The Dimond High School’s new soccer season begins March 4, with tryouts the previous week.

Burak Turker, a member of the Dimond Junior Varsity, spoke on the rigor of the Dimond tryouts.

Turker said, “So for the tryouts we started up with warmups for about half an hour, so for 30 minutes we’re just warming up and getting all our muscles that we haven’t used in a while all warmed up. And after the first 30 minutes we’ll start doing drills.

“One of the drills was a one-on-one, and so one person would have the ball, one of us would be defending, then we’d switch roles. And we did that for a good portion of the time, maybe 45 minutes or so.”

However, as tryouts advanced and as the day progressed drills became much more complex.

Turker said, “We did two on two, so we went from simple to more complex. This was the tryout on Friday by the way, this was the most complex tryout because it was two and a half hours.

“And so we did that two-on-two for awhile, and the last hour of practice we did scrimmage.”

The two on two and other such drills were very prevalent in tryouts, and interesting especially because of the way players needed to be divided up.

Turker said, “We split into teams of five, we had two goalies, and the scrimmages if you shot a goal the other team would be off. So it was pretty competitive, and that was basically the end so it was a lot of running and a lot of hard work.”

Coaches also purposely made the final drills difficult, in a very confusing way.

Senior Niko Latva-Kiskola , a member of the Dimond Boys Varsity Soccer team, said, “Second day, we had a lot of confusing drills, and they were intended to be confusing just to show how individuals operated underneath chaotic situations. Individuals weren’t given bibs just to make it more confusing.”

Sophomore Bennett Spills, a new member of the Dimond JV Soccer team, said, “I’d say the last day when we all scrimmaged it was a really cool atmosphere, really competitive and we all had a really good time.”

However, this year’s tryouts were decidedly different for many players.

Sophomore Will Fagerstrom, a member of the JV soccer team said, “Last year there was less running, but we played a lot more, and this year there’s a lot more running.”

Dimond also has a new set of coaches, Will Lucero and Tony Sadiku, for both JV and Varsity soccer.

Latva-Kiskola said, “Tryouts this year, they’re led by a different coach, the new coach that came about. He was there last year but was an only assistant, it was Will.

“But Tony was really the one at the helm for tryouts this time around.”

Latva-Kiskola added, “I’ve already operated under Will before and Will was good, but the biggest suprise was Tony, the new JV, coach who really ran most of the practices and most of the tryouts. He did most of coaching during the tryouts and he had an unorthodox way of teaching things.

“He had a bit of an accent, coached in a very foreign way but overall, I liked his style,” Latva-Kiskola said.

Spills was also very impressed with the new set of coaches, and said, “I’d say Coach Tony is perfect, and Coach Wells is a really good leader, they’reboth pretty good coaches.”

Fagerstrom also appreciated the effort made by the new coaches, and said, “It’s pretty interesting, we get to learn about them and see how they play.”

Latva-Kiskola was impressed with the team talent, and said, “There was a lot of good talent. Surprisingly the freshman class had a lot to offer, they came in. A lot of club players came up and were surprisingly good for freshmen.”

Many of the players also seem hopeful for the season, and many are confident in Dimond’s chances.

Turker said, “We have a really great team, we have some of the players who came back from Varsity are now on Varsity again. I think we’ll probably bring it home again, the state championship, because we’re pretty motivated.

“The new coach, Coach Will, the first thing that he told us was that we need to keep that standard, so he’s very motivated to bring the cup home,” Turker said

All in all, it looks to be a hopeful, if often-changing year of for the Dimond Boys Soccer team.