IAC BOYS SOCCER: SVEC SEES NUMBERS INCREASE (2024-08-28)

By TIM TAYLOR
Tioga County Sports Report
CANDOR/ SPENCER — The Spencer-Van Etten/Candor boys soccer team will have more to work with this fall as numbers have increased on the Eagles’ pitch.

“They're a lot better,” coach Sean Lanning said of the increase. “We're looking at 18, 19, which is a big difference from what we had last year when we had 13, 14, and not much coming off the bench.

“We're excited. We’ve got a lot of 9th-graders, got a lot of kids in the program in general, modified as well, so our numbers are exciting for this program.”

Lanning is in his second year coaching the varsity, teaming up with Jason Banks, who has been with the program for several years. 

SVEC has a good mix of experience on its roster as well.

“I think it's about half and half,” Lanning said. “We have a lot of seniors, maybe six or seven seniors this year, everybody that played last year, so we're definitely thinking we can do well this year.”

Some Eagle players took advantage of the off-season to attend indoor workouts at Candor once a week.

Lanning said it gave them an opportunity to work on foot skills and some other aspects of the game.

“With smaller schools, it's harder to get the numbers to commit to go to indoor and games and stuff like that every week, so we do that once a week during the winter for three or four months,” he noted.

Part of the preseason will be aimed at getting the younger athletes accustomed to playing at the varsity level.

“We have a lot of new guys … some athletic newcomers that we're looking to build their foot skills. And we're always trying to pass the ball, move the ball, make the other team work, so bringing them into the culture and having them figure out tha we want them to play soccer. We don't want to just run around the field the whole game.

Lanning said it’s hard to tell at this point in the season how SVEC compares with other teams.

“We don't really know what's going on with other teams at this point, but everyone has the same short preseason that we have,” he said. “We get six practices and then we have a game, which I think everyone will be suffering the same amount in the 80th minute of that first game, but you’ve got to do the best you can. First game, you never know what will happen.”

It appears SVEC will receive a forfeit from Whitney Point to open the season, then get its first live action Sept. 6 at Tioga.

——————

PHOTOS BY TIM TAYLOR.

Print Friendly Version