When the Wiregrass Ranch Bulls reached the regional semifinals last year, the team was experiencing its best season ever.
But that milestone lasted just one season, because this year the team took another step forward, by winning its region and advancing to the state tournament.
(Fred Bellet/Photo)
This time around, the Bulls won their region by shutting out Melbourne — last year’s state champion in Class 4A — by a 1-0 margin in the final.
The team’s first trip to the state competition ended in a 1-0 loss to Chiles, the tournament’s eventual champion. But no one at Wiregrass Ranch is hanging his head in defeat.
“From the moment that we ended up losing, I was proud of the boys,” said coach David Wilson, who also coaches the school’s state champion tennis team and serves as athletic director. “We hung tough and played well, but just not well enough to win.”
Wiregrass Ranch played well enough to win the vast majority of its games, racking up 25 victories against just two defeats and one tie. Wilson attributes the team’s success to a wealth of talent but also to a spirit of camaraderie and chemistry — a combination that he believes is critical in building a winning soccer program.
“It may be more important than having talent,” Wilson said of team chemistry. “If they don’t work together and pull for each other and push each other and everything else, then you could have all the talent in the world (and not succeed).”
Wilson said that he’s coached teams with more raw talent than his current regional champions, but never one that could rival both their talent and chemistry.
It’s also important for the players to take ownership of the team at Wiregrass Ranch. They hold each other accountable and can even run portions of their practices on their own. They also know that if things don’t go well, they need to find ways to bounce back. That characteristic was tested earlier in the year, said Brendan Duran, a junior.
“After we came back from our loss (a 2-0 defeat to Sickles in December) we regrouped and focused ourselves again, and just went from there,” he said. They wouldn’t lose again in their regular season, and went 12-0-1 until their exit in the state semifinals.
One of those wins was a 3-2 victory at Sunlake in January, and Duran said it was an important one. Given Sunlake’s track record of success — this season they reached their state tournament for the third year in a row — the win helped earn the Bulls some notoriety, and had people taking note of their skills and accomplishments.
While notoriety, victories and titles are the mark of a successful program, Wilson isn’t getting there by coming down hard on the athletes or getting animated when they don’t perform. He’d rather create a program they want to join, and let them motivate themselves into keeping it strong and reaching their goals.
“My philosophy the whole time has been the experience has to outweigh the outcome. If you go in and you keep screaming and yelling and everything else, it’s not worth doing. We don’t run a program like that,” Wilson said. “I think our kids really, really enjoy the experience of playing.”
They also enjoy the fruits of the team’s success. When the Bulls won their regional final game in the waning minutes, the sizeable home crowd provided vocal support. For Duran, who scored the game’s only goal, it was a highlight of the season.
“We had a ton of people at the game, and they all stormed the field after,” he said. “That was once-in-a-lifetime moment. I didn’t think that so many people actually cared about soccer until then.”
Soccer fans at Wiregrass Ranch might have more reasons to cheer in the future. Most of the players, including three goalkeepers, are eligible to return next season. In fact, out of 22 members on the team, only six will graduate this year.
Wilson also will look to the successful junior varsity soccer team, which went 13-1 in its recent season, to supplement the roster.
With that much talent coming back and their chemistry intact, this current “best season ever” achievement may not hold up long.
“Assuming everybody returns, we should be better next year than we were this year,” Wilson said.
Published February 25, 2015
