Women’s soccer is an extremely popular sport at Athens Drive. Over 40 girls throughout each grade level try out for the team every season. Since the 2017-2018 season, they have been in the top three teams in the conference. From the team’s founding, they have had winning records in all but three seasons total. Last season, they had a 10-5-5 record overall, and a 4-3-3 record within the conference. The team has been led by many different coaches, such as Coach Travis Seese for over 20 seasons and then Coach Meryssa Weyer for the past five seasons.

However, after five years of coaching the Varsity women’s soccer team, Coach Weyer decided to take a job at another school, and therefore step down from her position. This posed a new question: Who will coach the team? The school knew they needed to find a new coach quickly due to the sport’s popularity. Athletic Director Travis Seese and the school worked together to find someone new: Coach Eric Long. When he heard about the job, he jumped into action. 

“I saw an opportunity to be at a school with a really good soccer program, and in the past, I’ve been at schools where I’ve had to build the program from scratch basically,” said Long. “I wanted to go to one where I knew I had a good coach prior because I was friends with Coach Weyer.”

Coach Long has coached for over seven years at different schools, such as Riverside High School in Durham and Triton High School in Erwin. Coming to a new school as head coach without knowing the players may worry most people; however, Coach Long took it upon himself to make sure he had enough connections to start the season strong.

“Since the beginning, I’ve gone out and watched some of the girls with their club games and tried to get to know as many girls as I could prior to the season,” said Long. “These preseason workouts have also helped a lot for me to not only see how girls play but to make those connections.”

One of these connections is to senior Ava Markley. Ava is one of the captains of the Varsity team and says that the adjustment has been difficult, but Coach Long has been accepting and helpful with transitioning to the new change.

“We were all really close because we would all go sit in [Weyer’s] room and talk and do other things with her, and it kinda broke that bond between us when she left,” said Markley. “I can see Coach Long is trying to repair that by making things fun for us and getting us back into those relationships.”

Both Markley and Long have high hopes for the season and are excited about its start. However, winning isn’t the only thing they hope will come out of playing this spring. 

“I hope we just have a good season. Whether we play good or we all are like really close, I just hope this season will go well. And I know Coach Long wants that too because that’s the kind of person he is,” said Markley.