Two weeks prior to the start of school, Malvern soccer hosts tryouts to establish its varsity team and select captains. Being a captain for Malvern Soccer requires elite involvement, skill, and leadership. That is why it is such a prized position, and everyone has a say. Before the season starts, all players cast their three picks for the varsity captains of the upcoming season. The coaches do the same with their vote counting equal to the players.
Malvern’s varsity head coach, Susan Barr, is in her 7th season at Malvern, but has 25 years of coaching experience under her belt. She used to be a great player, but after she was done playing with amateur teams, she found her calling in coaching. When asked how the captains are selected, Barr stated,
“So we have three coaches on the team, and we have a vote as well. So there’s never really been a time where we’ve ever swayed a vote, so where we were kind of the tie breaker, which is really great, because we don’t want to be in that position, because we feel that so much of being a captain is just, it’s the dynamic that we’re creating in the locker room.”
Malvern plays in a very competitive Inter-AC league that offers great experiences for all of the players. So when captains Pierce Nevins, Will Boerner, and Max Utain were selected, they knew the significance of the opportunity presented to them.
Pierce Nevins, the first Junior chosen as a captain under Coach Barr, shared what the honor means to him.
“Being a captain to me kinda means a level of perfection. I went from being an underclassman last year to a leader of this team. It means I lead by example and am the first person that the younger team members look to.” Nevins said.
The team uses the summer to mold chemistry on the field because a team is best when they play as one. They train three days a week as well as play in an eight vs eight league that has some serious competition, including local PIAA schools like Great Valley, Lower Merion, Conestoga, Downingtown, and the West Chester schools.
“I think this year, you know, one of the things that we’ve done well the last two years is we really do train a lot in the summer,” Barr said.
The team carried their summer training into their season and started with a great record of 7-2-2. While they had seven wins on the board, Coach Barr said she focuses more on keeping the team motivated after a loss.
“We just try and really shape it into a learning opportunity, what we need to get better at, and going into the Inter-AC, the team, the core group, is very strong. I mean, you’ve got 14 seniors, and you have really high character seniors on this team. So I think that we definitely had felt that Unitas, going into the season, and it’s actually still with us right now,” Barr said.
One of the biggest moments of this team’s season was when they traveled to Mercersburg, a tough opponent, early in the season. Through capitalizing on opportunities and playing sound defense, Malvern pulled away victorious, even though the stat sheet would have suggested otherwise.
This was the moment that Coach Susan Barr knew this team was the “real deal.”
“At Mercersberg, for example, if you were to look at the stats in that game, in the first half, they would have outshot us; they probably would have had more of the ball in the first half, we took back a bit of control, but we just continued to score in those small moments of time on the field. So that was a pretty electric day in general,” Barr said.
It is wins like those that will keep the Friars moving forward in their season. With a strong foundation and captains setting an example to the younger part of the team, Malvern is poised to continue fighting throughout each and every game and is set up for success in the coming years.
