Prep Soccer Preview: Youth Will Be Served At Chaminade

 And as veteran coach Mike Gauvain can recall, the 2011 version of soccer will be one of the youngest teams in his 24 years at the helm.

"Last year was pretty young as far as having the freshmen and sophomores up, but it's one of our lightest senior classes (six) since the 2000 season when we had two."

The Red Devils are coming off a 20-7-1 season (2-2 in the Metro Catholic Conference) which included a district title loss to SLUH (1-0), which has been a rarity in recent seasons for this program.

Chaminade lost 11 seniors, including leading goal-scorer and the leader in assists in Alex Zuerlein, due to graduation but return six seniors (Luke Doyle, Tim Fagan, Nick Forte, Matt Gauvain, Tim Mayo and Chris Viamontes) with a wealth of experience.

"As always, it'll probably take us half way through the season before we figure out where everybody should be position-wise," said Gauvain. "This year might take a little bit longer because we lost so many kids from last year's team."

Offense

The Red Devils don't boast that go-to scorer that will tear up the statistics on a daily basis. But they do throw at opponents a consistent lineup that can get contributions from a number of different players.
Among those will be sophomore striker Tommy Barlow (who was tied with Donovan with 11 goals and also added 23 points in 2010), junior midfielders Jason Pesek (seven goals, 19 points) and Curtis Shillingsford (three goals, 10 points).

"We were pretty consistent across the board," said Gauvain, who added that junior striker Jordan Bay would see a bigger role this season. "We got a few goals from different guys throughout the year and that was nice because we were getting contributions from everybody."

Defense

In goal will be Viamontes, who was 6-1 a season ago with a .57 goals-against average and six shutouts.

"We're certainly expecting big things out of him," Gauvain said of Viamontes. "He should keep us in a lot of games and give us a lot of chances to win."

But the challenge, especially early on, might be the back four, which will get a complete makeover due to graduation. "We have to replace a lot of seniors, especially in the back," Gauvain admits. "We lost our whole starting back line."

Coach

Gauvain is no stranger to the coaching ranks in the St. Louis area. With a career record of 445-150-56 and a trio of state championships (2001, 2002 and 2006), Gauvain has a cautiously optimistic feel for this squad.

"That's a good way of putting it," he said. "I like what we've got coming back and I like all of our new guys...It's pretty exciting because we are young. I say young, but we've got seven kids that were freshmen and six sophomores from last year that were playing. All those kids played a lot of minutes. This isn't going to be anything new for them.

"We don't set a whole lot of goals other than to improve each time out. We did tremendous with that last year (9-0-1 before falling to SLUH to end the season). We played our best at the end of the year. It just wasn't good enough that night when we played at SLUH."

Schedule

Chaminade's schedule is once again loaded with a plethora of talented teams, including a foursome (CBC, SLUH, and Vianney) that is arguably one of the top, if not the top conferences in the country.
There's also a trio of trips, including in early September to Peoria, Ill., at the end of September and Jefferson City in October.

"We like to play the best teams that we can play. We set the schedule like that and hope that makes us better at the end of the year when it comes to tournament time."