PHS girls soccer ready to play

POLSON — Despite playing with eight girls who had never played soccer before, Polson High School’s girls soccer team posted a 3-5-1 record in 2012.

They finished a goal short of reaching the Class A playoffs.

This season, coach Michael Hewston’s team is young—he has 11 freshmen—but they are much more experienced on the soccer field.

“So we’re going to be deep,” Hewston said matter-of-factly.

Down that road, then, the 2013 team motto rings relevant as well as true: “Play for each other.”

That motto adorns the backs of their practice shirts and is the centerpiece of Hewston’s coaching philosophy this season.

Play for each other.

Hewston operates his program to coach as much about life as it does about soccer, a tactic he said he took away from the recent success of the University of North Carolina’s program.

He drew up a 12-point core value system for the girls to internalize throughout the season: tough, self-discipline, focused, relentless, resilient, positive, classy, caring, noble, selflessness, galvanizing and grateful.

And the core values serve as much more than a hortatory reminder of how to win soccer games or how to live. They become part of the practice regimen.

The 23 girls on the squad will spend at least four practices dedicated entirely to the mental aspects of the game, including pondering how those core values relate to their lives.

“Not only do you have to memorize them, but you have to understand them,” Hewston wrote his girls in the packet. They will culminate in a video-documented journey through the season that focuses as much on maturation as a person than it does as a soccer player. Or at least that’s how Hewston envisions it.

His hope is that the mental obstacles associated with his program will put challenges on the field into perspective, ultimately making them seem much smaller than they would to an ordinary teenager.

Hewston said he likes to coach a fast game, so his large roster number will play to his advantage.

“It’s really just a matter of finding the ones who have that drive and then teaching them to play together,” he said.

Hewston’s club will benefit from the return of keeper Monica Cleveland. Cleveland, a senior, was sidelined last season due to a broken hand.

“She’s been really looking forward to this year,” Hewston said.

The offense will be led by junior Sarah Howell, the 2012 squad’s leading goal-scorer. Howell will lead a stampede of strong freshmen, many of whom hail from the same club team that won the U14 state championship recently.

He hopes the team speed and knowledge of each other on and off the soccer field will translate into a successful season in both arenas.