Tiger Nation is a place where success is brought not given.

As this fall season is a wrap, the girls and boys soccer season had some great improvements making YCHS a greater place.

All athletes and students should be able to strive and know that Tigers will always put up a fight.

Kaia Fetch is one of the captains of the girl’s soccer team as well as Tielese Braithwaite and Kylie Warner.

Her position, this year of being a captain, is all about being a structure, but not like a coach, and helping.

But leaving the coaching to the coach, Fetch is still  someone who the underclassmen could look up to and provide a structure for them.

Fetch said that a good challenge that the girls’ soccer team had this season was their three-hour drive to Sutherland. Bus rides like that can make you extremely sleepy and 

make your body feel worn, that’s why coach Mike Fetch suggests that the girls not sleep in.

And to make sure that they are all prepared for the game mentally and physically make sure to eat well before the game to prepare their bodies and minds.

“It was such a good environment, the whole team and the girls. We had great team dinners and little activities together.”

Fetch said “say from the beginning of this season, from like the big talk our dad had to everyone. I feel like we were very good at listening in that part. And then right after we heard it, and right after we heard, like, an outside opinion, we’ve all bounced back and became  one.”

This season was most definitely a season that will not be forgotten because of the great little things that happened. She said that soccer has been built into her head. She knows what she wants to do and loves playing soccer.

“I love to play and just seeing other people enjoy it too,” said Fetch.

The girls just know how each other plays and how we can anticipate where they’re gonna go and how they’re going to move. And what they’re going to do with the ball. And so it’s easy to follow their steps when you know how they play.

As for the boys, Lucas Partin is a junior at YCHS who has been playing soccer for around 4 years.

He’s been playing for the YCHS boys soccer team, and his position on the team is a midfielder which is to control the middle of the field and he’s the distributor for the ball. He also helps on offense.

“So like scoring goals, getting assists. And also helping on defense, like making sure that the other team doesn’t score goals and  just kind of a support system,” said Partin.

One word Partin would use to describe the boy’s soccer season is a triumph,” he said.

One challenge the boy’s soccer team has faced this year was working as a unit. There were some boys that had been playing  longer than others and things just aren’t  connecting together which makes it difficult to work as a whole.

But when the boys began to figure it out at the end of the season everything started coming together, the little improvements made a big difference.

“Even though they didn’t win a lot of games we still had games where we were close and had some shut outs and how we won the last game of the season was a great feeling because even though it didn’t start great there’s always some little success that makes everything great,” said Partin.

Partin has always been a big fan of soccer because you don’t have to be perfect at soccer, the whole point is to have fun once you have fun and work hard at everything then you’re going to be successful. He thinks that’s kind of a misconception a lot of people have about it, a lot of people either see it as a ton of running, or you have to be really good at moving the ball with your feet and, like, kicking it or something, when that’s not it. 

“It’s going to be hard in the beginning to get the flow of things. It’s hard to get to do those things. But he still thinks the new incomers that haven’t played soccer in awhile or haven’t played soccer still had fun,” he said.

Improvement is really what they went with this year. Partin thinks they started the season, like he said, with players that had been playing for a while, and they started with players that hadn’t been playing for a while, which was tough like he had mentioned before.

But honestly, they just kept improving. They got better. They had outcomes in games that weren’t wins or ties, but they did a lot better against some teams than they thought they were going to do. And while it was tough, it was a hard season. We worked hard and we got there in the end.

“Winning our last game was really like a big improvement,” he said.

                                      Boys soccer team after a win at home.