See what Coach Terry Quigley and some of his players had to say about the upcoming Lexington Catholic girls’ soccer season.
Jared Peck, Real-Time Sports Reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader and co-founder of SoccerintheBluegrass.com, visited all nine Lexington high schools and spoke with coaches and players about the upcoming season. Over the next several days, SITB will release the notes and videos from those interviews that were used for the Herald-Leader’s preseason preview: Girls’ soccer: Big players, big games, high stakes in Lexington
KHSAA link: Lexington Catholic schedule
Coach Terry Quigley
On his team this year: We’ll see. We don’t know right now. We’ve a good senior class, good leadership and I’m counting on them to pull us together. We have a couple of good freshmen. Some of the younger kids have improved, so we’re all optimistic. Right now, behind us, we’re playing Daviess County, and I was talking to the coach before and he’s optimistic. Every coach is optimistic (right now). Nobody’s got a loss.
On this year’s impact players: We’re going to start it that way (with Maggie Corbett up top), you know Maggie is a great defender and if our defense holds them out, then Maggie gets to stay up at forward. If the defense falls apart, Maggie has to go back. She knows that. She’ll play either way. She scored 10 goals in the last 10 games of the season last year. That really helped.
Everyone’s focusing at first on Kennedy (Tranter) and all of the sudden they realized, wait a minute, there’s another scorer out there. Maggie was one of the reasons we had a good run at the end of the season.
I’d be shocked if Abby Van Hoeve doesn’t make a big (impact). She’s improved enormously. She was always a great athlete. She can run all day, but now, she’s added soccer skills and intelligence. She sees the game better. She really should be a significant player this year.
Olivia Williams has taken us to the state finals two years in a row. She’s our goalkeeper. She with Abby Van Hoeve and Kennedy started the last two state finals, so, she’s a big part of this team. She’s a great kid. She’s got great ACT scores. She can go wherever she wants and she’s a very hardworking soccer player.
On who will compete in the 11th Region: I think we’ll be fine. For me Tates Creek is the team to beat in the city. I think most people would say that. They had a great young team last year. They are only going to get better this year.
My goal ever year is to get to the region final, and that’s a lofty goal because you’ve got to get out of district and you’ve got to fight your way through the region to get to the final, but any team is successful if you’re playing in the region final.
Our goal, what I say to the kids, is to get better every day – get better as a person, get better as a player, get better as a team. And so, its’ working on the three areas, being a good person, being a good player, and a good teammate that makes the team stronger. That’s our goal. If we lose a game, you know last year, we lost nine games and we were playing in the state final. If you lose a game, we don’t groan over it or anything like that. What we do is we sit down and say ‘this is what we did wrong and this is what we’ve got to correct.’ That’s why we always play Sacred Heart the first game of the season to find out what’s wrong with us. And we find out, every first game of the season.
When we didn’t have a winning record till October last year, I kept thinking well, that team thinks that team thinks they are just going to walk in and go to the state final because the team before them did. They didn’t have the right frame of mind. And then they won 10 of 11 games, and they were right, and I was wrong.”
Abby Van Hoeve, senior
“You never forget that feeling after the game. It just sticks with you and you don’t want to ever experience it again. We’re tired of losing in the state final. We want to keep going and keep trying our best. That’s going to get us there.
I definitely felt it a little too much, you know, experiencing going to the state finals, losing twice and that feeling, but I definitely remember the excitement we had going to it with some of my best friends, experiencing that feeling of ‘we’re in the state championship. We’re one of two teams in the whole state who is still playing.
We definitely have a lot of talent in the underclassmen and we know that the seniors will push them and I feel like they will step up this year.
Olivia Williams, senior
At this point, it’s all or nothing for us. This is our last year. We want to go out with a bang – state championship.
I couldn’t ask for a better group of girls these past two years. The seniors my sophomore year really encouraged me and then it just kept going through last year and we hope to take their spots and be just as encouraging and make it just as fun as a team as it always has been.
Our whole back line has been graduated and we’re starting from scratch, but I have confidence in our underclassmen.
On playing Sacred Heart in the first game: I think it’s a smart tactic because it lets us see how we go against one of the best teams in the state, and it helps us to see where we can go from there. And I think that’s really valuable through the rest of the season as we grow. Coach Quigley says it all the time: our only goal is to get better every game.
More comments from and about Kennedy Tranter will be forthcoming in a future article.
