Posted by CatTales
on 8/16/2009, 8:01 pm, in reply to "Soccer Previews"
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Cambridge boys' squad has some big shoes to fill
Daily-Jeff.com
The Cambridge High boys' soccer team has some mighty big shoes to fill heading into the 2009 season.
Gone are leading scorer Chad Gerlach and assist man Nick Liptak as well as a host of other seniors who leave a solid group of underclassmen in their wake.
"This is certainly going to be a different team than last year," Cambridge coach J.R. Fox said. "We could count on Chad to score at least once a game last year. Now we're going to have several different scorers throughout the season with the guys helping each other out and spreading the ball around."
Gerlach was named first-team all-East Central Ohio League, all-Eastern District and all-Ohio Valley Athletic Conference.
Liptak joined him on all three first-team squads last season, gaining accolades along with three other since-graduated players.
Sean Warden leaves a vacancy in the midfield after taking first-team all-Eastern District, second-team all-ECOL and all-OVAC honorable mention honors.
Also gone is midfielder Timmy Harvey, who was named second-team all-Eastern District and OVAC honorable mention last season.
Fullback Cody Baker is also gone after being named second team all-Eastern District and all-ECOL honorable mention last season.
Midfielders Joey Sylvis and William Cline also graduated.
The departures makes it extra difficult for Cambridge to build on last season's 10-5-1 mark (4-3-1 ECOL).
"We lost a lot of key players from last season," Fox said, "but we also had a pretty deep team last year, so we return a lot of good players as well."
Three-year letterwinner Tim Fox returns in the midfield for Cambridge as do fellow seniors Andrew Bertubin and defender Ryan Jamiel.
"I'm excited about this season," Coach Fox said. "This is probably the best conditioned team I've had here at Cambridge. They've put in a lot of work this summer and they've really done what they need to do to be successful."
Senior Matt Drotovick and junior Greg Fox will split time in goal for the Bobcats.
"We have two outstanding keepers," coach Fox said. "We won't give up nearly as many goals as we did last year. These two are very similar and give us the freedom to change things up and keep a fresh guy in goal during tough games."
Junior midfielder Chris Pearson and junior fullback Tanner Balik also return for the Bobcats.
"We're still going to be a very offensive team," Fox said. "We'll be more of a two- or three-touch team this year though as opposed to last year when we did a lot of dribbling."
The focus for the Cambridge attack is quick, crisp passes. Last year's squad created many opportunities on offense through swift dribbling while Fox hopes this season's team can take advantage of positioning errors and use passing accuracy to pick apart opposing defenses.
"We have high goals for this season," Fox said. "The kids set the goals themselves. They're ready to fill those shoes and get the season going."
Rounding out the Cambridge roster are seniors Chris Kandibovich and Jordan House; juniors Zack Bebout, Caleb Mihalik and Tyler Earl and sophomores Grant Warren, Timmy Booth, Alex Kandibovich and Cody Carsten.
On the junior varsity squad for the Bobcats are junior J.W. Vandermark; sophomores Seth Roller, Russell Wolfe and Joey Galloway and freshmen Conner Engstrom, Cody Engstrom, Dakota Burris, Quintin Fettes, Aaron Ruby, Tony Carpenetti, Jorge Galindo, Jawann Singer, Trent Preece, Jerrord Atchison and Seth Warden.
Cambridge opens Monday, Aug. 24 at Steubenville before traveling to Dover on Wednesday, Aug. 26 to open ECOL action.
"We start out very tough," Fox said. "Dover and Steubenville are tough teams to start out with, but the kids are ready. They're amped up at practice every day having a lot of fun, but at this point they're just ready to get out there and go after someone who isn't on their team."
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