See what Bryan Station girls soccer players and the coach had to say about the upcoming 2017 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: Bryan Station schedule
Coach Daniel Hacker
On the team this year
We’ve got a good group of seniors. We’ve got six seniors that were part of that foundation and resurgence where we got the program going on a winning track, making regionals the last two years.
Key players
Amber McIntosh in the back is going to be super solid for us. The Bibbs twins, I know you guys ran that special on them last year, are back for their senior year. Zephany Rushin, who is one of our best players will be up top at forward and Cassie Hacker, my daughter, will be kind of be holding up the midfield with us. Of course, I can’t forget our keeper Katelyn Gentry who was second-team all-state a couple of years ago. There’s not a better keeper in the state.
I really think Zephany Rushin in going to have a breakthrough year. She was tied for us as top goal scorer last year, but I really think she’s going to knock it out of the park this year. (It’s) her physicality. She’s super strong. She never gets beat off the ball. She’s great in the air. She’s got that unique fearlessness. She’s not afraid to sacrifice her body to get a goal.
After that is where we’re going to have a little bit of shakiness. (The Defenders had no freshmen on the team as of this writing).
On depth, competitiveness with short bench
Depth is going to be a big issue, so we’ve got to be as fit as possible to do that to make sure we can compete. We’re definitely in rebuilding mode.
The big thing is keeping their morale up, especially this group of seniors that have never really experienced losing like (some past years). In the beginning, we’re going to take our hits for sure, but hopefully by the end of the season, we’ll get people shipped into shape.
Cassie Hacker, senior
I think we just really need to work on our fitness in the preseason, because we don’t have very many subs this year. But last year, I didn’t really ever come out. (She plays center back).
I’m looking forward to being challenged differently, because we’re not as deep as we have been in past years, but we still have a lot of good players, so it’ll be fun.
We can’t take any games off, that’s for sure.
Zephany Rushin, senior
On what she’s looking forward to this season
I want to play Dunbar again.
One how they’ll compete this season
One game at a time. One step at a time. All we have to do is really make sure that our passes are crisp and that we work together.
One game at a time is really how we have to approach it, because with every city one we have we have be own it. We have to be on the game every game.
We can’t eat junk either. No Sour Patch for Cassie this season. (“We’ll see about that,” Cassie replied.)
