By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

STAYTON, Ore.– For the first time for the 2016-2017 season, the Stayton Boys Soccer team are together for the season.

Behind a young nucleus, the Eagles look to carry what they learned from their 2-1 4A OSAA State Loss to Sisters, indoor soccer league and filling the holes left by seniors.

Two of their seniors who are graduating this June were star athletes and cousins in Ivan and Freddy Navarro, who help contributed to a Stayton team to a 14-1-2 overall record their senior year.

But, despite losing the Navarro’s in a class of eight seniors and being young; of those reminding and returning to the team come spring ball, have the experience and minutes needed to not have a let up said Head Coach Chris Shields.

“The good news is that we’re returning a lot of young guys who played a lot last year,” he said. “The good thing about this is that we had a lot of guys who played a lot of minutes last year that were young.  But I feel that we have a very strong group coming back and the great part of our league too is that everyone is resetting about the same time.”

Under the warm sun and warm conditions on the field, it’s not the heat that has Shields saying that this team is similar to the State Championship team of 2010.

“Like I said, we have a lot of young guys with a lot of time under their belt,” Shields continued on the youth.  “So we’re excited about that, this is going to be the first time since I can remember, since that group in 2010 where this year we’re going to have very few seniors, I think we have three that could possibly see playing time this year other than that, a lot of these guys will be back. A lot of these guys will get a year under their belts and be back again next year.”

Shields added too, as his team takes a warm-up lap or two before the team stretch and practice, that there is some relief in knowing that there’s a sense of stability coming to the program.

Meaning that there’s not really much turnover at the varsity level and it allows the freshmen coming in and those younger players to develop without worry about rushing them to the varsity level like he had to in the past.

“This year, we’re kind of set that balance a little bit where we’re going to have guys going,” started Shields.  “Guys who are freshman going to play a full year of JV.  Sophomore guys, get to play a full year of JV and letting next year, letting all those juniors and seniors play those varsity minutes and letting guys develop at their own pace rather than trying to force them along, maybe play positions or in spots they’re not ready to play.”

It’s not to say that the younger guys won’t have an opportunity to play varsity if the opportunity presents itself, but it just gives the future Varsity stars sometime to harness their skills before making that move up.

With his team being inside playing either indoor soccer, club soccer in Salem or a combination of the two upwards of five days of week playing, so Shields is excited to see his team back together in the outdoor environment.

“It’s always nice to get out and get going again,” “All winter seemed to be long..  So it’s exciting, it’s always nice to get back out and the summer is meant to be a little  bit fun, a little more relaxing.  It’s just nice to get out there and see the kids and get on to working now and know an idea on what you have before the season starts.

“We have a great group of guys coming from the middle school this year too, so there’s a lot of positives, there’s a ton of positives.”

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