Soccer Preview: Parkway Central Looking For Fast Start

A slow start is predictable for any young high school team.

And that proved to be the case last season with the boys soccer team. The Colts lost their first five games.

But young teams hope to grow and improve throughout the season and that was also the case with last year's Colts.

Parkway Central played .500 ball the final 20 games of the season and had a winning record (5-3) in the .

"By the end of the season we were where we should have been," Parkway Central coach John Theobald said.

Theobald hopes for a better start this season as he returns more than half of the roster of 22 from last season.

The Colts are currently 1-0 after defeating Troy, 1-0, last Friday.

"I don't know if we are a team which is going to set the world on fire," Theobald said. "But our depth is a lot better than in year's past and the expectations are higher coming into the season."

The improved depth should keep junior Andrew Chekadanov in goal for all of the season. Chekadanov shared the keeper position last year, also playing up top.

But sophomores Ben Sueoka and Evan Willenbrink should help in the forward line to go along with the return of junior Alex Whalen, who is the top returning scorer with six goals (the Colts scored only 30 goals as a team with no player scoring more than eight goals).

The strength of this year's team could be in the backfield with the return of seniors Alex Willenbrink, Keith Coulson and Chris Wang. They all saw extensive action last year.

Junior Ben Gross will anchor the midfield in the center. He sees the field well and is a good distributor. Gross scored four goals as a sophomore last year.

"I think this will be a very competitive team which hopefully will be in the running for a ," Theobald said. "We want to make sure that we are constantly improving and I know the guys want to have a record of better than .500 and be in the top two in the conference."