Young Bentworth girls team looks to continue storied tradition
By jose Negron
jnegron@yourmvi.com
Tyler Hamstra doesn’t question how good his young Bentworth girls soccer squad will be this fall.
His only question is how quickly will the Bearcats go from being a good team to a really good team?
“I know I have a good team this year, I just don’t know how much of a learning curve there is going to be,” said Hamstra, who is entering his seventh season at the helm of the girls soccer program at Bentworth. “Sometimes it happens overnight and sometimes you really don’t have big learning curves, but we’ll see.”
After losing eight seniors to graduation, Hamstra is looking to rely on a group that consists of four freshmen, six sophomores, seven juniors and just one senior.
Rather than seeing this season as a rebuilding year, Hamstra believes he’s simply reloading after his Bearcats went 18-3 overall and 12-0 in Section 2-A play last season.
Bentworth advanced to the WPIAL semifinals where it suffered a 5-1 loss to Shady Side Academy.
“I’ve coached in some rebuilding years and this definitely isn’t what that feels like,” Hamstra said. “I don’t have a ton of questions and I bring back a double-digit amount of girls who either started or played in every game. It’s not like there is really one spot on the team where I’m like, ‘I don’t know if this girl will figure it out or not.’”
Bentworth will have to replace a trio of all-WPIAL and all-section players in Jocelyn Timlin, Paige Marshalek and Rori Schreiber.
Timlin is the program’s all-time leading goal scorer with 157 career goals and was named the Mon Valley Independent-BeeGraphix Fab 15 Girls Player of the Year last year after scoring 47 goals and adding 25 assists. Timlin, who is now going to play collegiate soccer at West Virginia Wesleyan, is one of only 15 WPIAL girls soccer players to score over 150 goals in a high school career.
Marshalek is No. 2 on the program’s scoring list and Schreiber, a West Liberty recruit, gave the Bearcats another threat in the offensive zone.
Among the other seniors Hamstra will have to replace are defenders Lindsay Davis, Caroline Rice and Hannah Roberts.
“It’s definitely hard to replace that because those girls were in a situation where they were pretty much the starters for four years,” Hamstra said. “As sophomores, they had to start carrying the team. It’s hard to replace those goals and it’s hard to replace that experience.
“It’s not going to happen overnight, but the good thing is all the replacements are there and long term, I feel really good about the replacements.”
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