The DCHS Tiger Soccer Team took to the field last Saturday, hosting a soccer play day with Macon County, Cannon County and Westmoreland. The event gave the teams some much needed on the field play before the season opener this week.

Head Coach Dylan Kleparek, or Coach K as players and fans call him, told the Smithville Review that this year's team is young but ready to play. "We're pretty young. We've got nine freshmen. We lost 12 players from last season, so we lost about half the team, but we look pretty good. We're hard working, they come to practice everyday to work and they're getting better."

According to Coach K, the wet winter has taken a toll on several practices, so the play day provided to much needed field time, especially since this is the first season the boy's team will play on the new DCHS soccer field. "We haven't had a whole lot of time outside with all the rain we've had. We've only had five outdoor practices. The new field's doing really well. We really enjoy having our own place to play. It's considerably larger than the football field, so we have more space and it helps us spread out and pass. It's just really nice to have a place to call our own. It's been a lot of work by a lot of people, but it's really nice."

Coach K said with the growing popularity of soccer in the country, and a new soccer team in Nashville, the DeKalb fan base will continue to grow. "Our fan base has steadily been increasing throughout the years. Soccer is growing in the country, in the state, and in our community as well."

As far as the team's schedule, Coach K said that there will be a couple of matches right off the bat that will test their skills. "We've got a tough schedule. We've got pretty much back to back tough games. We start out Tuesday this week with Stone Memorial, which is a district match. And we go to Smyrna later in the week, and Smyrna is a big school. We're going to find out a lot about ourselves there."

"That's the intention," Coach K continied. "We want to get better. We don't want our toughest games to be our district games. We want to play some tough teams that will challenge us, and then we'll be in the right spot at the end of the season when it really matters."

As for the play day results, the Tigers came out strong, winning the first three games:

6-0 over Cannon County, 7-0 over Westmoreland, and 1-0 over Macon County.

The championship game ended in a tie, with Macon coming out on top 4-3 in penalty kicks.

"Overall it was a great day, Coach K said. "I am proud of the way my players played. We did some things very well, and we found some things that we need to work on."