Coupeville Sports

Varsity girls’ soccer action rages last fall. This year, things have taken a turn. (Morgan White photo)

Season #20 has been put on hold.

For the first time since 2003, there will not be a varsity girls’ soccer team playing at Coupeville High School.

Citing low turnout, CHS Athletic Director Willie Smith made the painful call Monday, but held out hope for other options.

“With profound disappointment, we are canceling our varsity girls’ soccer schedule for this year due to a lack of players,” he said. “Only 10 are practicing/on the roster currently.”

That’s one less player than the Wolves would need to even put a full 11-woman team on the field, while giving the team no subs or injury replacements.

Earlier, Smith had indicated a need for the program to have 15 players to be viable.

While the program’s 13-game varsity schedule, which was set to start Sept. 7 at Granite Falls, is gone, there are still options available to Wolf girls who have been practicing.

They are eligible to play with Coupeville’s boys’ team, as that is allowed in Washington state when a school does not have an active girls program.

Last year, several Wolf foes, such as Lopez Island, had a co-ed mix.

Smith and first-year head coach Kimberly Kisch, a former Wolf player herself, are also scrambling to pull together a JV-level schedule.

That would likely feature 7 v 7 games, instead of 11 v 11, perhaps using a modified field and game time.

The goal is to keep as many of the players still involved in soccer as possible, as CHS has seen in recent years that when a program goes down, it’s hard to get back up.

The move from 1A to 2B pushed boys’ soccer from the spring to the fall, where it joined football, boys’ tennis, and cross country.

Most 2B schools play 1-2 sports per season, and fielding four boys’ teams at the same time quickly proved to be a no-go, numbers wise.

Tennis lost the battle for bodies and has sat dormant for three seasons now.

Smith and Kisch don’t want to see girls’ soccer, which had played 19 straight seasons since its debut in 2004 — even surviving the pandemic — take a similar hit.

“It’s our hope that our girls that are signed up continue to play this fall or it will be very difficult for us to have a program moving forward,” Smith said.

“I firmly believe that Kim was and is going to lead a resurgence in our girls soccer program, but we need to play with who we have this fall in order to create a first step in the rebuilding process.”

Being more than a week into practice, with the season bearing down, Smith had to be realistic, however, for all involved.

“It is certainly not how we wanted this season to be, and it has not been an easy decision to make,” he said.

“But I also have an obligation to the other schools to allow them an opportunity to fill their schedules with other schools.

“I have reached out to our league schools, and they are all willing to work with us on a JV level game,” Smith added.

“I feel that I will be able to fill out a decent schedule with surrounding school’s programs to give our team a decent amount of games.”