Van Wert girls varsity soccer paused

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent sports

Van Wert’s varsity girls soccer program is taking a break.

It was announced on Tuesday that the program will step back from varsity for a few years and will play as a junior varsity team until the program becomes competitive. 

“There’s never a good time to make a hard decision,” head coach Ashley Showalter said in a Facebook post announcing the decision. “After some serious thought and some long talks, I have decided that we can no longer continue to do what has continued to get us nowhere in the advancement of the game. It’s time to take a step back and restructure.”

The team went 0-16 (0-9 WBL) last season and has not won a varsity match since 2021, when the Cougars finished 1-15 (0-9 WBL). The program hasn’t won a Western Buckeye League match since the 2013 season. 

“Sometimes you have to take a break to fix it and that’s what I am hoping to do,” Showalter said. “A feeder program will help with numbers and then once these athletes start coming into the high school program we should be sitting on a much better platform to move forward.”

“We just want our kids to be in a competitive situation where they can have some success and we just haven’t been there,” Van Wert High School Athletic Director Trent Temple said. “We’ve only won five league games (5-128-2) in 14 years and our numbers are pushing the border between being able to have a team, not have a team (14-15 girls). If we go JV we could play one game a week and don’t have to worry about injuries and make it through a game without putting our kids at risk.”

“Hopefully we can build numbers and hopefully develop some skills to where we can transition back to a varsity program where we’re at least competitive,” he added.

Van Wert’s boys’ soccer program did not field a varsity team last season. That program had gone winless since 2020, finishing 2-62-3 between 2020-2023. Temple said the plan is to eventually bring the sport back at a youth level and slowly work up to the varsity level.

“If we can do that we won’t end up back in the same situation,” Temple said. “We’re still struggling to find someone to take that on.”