Wirt Soccer Teams Enjoy Success

The boys and girls soccer teams each enjoyed solid campaigns this spring, and although each fell just short of the playoffs, both coaches were pleased with their teams’ development.

The Jaguar boys missed the playoffs by just one point, coach Chidi Enwerem said. They had ten points, while the two teams that advanced to the postseason each had 11.

“We had a few unfortunate games where, because of the weather, the games were stopped 10, 20 minutes into the game,” he said. “Because of that, we needed to battle for points.”

The Jaguars finished the season with a 3-3 tie at Charles Carroll on May 18, which Enwerem said illustrated just how well the team played all year.

“Charles Carroll is one of the stronger middle school soccer teams around,” he said. “We drew with them 3-3, which is quite impressive, and we drew with them at their school. At that age, kids are influenced by familiar environments and when they play away, they don’t do very well. But in this case, our boys did very well.”

The Wirt girls’ soccer team also narrowly missed out on a postseason berth, and finished with a 4-2-2 record while finishing third in their division. Jaguars coach Sharee Williams said that if her team had won last Tuesday it would have made the playoffs, but instead William Wirt finished in a 2-2 tie with Greenbelt Middle School.

“Not only did I think we’d do as well as we did [this year], I thought we’d be able to do better,” she said. “I definitely had confidence in our team – I guess it just goes into the ‘win some, lose some’ category – but the girls did play hard considering the fact that for the majority of them, this is their first time playing an organized sport.”

That teaching aspect is one of the biggest challenges faced by middle school coaches like Enwerem and Williams, who are dealing with students that have little to no experience in the sport they’re playing against.

In addition, both coaches said that the fact that Prince George’s County rules have prohibited sixth graders from taking part in middle school athletics – only seventh and eighth graders are allowed to do so – limits the pool of available talent.

 “It’s not only teaching the skills, but with some you have to actually teach the game of soccer,” Williams said. “For some of them, it’s just like, ‘OK, kick the ball.’ But no, you’ve got to talk about things like offsides and marking up. You have to talk about things like a wall when they get a free kick, and don’t take anybody down when you’re inside the 18 [yard mark]. … Then, it’s one thing for an individually to have the skills, but then you have to learn to work with other people.”

The short season – there are just eight regular-season games – doesn’t help matters.

“It’s immediately after the winter,” Enwerem said, “so from the time that we sign up the kids to the time the game’s start is two or three weeks. So, it’s hardly any time to actually train them, so you use whatever skills they already have. And you know, kids at that age, they play more of what we call “selfish soccer” – you want to dribble from your goal to the next goal – so you need to wean them from that, and that takes time.”

Despite their limited time, that was a goal that both coaches said they were able to accomplish this spring.

“That’s what we do, is try to inculcate team spirit in them: learning to play ‘team’ instead of just ‘me’,” Enwerem said. “We did quite a bit of that, and that is why we were able to win some of the away games. We played real mature soccer.”