{"id":191592,"date":"2025-04-08T16:20:50","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T21:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=191592"},"modified":"2025-04-08T16:20:51","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T21:20:51","slug":"van-wert-girls-varsity-soccer-paused","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2025\/04\/08\/van-wert-girls-varsity-soccer-paused\/","title":{"rendered":"Van Wert girls varsity soccer paused"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>SCOTT TRUXELL\/<\/strong><em>independent sports<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Van Wert\u2019s varsity girls soccer program is taking a break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s never a good time to make a hard decision,\u201d head coach Ashley Showalter said in a Facebook post announcing the decision. \u201cAfter 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\u2019s time to take a step back and restructure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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\u2019t won a Western Buckeye League match since the 2013 season.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSometimes you have to take a break to fix it and that\u2019s what I am hoping to do,\u201d Showalter said. \u201cA 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe just want our kids to be in a competitive situation where they can have some success and we just haven\u2019t been there,\u201d Van Wert High School Athletic Director Trent Temple said. \u201cWe\u2019ve 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\u2019t have to worry about injuries and make it through a game without putting our kids at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHopefully we can build numbers and hopefully develop some skills to where we can transition back to a varsity program where we\u2019re at least competitive,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Van Wert\u2019s boys\u2019 soccer program did not field a varsity team last season. That program had gone winless since 2020, finishing 2-62-3 between 2020-2023.&nbsp;Temple said the plan is to eventually bring the sport back at a youth level and slowly work up to the varsity level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIf we can do that we won\u2019t end up back in the same situation,\u201d Temple said. \u201cWe\u2019re still struggling to find someone to take that on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SCOTT TRUXELL\/independent sports Van Wert\u2019s 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.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s never a good time to make a hard decision,\u201d head coach [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-27 04:29:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191593,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191592\/revisions\/191593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}