Hartland Soccer to Build Off Defense

The road may be a little bumpy at the start, but there is plenty of potential for the boys soccer team.

The team’s strength is its defense and that’s what coach Andrew Kartsounes plans to build around.

“Two of our four games have been shutouts,” Kartsounes said. “We’ve got good goalkeeping which is always a big plus. Kevin Forster, who is a senior co-captain, is in this third year as our main goalie.”

The Eagles are 1-2-1 on the season so far. They suffered losses to Flushing (2-1) and Walled Lake Northern (2-0). They beat Holly (1-0) and tied with Ann Arbor Skyline (0-0).

“We need to find some consistency in scoring goals,” Kartsounes said. “We graduated our top three scorers (Adam Schiller, Ian Lovern and Tyler West) from last season. We’re trying to figure out our offense. We’ve only scored twice in four games. We’ve got some young guys involved in the offense and we’ll learn as go. But we have a stable defense to build off of.

“If we can start to score some regular goals we’re going to notch some wins. I think we’ll be in most games, if not all of them, because of the way we’re building from the back.”

The Eagles placed third behind Brighton and Grand Blanc in the Kensington Lakes Activities Association West Division last season (5-10-2, 4-5-1 West).

“We always try to finish in the top half of the division,” Kartsounes said. “We were third last year and we look to be in the same range. It’s always a good challenge facing the big boys in Grand Blanc and Brighton.”

Grand Blanc made it to the Division 1 state semifinals last year, while Brighton was the overall KLAA champion.

“This year the bottom four in the league are a lot closer together,” Kartsounes said. “It’s going to be a competitive division. Every game is going to be important. You’re going to have to show up game in and game out to win the division.”

Senior captain and midfielder Nolan Gray said the offense needs to use the outside wings to its advantage.

“We need to hold the ball in the center and wait for the wings to move up on the outside,” Gray said. “They’re progressing. We’re getting better as the games go on.”

“We’ve got to keep control, especially in the formation (4-5-1) we play,” Forster said. “We can’t bomb it over the top all the time.”

The 4-5-1 refers to the number of players at each position: four defenders, five midfielders and one forward.

Forster likes what he’s seen so far from the team.

“I enjoy how hard everyone is working,” he said. “It’s a big step up from last year. Watching how much we improve will be cool.”

Hartland's next game is at Grand Blanc on Tuesday in the opener of the KLAA West season.

2011 Hartland High School Boys Soccer Team

Editor's note: This is the fourth in a series of stories over the coming weeks that will preview fall sports at Hartland High School. Here are our past articles in this series: