ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 10, 1997 TAG: 9704100014
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RINER
SOURCE: CHRIS LANG THE ROANOKE TIMES
Girls who don't have their own soccer team are increasingly joining forces with their male counterparts in New River Valley high school soccer programs.
The day was sunny and windy at the empty football stadium at Auburn High School. Soccer practice was on and boys were attempting slide tackles on their teammates to wrestle the ball free.
A normal weekday afternoon at an area high school, or so it would have seemed. The part that might have surprised the average soccer fan was who else was attending boys' soccer practice - Dana Owens and Jessica Taylor. That's right - girls on a boys' soccer team.
Girls playing on boys' soccer teams is becoming more common in the New River Valley. This is especially true at the area's small Group A schools where there are girls who want to play, just not enough of them to field a full team.
Taylor says this could change in the coming years.
"A lot of girls in middle school want to play," Taylor said. "But there isn't enough interest for a varsity team right now."
The boys' varsity program, which is only in its second year at Auburn, is still in something of a developmental stage itself.
"In our first year, we didn't get a lot of support from the school system," said Taylor, a right forward/wing for the Eagles. "This year we have uniforms and goals. Well, the goals are still coming in."
This is the first season that the school is playing a full schedule. The Eagles played just six games last year.
The coed experiment seems to be working well for the Eagles, said coach Russ Wentz.
"The guys are really cool with them," Wentz said. "They feed them the ball the best they can during game situations. The girls are challenging the guys at practice, but when it comes to game situations, they sometimes don't know what to expect."
The same can be said about some of the all-boys teams that Auburn plays. These teams don't always realize that there are girls on the other side of the ball, and this can prove as a positive to the Eagles, especially when Taylor or Owens takes the ball from a male adversary.
"They get pretty embarrassed if you knock them down," said Owens, who plays forward and fullback.
"Especially when you play other teams with guys, they get mad at you if you take the ball from them," Taylor added.
But how do the boys on the team react to having teammates of the opposite sex?
"We definitely see them as equals," Chris Spencer said.
"I think they add some diversity," said Rutger Thomschitz, the Eagles' senior center. "They contribute in a different way and make it different than your average soccer practice."
The phenomenon is not limited to Auburn. Two other schools in the Three Rivers District have girls playing on their boys teams - Floyd County and Radford.
The Buffaloes have eight girls on their first year squad and things are working out just fine, coach Tim Callihan said.
"It's a situation where the girls wouldn't have a chance to play otherwise," he said. "They all seem to take to it naturally. The differences are in skill level, not in gender. As far as on the field goes, gender doesn't even come into it."
Radford coach Mike Greco agrees. Junior Stephanie Long plays center-midfield for the Bobcats and is treated like any other teammate on the Radford squad.
"She doesn't give any slack and they don't give her any either," Greco said. "She's just one of the fellow teammates and she's a good kid too."
The problem at some of these Group A schools is not necessarily finding enough girls to field a varsity squad, but finding enough opponents. Currently, just three schools in the NRV field girls soccer teams - Group AAA Pulaski County and Group AA Blacksburg and Christiansburg. Pulaski County is in the first year of its program and Blacksburg and Christiansburg each have been around less than five years.
"It seems like [there's enough interest]," Callihan said. "But only time will tell for sure. Finding enough opponents might be the hard part."
Auburn has adjusted well, not only to having girls on its boys team, but to a new team in general.
"You can tell the difference from the beginning of the season," Owens said. "We've actually starting passing the ball and we're becoming more of a team."
The development of that chemistry may be the difference between a winning and losing squad.
"At the beginning of the season it was more or less an attitude problem," Wentz said. "Everybody thought they were better than everyone else. Our team motto is 'team unity leads to victory'. You can't start a good program without good team chemistry."
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM THE ROANOKE TIMES. Auburns' Dana Owens (left)by CNBand Jessica Taylor workout during an after-school practice. color.