The Woodmore boys’ soccer team is off to a fantastic start and closing in on a league championship.

The Wildcats are 10-2 overall and undefeated in the Northern Buckeye Conference with a 7-0 record. They had three league games remaining as of last Wednesday.

If they win two of those three games, they clinch a championship in the league’s first season. They’ve beaten Rossford and Lake twice and have a make-up game remaining with Genoa and regularly scheduled games with Eastwood (last Thursday) and Otsego.

Coach Carlo Pocino expected Genoa and Eastwood to be a threat down to the end, adding that the Eastwood game last Thursday was to be “make or break.”

Pocino had a feeling it could be this kind of season.

“Looking at the numbers from last year with what we had coming up and what other teams had leaving, I thought we’d probably be a little more competitive this year. I think the kids decided that this year was the year to do something and they came together and are doing what they have to do,” Pocino said.

Junior and captain Donny Bowen attributes this early season success to the chemistry his teammates share out on the field. Bowen also attributed the early season success to sophomore Malachi Brown, who is also the kicker for the football team.

“His speed is amazing and combined with his legs, he obviously is going to be a good player,” said Bowen.

Other players who have made a key impact are junior Ryan Paul and senior Travis Moenter.

“This is the closest team I have ever been a part of. Any problem we have, we talk about and overcome for the betterment of the team,” said Moenter.

Pocino said, “The whole team has stepped up this season to reach where they want to be at the end of the season.”

“I don’t like to isolate a specific player because this is a team sport,” Pocino said. “I don’t want one person to think that they are better than anyone else. They worked as a team the whole year and they deserve credit as a team. Some individual will excel here and there in different plays, which makes the other person score. But if the rest of the team wasn’t there, than that one person couldn’t score.”

Pocino says he learned a lot about his team from a pre-season tournament. As a result, the play of junior goalkeeper Ryan Paul and the Wildcat defense has become a big part of the team’s success.

“My defense this year, we rearranged a few people around. Our Bowling Green-Otsego (pre-season) tournament is a good thing to go to because I can see where players are playing at, so coming out of that we decided to circumvent players to other positions and that seemed to work out well this year,” the coach said.

Where they want to be at the end of the season is on top of the NBC which is right were Coach Pocino sees them finishing. In the league, Woodmore defeated Rossford 7-4 and 10-1, Lake 4-2 and 3-1, Genoa 3-0, Eastwood 1-0, and Otsego 2-1.

“Eastwood in the SLL (now defunct Suburban Lakes League) was the only team that we had never beaten,” Pocino said. “We had beaten all the other (NBC) teams except Fostoria. So this year was the first time we actually beat them (Eastwood), and it was a good game — I have to say that. It came down to the final five minutes and we finally managed to get a score.

“We came from the back, we passed up from the middle, and our center forward Malachi Brown held the ball just long enough for Donny Bowen to slap by the defense and he got a quick pass and a quick shot and that was it,” Pocino said, describing the winning goal.

Woodmore does have two non-league losses to Oak Harbor, 3-1, and Ottawa Hills, 5-0. In other non-league games, Woodmore routed both Tiffin Calvert, 14-0 and Clyde, 13-0.

Pocino has been involved with the Woodmore program since its inception. He says the creation of the East Suburban Soccer League is the reason Wildcat soccer is where it is today. He has been the only boys’ coach Woodmore had since the program began as a club team and then in 2005 it became a varsity sport.

“When I came over here in 1982, I started coaching with Solomon Lutheran — they asked me to coach over there first,” Pocino said. “I coached about five years over there, and the rest of the school asked if I could help, and so (the athletic director) asked what I could do to help get a (Woodmore) youth program started, and I said, ‘Well, I need some soccer nets and posts and ball, and they got it for me,

“The first year we fielded seven teams from Woodville and Elmore and that grew to 20 teams three years later. It has been a feeder program for Woodmore, Genoa, Eastwood, Lake — everybody that is using the ESSL. When they got the Arsenal travel team started, that increased and made those players better.

“I can see that now, because five years ago was the last bunch of players that came through when that got started, and all these players now are all players that came through the ESSL. We’d like to keep that and the more they play, the more they get better when they come up to our level.”

Jon Sandwisch is a Woodmore senior who writes for the school newspaper, Window to Woodmore. Some of his story from the September issue of the school newspaper was used with permission from advisor Carolyn Nitz.

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