Wright City girls soccer coach Devin Raney has high hopes for the Wright City Wildcats this season.

Raney is in his fourth year at the helm of the Wildcat soccer program. He has coached the Wildcats in two previous seasons. A third season was canceled due to COVID-19.

Raney has a veteran group this year. The varsity team is comprised mostly of juniors and seniors. They do have a few freshmen and sophomores who have made the jump and are on the varsity squad.

Raney’s goals for the Wildcats include making it back to the district finals. He would love for the Wildcats to make the state tournament, he said. They also want to score a minimum of 40 goals and beat their rivals.

“We have a lot of really good goal scorers,” Raney said. “We’re going to score a lot of goals this year just in general. Just from the talent and skill sets that we have. It’s kind of built for that a little bit.”

Raney added the Wildcats also have a strong defensive core. They are going to be an all-around formidable team, he believes.

Raney confirmed the three freshmen who are in the mix for the Wildcats will bring another element to the team this year. Two of the three freshmen in the mix are defenders. They will help the Wildcats replace last year’s senior contributors, which was mostly the team’s whole defensive core, Raney said. It is nice to replenish the defensive side with new players to the team, he believes.

They have spent the early weeks of practice installing the formations and going through it with the new players. The returning players should already understand what is expected, Raney said.

“Now that we have a different group, you have to understand you can do new things,” Raney said. “There’s a different skill set, and so now we can do things this year that we couldn’t do last year. My defenders can continue runs, which last year, we couldn’t. Especially with those freshmen, they can play a ball up and keep going down the field, take shots and get up into the box. And that’s something we couldn’t do last year that’s definitely added. I would say we’re definitely a better team this year than we were last year.”

They have worked to build a sense of family among all the players, Raney said. The team captains reached out to the freshmen soccer players and included them in things. The freshmen were included in the indoor leagues, Raney said.

“We really work hard at kind of building a culture of family,” Raney said. “Everyone’s here together. There’s not cliques. We’re all working together to get better. And so even though they’re freshmen, they’re still very familiar with everyone. My captains are very good at touching base with everyone.”

The Wildcats held tryouts during the first week of practice, which was the first week of March. They were working on conditioning the second week of practice. Raney noticed varying degrees of conditioning levels from his players.

“I have a few girls that wrestled and did winter sports and were very much ready to go,” Raney said. “But some others that haven’t been doing anything since last spring, that’s been a little bit of a challenge.”

Wright City is scheduled to open the season with a home game against Liberty Christian tomorrow.