Playing soccer is an honor. Being able to find a team that acts like family and can work together seamlessly is a valuable tool that not many teams around the pacific northwest have. The Tahoma Bears soccer program tries to focus on the community that their players build with each other during the season. 

The Tahoma Bears showed that yet again they can come together and perform to the best of their abilities and win. The boys first game against the Mount Si High School Wildcats went as well as Tahoma could have hoped. After winning 4-1, giving up only one goal, the Bears Head Coach Rick Maloy states the positives and downfalls of his team during their first league game of this season. “We did a really good job through the middle of the field, especially our center fielders, Nacho, Pablo and Zeth”. 

When highlighting his players, Rick Maloy highlighted the starting Goalkeeper Cohen Storch who also when interviewed stated that creating a family is something that soccer is all about for him. 

Everyone sets goals for themselves and sometimes unconsciously the people around them as well. That is especially the case when someone plays sports or is coaching a team. Goals are something that pushes and drives someone to do and achieve at a better level. Cohen Storch’s goal that he has set for himself, and that carries out to his team as a whole, is to have an average of 1 or fewer goals scored against the Tahoma Bears each game. 

Of course it would always be better to have no goals scored against your team, but thinking realistically Cohen Storch was able to set his goal to an achievable level. 

Ups and downs are always a part of sports. No matter how good a team is, even if they win their first game of the season like the Tahoma Bears did on March 11th, there are going to be as both Coach Rick and Cohen Storch state ‘weak points’ during a game. 

Although the team for the most part has great chemistry with one another, there was improvement that could certainly be made in their transitions. This is something that both the players and the Coach agree need to be worked on throughout the season. 

The mindset that Coach Rick is trying to form for his team and the soccer community at Tahoma High School is that everyone on the team, specifically for Varsity, should be only setting their level of performance to the standards of being able to go to state and win all the games that they can and to never give up. 

That is all sports are about. To never ever give up on yourself or your team. The boys soccer team had a great first game on Saturday and as a whole, they plan to have many more. Making the soccer community better and more welcoming for everyone involved.