Smaller high schools have to build soccer numbers

Jun. 23—McLean County has been able to keep a girls' soccer team playing for several years, although it is a small school that has to work to keep numbers.

Hancock County has looked at getting girls' soccer together at the varsity level, but it is still gauging interest.

Both schools are serious about football, where they play in Class 2-A, but are also both eligible for the All 'A' state basketball, baseball and softball tournaments.

McLean County has struggled to find wins the last few years in girls' soccer, but it has a large number of seniors who will be playing this season.

"Pretty much everybody is going to be back, we will have 12 seniors," said Ricky Humphrey, who has been the coach for seven years. "We have an abundance of athletes at the school, but we have to teach them soccer, that's what I do."

An example of success for McLean County was Taylor Galloway, a basketball player Humphrey had been trying to get to play soccer during her time at the Calhoun school. Galloway decided to play her senior year, and her overlap improvement on the basketball court was noticeable.

"Ryan Groves is the basketball coach, and he told her he wished she'd played soccer three years," Humphrey said. Galloway's speed and footwork improved on the basketball floor.

"Now some of basketball girls are going to be playing soccer, some softball players are going to play. They saw Taylor get better and how our program works."

Humphrey has been a long-time soccer coach in the area, working at Ohio County before McLean County.

Humphrey said he goes to a lot of athletic events at the school to see if there are potential soccer players, and to support the other sports as well.

Smaller schools in general have always had to share athletes in both boys and girls sports.

There hasn't been a lot of interest for boys' soccer at either Hancock or McLean County.

The KHSAA has surveys for schools to give students in order to gauge interest in sports they'd like to see offered at schools.

There was enough survey interest in girls' soccer at Hancock County for athletic director Jeff Kessans to have a meeting during the school day.

There were steadily declining numbers at the following meetings once kids were told of the time commitments and running demands of the sport.

They started with 32 at the first meeting and had 10 by the time Kessans gave them a practice schedule.

"The first meeting we told them when the season would be, we tried to explain what kind of shape you had to be in, that this was not intramural sports," Kessans said.

When 10 showed up for the last meeting, he told the younger girls to talk with classmates, start building up interest, then they would see if they could start a jayvee program in the near future.

Without solid commitment from potential soccer players, Kessans didn't want to take away from volleyball numbers, which is also working to grow.

"We told (soccer) if we could get 15 committed, we could play jayvee," Kessans said.