Sylvania’s Inaugural Soccer Season
By Bonita Wilborn
Josh Clements, Sylvania High School’s Assistant Football Coach, High School Algebra Teacher, and strength and conditioning coach for girls athletics, will don yet another hat when the spring sports seasons get underway, as he will become the school’s first ever Varsity Boys Soccer Coach. Traci Roper, Sylvania’s EL Teacher will be coaching the Varsity Girls Team.
According to Sylvania’s Booster Club President, Tammy Andrade, students from Sylvania have been participating in recreational league soccer for approximately seven years, and are very excited that their school will finally have a team. “Coach Clements is good hearted and he’s a good coach,” Andrade began. “We works very well with the football players and the students really respond well to him. We’re excited that Coach Clements was willing to take on the task of coaching the soccer team.”
“We started fund raising in January of 2017,” Coach Clements explained. “I set a goal of $30,000 so that we could buy the necessities; uniforms, goals, balls, training equipment, and etc. We put the boys and girls both through a summer workout program. The boys had been doing that for a couple of years and we started it with the girls and tied it all in with every female sport at Sylvania. So for the students it’s been fundraising and preparing to play.”
Josh Clements is a 2009 graduate of Fyffe High School where he played football for the legendary Coach Paul Benefield. After graduating high school, he attended Shorter College in Rome, Georgia where he was a student athlete and played football. After graduating from Shorter, Josh got a job in the education field. He taught and helped coach football at Hazel Green High School from 2013-2015. The next stop in Coach Clements’ career was at Cullman High School for the 2015-2016 school year where he taught and coached football. Then he came back to DeKalb County at Sylvania High School to teach and coach football with the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year. Having football in the bloodstream, it might seem strange that Coach Clements would be willing to take on a sport that he has no experience in as a player. “The students at Sylvania are really excited about us starting a soccer team. They’ve wanted to have a team there for a while, even before I came to Sylvania,” Coach Clements said. “There’s just not been a county employee that was willing to start a program with the kids, until now.” But what Coach Clements lacks in experience he makes up for in enthusiasm. “I’ve met with Fort Payne’s coaching staff and watched lots of videos,” he said. “I’m not an expert in soccer by no means, but I have Delfino Meza, a Fort Payne graduate on staff at Sylvania and he is going to be the Varsity Boys Assistant Coach. There are some local parents that are willing to help with the Varsity Girls Team.”
Soccer is a spring sport that runs parallel with baseball, so Sylvania’s inaugural season will be beginning very soon. The other schools within DeKalb County that already have established soccer teams are Fort Payne High School, Crossville High School, and Collinsville High School. According to Coach Clements, “For this season Sylvania’s girls are scheduled to compete against Fort Payne, both the girls and boys are scheduled to compete against Crossville, but Collinsville’s schedule was already full, so Sylvania will not get to compete against them this year, but hopefully that will change next year.”
So Sylvania’s soccer teams will be doing a lot of traveling. Sylvania is in a region that includes Tanner High School located in Limestone County, Saint Bernard High School located in Cullman, Decatur Heritage Christian Academy located in Decatur, New Hope located near Gurley, and Whitesburg Christian Academy located in Huntsville.
“Coach Putnam has been instrumental and supportive in getting the soccer team going at Sylvania,” Coach Clements said. “So far as conditioning is concerned, lung capacity must be greater for soccer than with football and basketball. The amount of running in football comes in short bursts; normally 8-10 seconds, them the players will huddle, set up for the next play, and run for another 8-10 seconds. Soccer is more of a continual running sport. It has 2/40minute halves where the players are continually running. So the conditioning is totally different.”
Sylvania’s Soccer team will play on the school’s football field, a good way to make use of the stadium during the dormant months when there is no football being played there. With teams of sixteen varsity boys and twenty-two varsity girls at Sylvania who needed someone that would be willing to be in charge, perhaps enthusiasm will be enough to get them started, after that it will depend on the players’ willingness to learn and work hard to be successful. While this is a building year, we wish them great success.