Lacy Stevens, Co-Editor-in-Chief
While girls’ soccer season has ended, and the boys’ season has yet to begin, the male varsity members of Cookeville High’s soccer team have managed to ready themselves for the 2002 Spring season as Cookeville United, a city soccer team.
While the games for these guys are long over, their glory from a shining season has not yet passed: they are Tennessee’s Division II State Champions.
Cookeville United, once known as Cookeville Blitz, has been in existence for two years after merging the Blitz team with another city team.
Yet most of the boys on the starting lineup are the same as CHS’s star starters: Tyler Huddleston, goalie; Matt Currie, Brandon Smith, Bobby Norwood, David Epley, and Sam Matson on defense; Kent Starkweather, David Knieling, Corey Boyd at midfield, and Roland Borys and Luciano Zanforlin are forwards.
Instead of playing other high school teams, Cookeville United plays other Tennessee cities -- Chattanooga, Nashville, Knoxville.
Unfortunately, these city teams have a bit of an advantage over our Cookeville soccer players: other teams are pooled together from different high schools, combining the skills of the most talented players from those cities; Cookeville, however, cannot do this, because there are no other city teams in Cookeville to stack.
This disadvantage, however, did not hinder Cookeville’s team in plowing
through the State Tournament, which resulted in an surprising -- but elating
-- win in favor of Cookeville United.
Kent Starkweather, member of Cookeville United, relayed the tournament events
which led up to the possession of the Division II State Title:
“The first game was against Chattanooga. They beat us 3-1. Tyler sprained
his ankle pre-game, and while he was getting taped, Chattanooga got a quick
goal on Luciano, who filled in.
As a team, we played behind the whole game and didn’t get into our style.”
In the second game, Cookeville United found themselves up against Murfreesboro,
who had defeated them two weeks before.
Of this game, Starkweather said, “We came fired up, and we played a great
game to upset them, 2-0.
That’s the game where we started playing well for the first time this year, and we continued to play well for the rest of the tournament.”
Because of their victory over Murfreesboro, Cookeville United advanced to the Semi-Finals, where they played Knoxville.
“We played a solid game, got two quick goals in the second half, and held on to the lead,” said Starkweather.
With their 2-0 win, Cookeville United moved to the Finals, in which they battled against -- yet again -- Chattanooga.
Starkweather described the game: “We came up quick and scored 23 seconds into the game, then they scored after a defensive breakdown.
At half-time, we had inspiring talks from our team members, and that got us ready for the second half. We won, 3-1, to bring home Cookeville’s first-ever Division II State Title. It’s amazing that we clicked at the right time.”
“After we went up 3-1 , that was the first time I thought we could win it,” Starkweather admitted with a smile.
Article prepared for web by: Amanda Swallows
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