When we think of great teams, we often think of the standout players — the leading scorer, the best defender, the most versatile athlete.

Sometimes, we don't think of the man or woman behind it all. For the Clay boys’ soccer team, that man is new coach Kenny Katschke.

Katschke, who just completed his first season as coach, has been awarded the Alan Miller Jewelers All-Press Co-Coach of the Year and Northwest Ohio High School Soccer League Coach of the Year. Katschke shares the All-Press award with Woodmore coach Carlo Pocino, whose team won the inaugural Northern Buckeye Conference championship.

Needless to say, Katschke is flattered.

“It sure is nice,” he said, “to be recognized by the coaches like that.”

The Clay boys’ soccer team is actually a part of two conferences, the NWOHSSL and the Three Rivers Athletic Conference. This season, the team finished with a 9-7 overall record and went 3-4 in the TRAC and 3-0-1 in the NWOHSSL, good for first place in the latter conference. The Eagles' season ended in the Division I sectional with a 3-0 loss to Springfield.

The Eagles had three players named to the All-Press first team (Damyn Earl, Cody Wisniewski, Dean Shousher), four named to the second team (Jared Burson, Brandon Resendez, Alex Dempsey, Clay Meyers) and two (Zach Soncrant, Gabe Mendoza) who earned honorable mention status.

Katschke was quick to note the contributions of Earl, Wisniewski, Meyers and Shouser and is excited about the potential of the underclassmen, particularly Mendoza and Dempsey.

This season, Katschke installed a new offensive system, a possession-game system that focuses maintaining possession of the ball as opposed to playing a more sporadic, less structured type of game.

“We try to keep the game slow, pass the ball, bring it up slowly — it's like a chess match,” he said. “It's not just kick the ball and run to it. In 80 minutes, it's nice to have that 50 to 55 minutes of possession. If you have the ball more than the other team, your odds are better.”

Katschke was pleased with how his team dealt with learning the new system.

“A possession-game system, sometimes it takes a few years to learn, and for them to learn it in a month or two, they did quite well,” Katschke said.

Katschke is conscience of the role his assistant coaches, Jeff Burson, sons Kenny, Jr. and Cody Katschke, and Brent Combs, the junior varsity head coach, who he says played in helped to mold the team. Kenny Jr. was an assistant with him at Genoa and Cody previously played soccer at Owens Community College.

“We surrounded the kids with more coaches – that was nice,” he said. “We never had that before.”

Katschke believes that for him to build a sustained, quality program at Clay, he must do two things: (1) build a soccer presence in the community and (2) get his athletes to realize that offseason training is vital.

“Hopefully, we can build the program,” said Katschke. “We have kids coming in with that ability. We want to start putting boys teams together at the junior high level and show them the system. The talent is there – the kids need to play soccer together.”

He is hopeful that his players will compete in indoor soccer leagues during the winter partake and in travel leagues in the summer.

“They need to, as I like to say, keep their foot to the ball all year long,” said Katschke.

Katschke, a 1979 graduate of Clay, came over from Genoa, where he was coach for the past seven years, the last four as head coach.

Mike Donnelly, Clay’s athletic director, said, “We were looking for a new coach and he was looking for a new challenge,” said Donnelly, the school's athletic director. “Mr. Thompson (the school principal) and I had the opportunity to talk with him about the job and we hired him. He kind-of proven us right.”

Looking ahead, Donnelly, who oversees a number of sports at the high school, is optimistic about what he believes lies ahead for the boys’ soccer program.

“He did a great job instilling team discipline,” he said. “I thought he had the respect of the team and the parents and it was a job well-done. I see nothing but improvement in the future of the program.”

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