Everything came together for Crawfordsville boys soccer last season. The Athenians stood atop the Sagamore Conference at a perfect 7-0 and were champions. CHS also came within 15 minutes of capturing a sectional title before falling in a 2-1 defeat to Tri-West. They finished the season with a 13-4-1 record overall.
This season CHS will be without 10 of those seniors from that historic 2021 season, but coach Marcus Hale still sees the talent on this year’s team and knows good things can still happen.
“It is hard to replace such a talented team like last year’s,” he said. “We do have returning players who we expect to see great things this year. Andrew Jones, Yeison Cifuentes, Shota Koyanagi, Manuel Olvera, Partick Corado, Ryo Nishina, Max Brumett, Jaziel Gil, and Alec Saidian I expect great things from all of those guys.” Nishina showed a ton of promise last season in his freshman season and will likely be the go-to scorer for Crawfordsville.
Hale has liked what he’s seen so far in the off-season from his team as they learn to step into some new roles and leadership positions as the team begins to set it’s goals for the upcoming year.”
“The team has been willing to work hard, play with effort, and be coach-able,” he said. “We just simply want to go out every time and play really good team soccer. That’s our focus along with playing smart and playing as well as we can.”
Crawfordsville will begin it’s SAC title defense on Tuesday when they open up at home against SAC-rival Western Boone.
