GREENVILLE – The Greenville girls soccer program held a four day youth soccer camp at Greenville High School
With numbers dwindling in many school sports programs, the Lady Wave program under the direction of Greenville varsity head coach Dave Ernst is seeing numbers on the rise in the program with 61 attending the four day camp.
“Two years ago we had a camp of 12 so the word is getting out there,” said Ernst. “There is some excitement about soccer this year and we are glad to ride that wave.”
Coach Earns and his staff attend gym classes twice a year at the Greenville K-8 building to promote Lady Wave soccer.
“We work with the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade,” Ernst noted. “We do two parts – one is obviously sharing soccer and also recruiting.”
“We struggled at 22 last year,” Ernst said of the high school program. “We’re going to look to be pushing the 32 number this year at the high school level.”
Lady Wave junior varsity coach, Ethan Cundiff and volunteer coach, Steve Shepard assisted Coach Ernst along with the high school girl’s soccer team members.
“All my varsity and junior varsity girls are helping,” said Ernst. “We are averaging 17-18 girls coming out each night to help run the camp. We are running the camp but the girls are actually running the camp.”
“We lay everything out and then we give the lesson plans to the girls and say make it your own, something you can show these kids,” Ernst added. “They’re doing 10-12 minute groups and then rotate, do three rotations and then we get some game play in.”
The staff is taught passing, shooting, dribbling and throw-ins and small drills while playing 6-on-6 games concluding with a Thursday night full hour of actual play.
Each camper received a T-shirt and four nights of camp as Coach Earnst and his staff continue to build the Lady Wave soccer program.
