Plymouth boys soccer only looking forward
PLYMOUTH – Plymouth boys soccer coach Grant Masson comes into this season with a lot of new faces, but he isn’t one to long for the past.
“My dad used to tell me ‘Don’t look back because you aren’t going that way’ and that’s how I coach,” said Masson. “We lost some good players but we have 13 seniors this year. Five or six came out of nowhere who decided they wanted to play this year. We only have four or five returning players from last year.”
“What we’ve been trying to do is get our new players to jell with our system and jell with the returning varsity players,” he said. “We demand that they run and they attack and they have to get used to that. In club play, there is a pass, and then you stop and look at what happens. With us, it’s pass and go.”
Masson has brought a style of play to the Rockies that might be described as “run and shoot” in some other sports.
“My motto is the best defense is offense,” said Masson. “We want to play in the opponent’s third. That’s our goal. Playing a 4-3-3 is an attacking formation. It’s not a defensive one. We want to get out and get after the other team and make them make mistakes.”
Masson relies on his veterans to get that work ethic across to his other players.
“I have two junior captains, Levi Hutchinson and Troy Hundt. I don’t normally have junior captains but these guys are true leaders and they lead by example,” said Masson. “I depend on them to go the extra mile on the field to show these players what it takes to play Plymouth soccer.”
“When we practice we practice high tempo and they know what is expected of them,” he said. “It’s a challenge to buy into that identity. Some will say we won a lot in 2020 but once again we aren’t looking back. We have the players who are fit enough to do what’s expected of them, we just have to get them in the right position to do what we need them to do. We’ll get there.”
“We work on what can be. Not what was,” said Masson. “I’m an old-style coach. If you do something wrong I’m going to tell you, I’m going to spell it out. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, but it’s a teaching moment. This is where we want you to be, if you do this then you will be successful. You can do it right and this is how you do it right. You aren’t doing your job if you don’t tell them this is what we want you to do to do it right.”
A lot of that involves work in the offseason, and Masson has had some mixed results.
“Our offseason wasn’t as effective as last year,” he said. “We have a bunch of first-year players who haven’t realized yet that you get out of it what you put into it. We have players that have never gone through Plymouth conditioning before. It’s pretty rigorous.”
“We played two tournaments (over the summer),” said Masson. “We were highly effective at the Argos shootout. We tied Illiana Christian who is a really good team and we came alive in the second half and beat DeKalb 8-0.”
“We played in the Panther Classic at NorthWood and we beat NorthWood 4-1 and got into the championship against Bremen,” He said. “We got beat 3-0 because the boys were feeling sorry for themselves because they were tired. Bremen wanted it more. It was a mental thing more than physical which is what we are working on now.”
“Soccer is as much a mental game as it is physical. I’d take a player with good soccer IQ over somebody you might call a physical stud. We need to be mentally tougher and dig deeper than the other team.”
Dig deeper could be pretty deep as the Rockies face a conference schedule alone that would challenge any team.
“Warsaw is ranked this year, we have Goshen who is ranked this year, we have Northridge who are ranked this year I could keep going down the list,” said Masson. “The NLC is a different beast. You are always going to have two or three teams that are going to go deep in the tournament. The one thing is this. We want to compete. If we can do that we are going to sneak up on some of those teams that might take us for granted.”
“When you play a Plymouth team you are in a dogfight,” he said. “For 80 minutes we are going to come after you. That’s the identity of a Plymouth team. When the whistle blows we are coming for you. When the whistle ends we will shake hands.”
It’s a message that he makes clear to his team.
“We let them know how much of a challenge this is going to be,” said Masson. “But we also let them know on any given day, or any given time they are high school kids just like us they come onto the field a little over confident, that’s when you get them.”
“All in all we had a successful off-season. We’ll be ready.”
