PEABODY — Andrew Douglass enjoyed a solid first year as head coach of the Veterans Memorial High girls varsity soccer team in 2021. The team went 7-5-4 overall and made it to the Division l State Tournament as the 23 seed. Now, with a completely revamped varsity squad, Douglass has a big challenge lying ahead of this 2022 fall season, but it is something that he is looking forward to taking on.
“I have a good understanding of what the program is like and the expectations now,” Douglass said. “I just want to improve; I want to grow on all assets.”
For this season, improvement and growth is something that will need to happen quickly with the current make-up of the team. The varsity program graduated eight starters from last year’s team, forcing the young core to step up into the spotlight.
“It’s a really young team, a lot of players playing different positions than they played from last year or ever before, so this is really about trying to put the pieces together, figure out who’s going to step up, who’s going to help us out, and who’s going to put the ball in the net,” said Douglass.
The inexperience showed itself at the beginning of the team’s scrimmage against Hamilton-Wenham Wednesday afternoon. The Tanners spent a lot of time on their own half of the field and struggled to advance the ball when they had possession, leading to a handful of early goals for Hamilton-Wenham.
“A slow start never helps, Hamilton did a great job of possessing the ball,” Douglass said. “We were chasing it a bit.”
The effort remained strong for Douglass’s team, however, which resulted in Peabody finally breaking through late in the game when a shot ricocheted off of Hamilton-Wenham’s goalie right back to Peabody for an easy tap-in.
It certainly wasn’t perfect, but Douglass came away with a lot of positives after the scrimmage.
“The players are stepping up, they’re training hard, they’re listening, so it’s going to work out,” he said. Once we sunk in and really got our feet underneath us, I thought we held the ball really well.”
The leadership from the upperclassmen will be another integral part of the team’s success this season with the large number of young players that Peabody has. Douglass hopes that a lot of that mentorship can lead to a stronger offensive presence, as he feels that is something the team lacked during their run to the state tournament last season. The Peabody coach is also a goaltender by trade and notes that he also needs to improve on the offensive side of the ball due to the defensive nature of his position.
“As a team, we’ve always struggled figuring out how to put the ball in the net, so that’s something we’re going to look to improve on and is something that, as a coach, I need to work on as well. It’s something that I’ll be doing my homework on.”
With the loss of nearly all of last year’s starters, multiple girls from the junior varsity team were called up for this season. With new faces, new positions, and new learning curves, Douglass knows that there is a lot of work to do, but he hopes that the team can become successful this year through developing chemistry and working as one unit.
“It’s important that we grow as a team, really bond as one group, not so much because there’s division, but bringing in a lot of new faces from JV to varsity this year,” Douglass said. “It will take some bonding and some meshing before things click this year, but I hope by the end of the season we will have gotten better and play well as a cohesive unit.”
Peabody Veterans Memorial will next take the pitch Saturday morning as they take part in a soccer jamboree in Reading.
Ryan Vermette can be reached at [email protected].
