Ready to Rumble: Roxborough Soccer 2010

Twenty-four months ago Mark Dumsha built the Roxborough boys soccer program from scratch.

"The previous coach gave it up, retired, and there was an opening for a year where nobody put a team together," said Dumsha, who teaches math at Roxborough High School when he's not teaching young men the nuances of the game.

"A few kids who I taught, and was friendly with, asked 'Why don't you, coach?' So that's what I did."

A history lesson: With a cancelled season behind them and an uncertain future ahead, that 2008 Indians team rose like a phoenix from the ashes and soared. Dumsha, despite having played only peewee soccer himself, led the renascent squad to a 7-2-1 record. The team entered 2009 optimistic and short only two players from that surprisingly effective team, but fell to 2-7-1. The phoenix had crashed.

This season the focus is on mending wings.

 "We're sort of in a rebuilding mode this year," Dumsha said. "We just started practicing in August, and we have a lot of kids who have never played organized soccer before. So, a lot of what we work on is basics—offside rules, things like that...

"The biggest thing is ball handling. Not just controlling the ball, but finding the open man. Or if you're that man, giving the guy with the ball an open lane to get it to you."

Ralf Martinez is one of the Indian rookies. While he's occasionally unsure of his the position—"What do I play?" he put to a teammate when asked by a reporter—he is sure that he's in the right place.

"It's hard. You have to learn everything new. You can't just kick the ball, you have to learn how to kick the ball. It's fun though."

Dakwuan "Milk Dud" Anderson is—in his second year of organized soccer—one of the Indians veterans. As he watched a kick sail over his goalies outstretched arms and into the net (or where a net would usually be) in a recent scrimmage against Bishop McDevitt, he opined that his Indians have a long way to go.

"At practice we look good, but right now I don't know," said the sophomore halfback, before alluding to his teammate's relative inexperience, "Some of 'em ain't never played before."

Junior Joe Smoot, also in his second year, is more optimistic about his team's prospects.

"This year is a new beginning for us. We're a young team, but, if we work together, we're gonna be a good one."

Smoot takes seriously his responsibility to tutor the less experienced Indians.

"I help them work hard, do what I can to give them a boost up."

The Indian who everyone is counting on to give the team a boost-up is senior Chris Paulfield. The native Haitian plays nearly every position for the Indians and is identified by his coach and teammates alike as the cornerstone of the team—both on and off the field.

"I try to do my best to help them out. Next year I'm going to need them to take my place. For me [having inexperienced teammates] is not hard. I've played before where it was five-on-14, and we still beat them," said Paulfield before adding, perhaps, "we will win this year."

Dumsha's own expectations are more modest, but in the long view he has high hopes for his unseasoned but scrappy squad.

"What I'm hoping is we continue to grow and build, get some wins, finish in the middle of the pack, and maybe if things break our way, finish in the upper echelon of the league," he said before pausing, as though waiting for a distant vision to come into focus, "I'd like to get to the point where we're like the Patriots, or USC, or Florida, and we just reload rather than rebuild."

Dumsha also has another, more abstract, ambition for his little program: spreading the gospel of soccer.

"A lot of the kids want to play football and basketball, but when they come back to school I ask them if they'll give soccer a try. You get a kid who's teetering, they play a year, bring it back to the neighborhood, and then their friends come out and play.

"That's how you grow a program."

The boys soccer team opens its season Sept. 14.