross is planning for the future. Next year he intends to schedule more games and to field a varsity team. According to Ross, student and community buy-in for the program has been more than he could ask for.
“The kids are excited, and the parents and community have been super supportive,” Ross said. “The kids are talking to their friends about it, trying to get more kids out to play. Our team is young, so we have a good group of kids coming up. We have kids who want to play soccer, we have backing from our families, and things are really looking great for the future of our program."