We are excited to get the regular season going as we officially wrapped up the preseason on Saturday in the Collins Preseason Soccerama. I think the staff would agree that while there are a lot of questions still to be answered, we are happy where each team is right now and there were plenty of positive moments during the preseason. I know Matt is excited about the improvements JV Red has made and that the boys are looking forward to their game on Thursday. Brian and Adam are happy with the progress of JV Navy and look forward to the games this coming week, especially the Lexington Catholic JV tournament, which should tell them a lot. The JV Navy boys saw opposite ends of the spectrum as far as their competition during the preseason, as they were not pressured a lot in Bluegrass State Games and not a ton either in their first scrimmage game against KCD. St. X's JV team is always an aberration as they are usually like a mid-level varsity team, so it is tough to gauge where we are against them. They are no doubt a very high level program, but they also get massive numbers. Their JV team is "old" in JV terms as they are usually all sophomores just because of their sheer numbers. Their varsity squad had at least 35 players and 95% of them are juniors and seniors, so rarely do they bring sophomores or freshmen up to varsity. There are no excuses for our JV boys, but it's important to keep that game in perspective, especially with being a little shorthanded.

Diego and I are pretty happy where we are at with the varsity group. There are so many roles to be defined with such a new group, so there continue to be a lot of questions about our direction. We definitely answered some of them during the preseason, but there is still a long ways to go with this team and we are just starting to scratch the surface. Our scrimmage performances were positive. We really limited KCD defensively, and held a large majority of the possession. The final third is where things are breaking down for us, so that continues to be an area of focus. In the first half against St. X we were on the backfoot for a large portion of the first 40 minutes, but did manage to score a very nice goal. However, in the second half we were much more positive and gave X a bit of trouble. Improvement is all we are hoping to see right now and we definitely got better on Saturday. While a 2-1 loss to St. X (who I expect to be a top 5 team as they always are) in an even game is very positive and something to build on, I think we all are keeping things in perspective. With such a small sample size we are cautious to be too confident at this point in the season, but we like a lot of what we saw in that second half against St. X. I am very curious to see if some of our adjustments will carry forward positively into the regular season this week. No matter what, the varsity guys should be feeling confident after going toe to toe with one of the state's best!

It's always an exciting time to get the regular season going. I'm sure the boys will be amped up tomorrow in their first game! I know the coaching staff will be as well! It's just the start in the next phase of the process, but we are ready to get that phase going!