The first live action of the season for the Mid-Prairie boys soccer team is Thursday when they travel to Solon to meet the Spartans in a scrimmage. The Hawks are coming off of an 11-5 season a year ago that wrapped up in the substate final of the 1A tournament with a loss to West Liberty. Mid-Prairie started last year 7-0 and reached the top five in the coaches poll. They scored 61 goals and gave up just 22. Individually, the Golden Hawks have their two leading scorers back with Owen Trimpe and Jack Pennington combining for 29 goals. The duo also had 13 total assists and will have to step up and replace assist leader Ethan Trimpe’s 9 from last year as he moved on through graduation. In goal, Justice Jones returns for his senior year after 410 minutes on the line a year ago with 34 saves and an 81% save percentage. This week, Mid-Prairie head coach Pat Cady joined us on the KCII PM Sports Page to talk about some of his veterans and the task at Solon. “Tucker Miller, sophomore had two goals and three assists last year. Jack Pennington was an all-state selection in class 1A last year. Braden Hartley is back this year. Gunnar Gingerich, a senior, had seven goals and three assists last year. Owen Trimpe was our leading goal scorer. Jarrett Hoffman we are going to lean on to shore the defense up. Beau Flynn will start at center back for us. Justice Jones stepped in last year and took over for us in goal and he made a few saves that I don’t think other goalkeepers would have been able to. A lot of talent there. Hopefully we can put something together when we get up to Solon. It’s never been that we didn’t have the skillset or the know-how, they practice on that pitch every day at 7p.m. and it usually takes us about a half of soccer to get things figured out and organized.”

Solon was 13-6 last year. They dropped their substate final to Iowa City Regina 3-2 in extra time to end the season. The Spartans scored 67 goals last year and gave up 28. They lost leading scorer Gabe Yetley and his 25 goals to graduation but return Dillon Bruck who was second on the team as a junior with 20 goals. Yetley was also the team leader with 13 assists. William Wittich is the returning leader in that stat with six a year ago. A veteran returns in goal for the Spartans with John Peters posting more than 1400 minutes there a year ago with a 67% save percentage. Action starts at 6p.m. tonight at Spartan Stadium in Solon.