The Russellville High School varsity girls’ soccer team’s 2024 campaign came to a close on Monday night as the Golden Tigers were beaten 3-1 by Guntersville, eliminating them in the first round of the Class 5A playoffs.
Despite the loss—it was Russellville’s second straight postseason defeat to the Wildcats—Golden Tiger head coach Dalany Roberts felt that her team played well against one of 5A’s best squads, which boasts 20-plus wins this season and was ranked No. 2 in the state in the final Alabama Sports Writers Association poll of the season.
“I was very pleased with our game,” she said.
“We lost to Guntersville, unfortunately, for the second year in-a-row, but if you look at last season, it was 7-0,” Roberts added. “Last year, did we play? Yes. Do I feel like we gave (Guntersville) true competition? No. This year, did we actually give them something to play against? Absolutely.”
One of Guntersville goals in the game came from a penalty kick, an undeserved one in Roberts’ opinion, but she said that’s part of the game. One of the Wildcats’ other goals came off a corner kick, a corner that Roberts said wasn’t defended as well as it should have been.
“The second goal was off a corner that we didn’t mark properly. That’s the mental part of the game that I’ve been talking to the girls about and what I’ve been talking about all season,” she said.
Roberts said it’s not necessarily the skill level that the Golden Tigers are lacking to get to the next level but that in-game knowledge and vision that allows players to put themselves in the right positions and make the correct decisions.
“The skill is there for the most part. Can we refine it? Always. But it’s knowing the sport, understanding your position, understanding if (teammates) need my help or if they need me to make a play,” she explained. “You’ve got to be strategic. You can’t just be on the field and expect magic to happen.”
Viewing the season as a whole, Roberts believes this team’s performances this year show the program is continuing to get better.
“If you look at last year and this year, I think the record alone speaks for itself,” Roberts said. “We ended the season 11-7, which is better than last year. And if you look at our spread of goals for us and goals against, last year we were in the negative. This year we ended the year in the positive: a lot more goals in the other team’s goal and more kept out of our own goal.”
Progress will continue to be the name of the game. Looking at the youth of the current team, the Golden Tigers have time to work on their game and improve in the future, but Roberts said the players have to continue to put in the work, even in the offseason. No excuses.
“We have to continue to progress because the girls have a lot of potential. We’re only losing three seniors—a big part of our program, absolutely—but we have a lot of young, eager players,” Roberts said. “The reality of it is if we want to compete with some of these top tier programs that we see the girls are going to have to grind a little bit more.”
“If they want it bad enough, they’ll be out here training outside the training sessions that we have and what’s mandated or allowed of us,” she added. “We’ve got to keep gaining momentum. We are able to compete against programs like (Guntersville) and other teams like that, even given the fact that we don’t have some of the resources other schools do (i.e. local club teams, travel teams). I think that’s exciting, but we also can’t use it as a crutch.”
“We may not have an indoor turf field like Florence, but we have a gym so, you know, get your touches in. If you’ve got a garage, get your touches in. If you’ve got an older brother, get your touches in. Just don’t make excuses.”
Looking forward, given the experiences the Golden Tigers had this season, Roberts said the future is bright as long as this team can continue to grow and connect.
“The more experiences we have, obviously it just molds us into a better team. And the more the girls come together and have this fellowship with each other, the better,” she said. “We’re excited for the future…we’ve just got to continue to move forward and not look back.”
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