The Pleasant Valley Girls soccer team is starting their season off on a hot streak. The team was unsure about how they would start off with having a roster full of young girls, but with the help of senior experience, the Spartans have won their first five games.

“A part of me being nervous at the beginning of season was because how many important seniors we graduated last year, and it’s always hard to fill in those spots the next year,” senior Rory Donahue commented. “Another part of it is because how late we hired our new coach. We only a couple of months with him before our season and in previous years we had open gyms throughout the winter.”

The Girls’ team hired Ed Knupp as their new head coach, making it their third coach in four years. Knupp came from helping coach Bettendorf’s soccer team and brought a lot of experience and knowledge to the team. Although this will be Knupp’s first head coaching position, he already has big plans for the future.

“He has brought a discipline to the team by making us do little things in practice everyday. His dedication to the team is obvious to us,” Donahue said. “He makes trips to scout teams, he checks up on us in the weight room and we have regular game film sessions.”

The seniors that are on the team now would have only been freshman when the team was the runner-up at the state tournament three years ago. A lot of those seniors would like to achieve some more goals before their last season comes to an end.

“First our goal is to do well in MAC. We definitely want to improve our MAC record from last year, but of course the goal is to win the conference,” senior Grace Necker stated. “Next, I hope we can redeem ourselves in the regional final from our overtime loss and make it to state.”

Although the team is off to a great start, the players understand there is still a lot of the season to go and they are not playing their best games yet. As most teams are, the girls hope to be playing their best soccer towards the beginning of June at the state tournament.

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