Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
The Genoa girls soccer team features several talented veterans, and 11th-year head coach Josiah Hanson is excited for his team’s potential.
“Positionally, I just think we're pretty strong across the board,” he said. “We're replacing a couple pieces on defense, but other than that, I think we're strong.”
While the Comets lose four seniors, including three starters, they return each of their six All-Northern Buckeye Conference players from last year, when they finished 13-3-2 overall (4-2 NBC).
Both of their league losses were tough 1-0 results, and both were to Lake and Oak Harbor, who shared the NBC title. Genoa defeated Wauseon to win the Division IV sectional title before falling to Oak Harbor in the district semifinals.
Adrianna Williams, a senior midfielder who is a reigning Division IV All-Ohio selection, is one of the area’s top players after having led Genoa with 25 goals and nine assists last year. She is one of a league-best three returning First Team All-NBC selections for the Comets.
The other two are a pair of juniors in midfielder Ava Houghtaling and defender Izzy West. Another junior, Malani Smith, was Second Team All-NBC.
In fact, Hanson said his seven-member junior class is his largest and probably his strongest, from top to bottom.
“They are a pretty talented group, and there's a bunch of them,” he said. “They are gonna have a big role this year.”
Senior midfielder Lyla Edens also earned second team honors.
“Lyla didn’t have much of a stat line as she’s a defender, but she was a captain and a leader on the field,” Hanson said. “She’s a very solid player.”
Senior goalkeeper Addi Moritz, who was an Honorable Mention All-NBC player, returns after making 95 saves and producing seven shutouts.
Hanson said the team has had solid summer work heading into the preseason, which officially began Aug. 1. They also went 2-1 in bracket play in the 795 Cup, which was hosted at Genoa High School.
“The summer's gone really well,” he said. “We're just trying to stay healthy. This has been one of the stronger schedules in terms of teams we're facing in the summer. I think it’s a really tough offseason to try to get us ready for the regular season. But our focus is to stay healthy, get more focused on us, and to get better every day.”
Hanson said the team has some tough competition in the scrimmage schedule, including Bryan and four-time defending state semifinalist Ottawa-Glandorf.
“We just want to compete with everybody,” Hanson said. “We want to continue to compete at a high level. It's a very tough league in terms of a lot of teams being similar, so we want to just go out there and compete and continue to play hard and do things the right way.”
