GCCC Soccer Starts Strong

OPEN MIKE
Mike Kessinger

The first time I spoke face to face with new Garden City Community College soccer coach Jeff Huffman, he made it abundantly clear what the expectations of his men's team were.

Huffman said the Broncbusters were going to be good. Without blowing it out of proportion, he believed the first men's soccer team at GCCC was good enough to finish in the upper half of the Jayhawk Conference. The belief that winning 10 or more games on a 16-game regular-season schedule was nothing short of a reality in his mind.

Huffman talked about the team's chemistry, that they were all coming together. He made it known that the five players he called the Albuquerque contingent were going to be a force, and that the two players who had come to Garden City from Michigan with assistant coach Stephen Gorton were only adding to the teams power. Huffman felt good about his team.

When presented the question about seeing a place where there may be an immediate concern, he sat at his desk, quietly looking at the ground, searching for an answer. He looked up and said there was no place of concern on the field. With a roster that included 23 freshmen and one sophomore, Huffman felt like his team was set.

It wasn't the coach just blowing hot air; the players believed that great things could happen. Three days before the Busters took the field against Dodge City to open the season, midfielder Greg Gorton said in a season preview interview the team's goal was to make it to nationals. He didn't blink or hesitate.

The Busters started out on fire. Through three games, all victories, they outscored opponents 18-1. After that, the team won their first road contest at Neosho County 2-0. However big it was that Garden City could get a win on the road against an opponent like Neosho, two players were ejected. It was a problem the Busters would deal with more down the road.

With a 6-0 mark, the Busters got their biggest chance to date to show they deserved national attention when they played host to Barton County, the No. 8 team in the nation. Using their quickness to beat the opposition all season, Barton could never break loose, and after two overtimes the game ended in a 0-0 tie. The Busters had arrived.

Garden City's first loss didn't come until its 11th game of the season, a 3-1 setback at No. 4 Johnson County. The Cavaliers had the advantage of playing most of the second half two men up, as Buster centerback Rodrigue Fontem and midfielder Luis Posada had been ejected.

The players knew it as well as the coach that the problem of having players ejected or picking up yellow-card cautions must come an end. GCCC forward Kyle French mentioned it after a 5-2 win against Coffeyville that things like red and yellow cards had to cease. The ejections did from that point on.

The Busters were knocked out of the Region VI quarterfinals 2-1 by Neosho on Oct. 25, but that didn't take away what the first-year Busters accomplished.

They went 12-3-1 and were the No. 4 seed in the conference tournament, which meant they finished in the upper half of the conference just as Huffman predicted in the preseason. They did it by growing a lot and learning from their mistakes.

Twenty-one players have a year of eligibility left. Knowing that, the Busters will be back, and making a run at better things is a realistic belief.