A year older, Lady Tigers ready to play a do-over

By Josh Bowe

Special to the News-Mirror

There's no shortage of experience on the Mansfield High School girls varsity soccer team. Mansfield has returned 14 players from last year's team.

Lady Tigers coach Jay Zeller knows all that experience means one thing - he has to get the most of this season's team.

"It puts it square on my shoulders," Zeller said. "We didn't finish the season last year the way we thought we would. It's in the back of our minds. We've got to fix that, (that's the) biggest part of my job, getting these girls in shape to fix that."

Zeller mentioned the disappointment of losing early in the playoffs last season. Mansfield had only two losses last season - but not enough to show for it.

With the team almost completely intact, Zeller knows that this has the chance to be a special season.

"The girls already know each other, they've developed those relationships," Zeller said. "They're just great girls and that's half the battle. Then you add the talent and it get exciting about the possibilities."

So far, the Lady Tigers are living up to their promise. Mansfield has five shutouts so far and has scored multiple goals in five games.

The Lady Tigers' biggest win so far came against city rival Legacy. Mansfield shut out Legacy 6-0 and the Lady Tigers had a 5-0 shutout against Katy last week.

Zeller said all the big wins are a result of Mansfield's improved offense.

"We weren't very good at finishing last year, we've improved on that this year," he said. "We've won a couple of close games so far, but haven't had a lot of close games as far as score goes. We're putting goals away we weren't last year."

The other area in which Zeller said the team has improved from last season is maturity. Last season, most of Zeller's regular players were freshmen and sophomores. Now he has more juniors and seniors and that's helped Mansfield jump out of the gate with a quick start.

It didn't take long for the Lady Tigers to get up to speed after the off-season since most of the players had been through it before.

"We've been really young with freshmen and sophomores and now those girls have grown up," Zeller said. "For us its been comfortable with the team and fitting in. All the other stuff tends to work itself out."

Zeller said it helps that Mansfield doesn't rely on a superstar player. "We're a fairly complete team from the starting group into our bench players," he said. "The most valuable player is just the team itself. "That's better than having any one superstar."

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