Franklin High School’s men’s soccer team has high hopes for the 2021 season.
After months of uncertainty as to when, or even if they would get to play due to fears over the COVID-19 pandemic, on Jan. 27 Panther footballers finally began a shortened season of 13 games, dispatching the Swain County Maroon Devils in Bryson City by a 3-1 margin. Ahead of a jam-packed six weeks of action, head coach Matt Kolodzik said he’s eager to see what this year’s Panther team can do.
“We’re gonna have a lot of team speed, probably more team speed than I’ve had in previous seasons, so I’m really happy about that,” said Kolodzik. “My outlook on the season is we can really go as far as these guys want to push. … Since we’ve had a lot of time to work out, they know each other very well, plus a lot of the core group has grown up with each other, so our chemistry is most definitely there. There’s no egos there – they’re there for each other. It’s a family.”
With a bevy of speedy players on this year’s squad, Franklin should be well-conditioned for late-match situations. Aside from two newcomers who transferred to Franklin this year, including former Highlands striker Luis Torres, Kolodzik said players’ familiarity with each other from youth and middle school teams will help the team play as a unit during tough matches. This familiarity will come in handy given the Panthers’ youth this year.
“We don’t have one senior on our roster now,” said Kolodzik. “Now, there’s two ways to look at that. I would have had a small senior class anyway, probably three at the most with one major contributor, so it was pretty much expected that we weren’t going to have a lot of seniors. Planning for that, we already brought up a lot of players last year to give them a lot of experience. … This year has been a pretty seamless transition – even with a lot of senior leadership not there, we still have a lot of leadership on the team.”
Given the many challenges of preparing for the season in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Panthers’ leadership, both coaches and players, was put to the test this season. Although the team has been holding organized workouts for several months (preparing for their usual fall season only for the state to postpone it to winter), social distancing measures have limited on-field drills, forcing Kolodzik to get creative in teaching strategy this year.
“Everywhere from workouts to practices, we’ve implemented some different ways of teaching,” said Kolodzik. “We even have a little separate Google Classroom for the team so we can put on set pieces, and they can study those [at home]. I send that out one at a time so that they can study them, and hopefully when we get to practice the learning curve is is a lot shorter. That’s our goal, and I think they’re more involved than they have been in the past. It’s been really exciting, the attitudes are excellent.”
With such a unique set of circumstances under which to prepare this year, Kolodzik has relied on the team’s leaders even more than usual. One player that has impressed in this regard is junior Solomon Espinal, a central midfielder and the team’s “Number 10” (the number 10 in soccer is traditionally given to a team’s top goal-scorer and offensive catalyst). Also on that short list are junior defender Caleb Pevia and junior goalkeeper Isaac Jennings, who expressed confidence for the Panthers’ chances this season.
“I believe we’ll have a great season,” said Jennings, who recorded multiple nice saves in the Panthers’ opener against Swain County. “We’ve trained off and on as a team since June, and although COVID stopped us from training with the school, it didn’t stop us from getting work in. We still had a group of guys go out to the field on their own to improve almost every day. I feel all of that work is going to get us to the top of the conference.”
Between Espinal, Jennings, Pevia, and a bevy of juniors and underclassmen, the Panthers will have a young but talented team this year. After their 3-1 opening-match win at Swain County, Kolodzik said he’s simply relieved to be able to play the season.
“Everything looks really good, and we’re chomping at the bit to get out there,” he said. “It feels like a year coming really - even though we’ve only been out here since June, it feels like it.”