By Mark Robinson
Head Coach Lucas Lemine of the Greenbrier East Boys Soccer team went into his second week of practice teaching players to position themselves correctly in their offensive and defensive formations. Last week he listed 29 boys as coming out for the team. That number has now grown to 31. Sixteen boys will be on the varsity team; the rest on the junior varsity.
“Kids that are new to the program don’t understand how to do defense, so today’s practice will be two hours of kids learning to defend not only one on one, but also in group situations. I think a strength of our team is our speed and our attacking ability, but a weakness is defending. That’s not typical for a team that I coach. Normally we’re way more advanced defensively than we are offensively,” Lemine said.
“Something I try to stress is their alignment and their spacing, corresponding to their direct position on the field. If they’re not in their correct alignment or they’re not spaced out correctly, we can’t defend right, and we can’t retain the ball, possess the ball.
“We try to make sure they understand where they need to be in certain situations, and we’ve also gone over their individual marking responsibilities on defense. We’re still building on it. We’re not very good at it yet.”
The junior varsity team plays a scrimmage Saturday, Aug.13, at Princeton. The varsity team plays Tuesday, Aug. 16, at Nicholas County, at 7 p.m. Thursday the 18th they play at Midland Trail at 6 p.m. The first game of the season is Tuesday, Aug. 23, at James Monroe.
