SHORELINE — It’s too bad the Shorewood girls soccer team doesn’t put much stock in scoreboard victories.
If they did, the Thunderbirds could live comfortably off the dividends alone.
But rather than gush about the school’s history of league titles and playoff appearances, their team captains go on at length about simpler, game-by-game objectives and the energy the newcomers have injected into this year’s lineup.
“Our expectations we usually like to set are based on effort and achieving our own goals of success,” senior goalkeeper Brittany Williams said. “We never like to look at winning state. We look at performing as a team.
“Playing as a team and playing with heart are our main goals and expectations for this season.”
That’s precisely the philosophy Shorewood coach Joe Hampson wants to cultivate amongst his players.
“Our goals are day to day. They really are,” Hampson insisted. “This team in the past has been convinced we play against ourselves day in, day out. The byproduct of a scoreboard victory is going to be there for us. We don’t measure our success by the scoreboard.”
It doesn’t matter that the T-birds prefer to stay mum when the topic turns to their winning ways. The numbers speak for themselves.
In Hampson’s three years as coach, Shorewood boasts a .755 winning percentage (40-8-5) and has advanced to state the past two seasons.
The T-birds went 15-3-0 in 2002, with two of their three losses coming in the playoffs. All three defeats were by 1-0 counts and no team scored more than one goal on Shorewood all year.
Hampson passed the praise on to his players.
“We get a great amount of talent,” he said. “The girls who come in (have) excellent attitudes and personalities. That’s one thing we work really hard on — attitudes.”
Though just three seniors graduated from last season, the T-birds have experienced sweeping changes.
Junior center midfielder Kali Chamberlin was scratched for the season after tearing her anterior cruciate ligament over the summer and Shorewood is also without an all-league defender who is taking a full slate of community college courses.
“We have some returners but most of the team is new,” Williams said. “In all, there’s about 10 new people, which is a huge change for us.”
One constant the T-birds can count on is the presence of Williams and King’s senior Tiffany Dillow in goal. The keepers have combined for 21 shutouts the past two seasons.
Shorewood returns a pair of starting defenders in first-team, all-league junior sweeper Katie Barnes and senior Brianna Wartman.
“We haven’t been able to practice that much with pressure, so we’ll be using these next few games to really put our defense under a lot of pressure and see how well we react,” Williams said. “I have faith we’ll be really strong back there.”
With the loss of Chamberlin and two senior center-mids from last year, the T-birds had the most holes to fill at midfielder.
Returning seniors Akosua Fordjour and Colleen DelRe are joined by freshmen Lily Albin and Rachel Eckerlin, sophomore Gabrielle Davis and senior Megan Sego.
“In our first six preseason games we’ll be playing some different lineups, getting some different people in there at different positions,” Hampson said. “Hopefully that will pay off in the long run.”
Sophomore forward Lauren Sego should pick up the slack created by the exit of leading scorer Nanda McCormick. Sego provided nine goals and five assists as a freshman and was an all-league, honorable mention pick.
Senior Nicole Kopta also returns up front and sophomore Emily Sands will figure into the mix as well.
“We’ve got a really exciting look to us,” Hampson said. “We can be fast or we can be ball controlled. Hopefully, under the Wesco pressure we can utilize both.”
The T-birds outscored their Western Conference 4A South Division competition 25-2 last year, finishing a close second to Meadowdale — the only team to beat Shorewood during the regular season.
Coaches have struggled to settle on a clear-cut favorite in the division this year, but most expect the wins will continue to pile up for the T-birds.
Not that they’ll be keeping track.
“You’ve got to take your hat off to the girls throughout the years,” Hampson said. “They have really jumped on board with the philosophy of this program and have taken it to heart and believed in it.
“If you don’t believe in it, you’re not going to succeed, and they have. They deserve a lot of credit.”
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