A Look Back:  Year 1, 2004

By Paul Rosenbrook

I look back on the first team at FHE with a great fondness.  As fate would have it, the Varsity soccer coach at FHE resigned about a week before the first practice and the school called Matt Roberts to offer him the job.  Though I had been planning on taking a season off from coaching, Matt talked me into filling the role of last-minute JV coach.

I remember arriving on the school grounds for the first time that August.  It looked very different than it does now:  there was no stadium, the grass had not yet totally filled in on the soccer fields, and the school was only partially assembled as crews worked feverishly to get the facilities ready for students.

About 25 players showed up for the first day of practice.  We spent the day playing 11v11.  The team was tentative, nervous, and the play was less-than-stellar.  The group was very young, as the first year at FHE did not have a Senior class.  We had a decent group of players, but no real identity yet.  After some recruiting of guys who had never played the sport before, 15-player rosters were set for both the Varsity and JV teams.

We were set to play all of our games on the grass fields, which were in such rough shape that as I coached, I carried a screwdriver around with me to pry the giant rocks from the ground each practice.  I recall pulling hundreds and hundreds of rocks.  One half of the field was always as hard as concrete, but the other would flood every time it rained.  On top of that, the field was extremely small at 98 yards long by 45 yards wide, but we called it home.

The first game was against Spring Lake, a game we played at home.  We had a small ribbon-cutting ceremony headed by then-AD Tom Walters, then kicked off.  Spring Lake had a very strong program and we had been together for a week.  The result was an 11-0 loss, a school record that still stands as our worst defeat, but something important happened that day:  our program was born and the players never quit.

The players’ character and Coach Matt Roberts’ emphasis on discipline and hard work carried us through that season.  It built a strong foundation on all of the right things.  We stressed camaraderie and accountability and the players bought in.  The schedule wasn’t overly difficult in our first year and we were not yet a part of any conference.  We were very up and down as we gained experience and worked to catch up with other programs in the area.

The season ended with a home loss in our first District game to Calvin Christian by a score of 4-0, a game in which we thought we played very well.  We ended with a 8-10-0 record, scoring 51 goals and allowing 61.  Juniors Andrew Kelly (forward) and Rob Saliers (sweeper), who served as team captains, were named to the All-District team.  Kelly was our leading scorer with 12 goals and 12 assists.

FHE Soccer was born and with no Seniors, the team had a year under its belt and was set to return its entire roster for the 2005 season.