MOULTRIE — The Colquitt County boys and girls middle school soccer teams, which open their seasons today, have new coaches: one who has five years of experience and the other just starting a career.
Both are former outstanding Colquitt County soccer players.
Kristen Yates Harrison, a fine defensive player who was a senior on the 2004 Lady Packers team, is now teaching back in her home town and has taken on the head coaching duties of the middle school girls team.
Ashley Hill, who coached the middle school girls for three seasons before taking over the junior varsity boys the last two years, will handle the middle school boys team.
Both will send their teams out for their season-openers today against Pine Grove at Tom White Field at Mack Tharpe Stadium.
The girls game will start at 4:30 with the boys match expected to begin around 5:45 p.m.
Harrison, whose husband Justin also will start his soccer coaching career this season as an assistant to varsity boys head coach Rob Craft, said she is pleased with the athleticism of squad.
“This is really a great group of girls,” Harrison said. “A lot them play softball, run track, are cheerleaders. They’ve been real easy to teach.”
And Harrison said she is using some of the drills she went through as a player under Lady Packers coach Jimbo Jarvis.
Harrison said the team has eight veteran players back from last year’s team and she is counting on captains Madison Sumner and Raley Wallace, both eighth-graders, for leadership.
The rest of middle school girls roster includes Amber Boyd, Angelica Fonseca, Selyna Gant, Olivia Griffin, Carly Beth Horne, Christin Hunnicutt, Reagan Kelshaw, Amber Kling, Kailey Middlebrooks, Yasmin Moctezuma, Aubrey Norris, Kennedy Sikes, Mary Holt Statom, Kali Summerlin, Fielding Thomas, Ferrell Tyndall and Makenzy Willis.
Hill posted a 23-4-5 record from 2005-2007 as the middle school girls coach, including records of 9-0-3 and 9-0-2 in his final two seasons.
He was 6-8 and 8-6 in his two seasons as the junior varsity boys coach and said he is glad to be back with the middle school program.
Hill’s 23-player roster includes nine eighth-graders, many of whom have been already been in the middle school program. He also has eight seventh-graders and six sixth-graders.
“And even though we have a lot of eighth-graders, we are very young,” he said.
With the season-opener coming against a new school, Hill is hoping to be able to play a lot of his younger players.
The middle school boys roster includes Francisco Gomez, Josh Smith, Esbin Soto, Garrett Moore, Marcus Lopez, Fernando Miranda, Richard Garcia, Ryan Littleton, Austin Lane, Daniel Corado, Tyler Spires, Jason Nunez, Richard Esparza, Jose Dominguez, Luis Padilla, Tyler Lopez, Jose Martez, Hector Badillo, Jared Brown, Luke Brinson, Eric Gould, Matthew Moody and Nic Johnson. The manager is Cleyber Matos.
The middle school teams also will play at Lowndes on Saturday morning and will be back at the stadium on Monday to play host to Tift County at 4:30 p.m.
The middle school teams have 18 regular-season games to get ready for the South Georgia Athletic Conference tournament, which will begin March 26 in Tifton.
