by Marty Zier

Sports contributor

Viking girls soccer head coach Chris Doherty starts the year with a new assistant coach, Keely Scott, who has been on Orcas six years and offers a significant college soccer background to help the team.

“Keely offers great input with her collegiate experience that I appreciate and she understands the girls very well,” he said.

Doherty fields a stout squad with a solid team of 16 players with five new entrants.

“These girls have benefited from the middle school program under Coach Carter,” he said. “The freshmen are well trained and take practice seriously. This year’s team seems keener and they want to be here. Practice attendance mornings and evenings is very good.”

Looking at the coming year, Doherty says they are off to a very good start with training.

“Our defense and strikers are in separate groups and we are focusing on those areas more this year. This is a very tight team that works well in groups and as a team. We have three senior team captains, Haley Moss, Joanne Mietzner and Joie Zier, who have vastly different characters and compliment each other on how they organize the team.”