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Crestview enjoys stellar year
By Ryan Buck
COLUMBIANA
The Crestview High football team is undefeated and rolling toward a fifth consecutive Inter Tri-County League championship. Their shadow looms over a community that takes great pride in their gridiron accomplishments.
Barely a football field’s length from Crestview Stadium, however, their classmates are also building something special.
It’s at the Zachary Garwood Soccer Complex.
The boys’ soccer team currently owns a 13-2-1 record with the number one seed in the upcoming Division III district tournament.
They became the first team from the ITCL to capture a district title last season, but it was a 3-1 loss to Doylestown Chippewa in the regional semi-final that motivated them for another shot this year.
“As soon as the whistle blew, there wasn’t one guy who wasn’t crying or had tears in their eyes,” said fourth year coach Jonathan Kinkead. “These guys started in June conditioning on their own. I didn’t see them until July.”
After a 2-2-1 start, including a loss to rival South Range, Crestview ripped off 10 straight wins, averaging six goals-a-game. They feature a fast-paced, quick-passing attack that produces lots of scoring chances.
“My team looks at me to do a lot of scoring, give-and-go’s, assisting,” said junior forward Greg Bable, the Youngstown District Player of the Year.
The sophomore and junior-laden Rebels earned a measure of revenge with a 3-2 victory over South Range in their second meeting and haven’t looked back.
“We’ve definitely gotten better throughout the season,” said Bable, who’s older brother Derek is the school’s career shutouts leader at goalie. “When we started we were still getting used to each other and our roles. We started clicking.”
Their current success is the direct result of the school and community’s dedication to building the program within the last decade. Kinkead’s seen it grow from a club activity, to OHSAA sanctioning in 2001 and finally winning seasons.
So much early interest drew athletes away from more prominent sports.
“The football team went 1-9 that year, which is rare for Crestview,” said Kinkead, who was a junior on that first official Crestview team and now substitute-teaches in the schools while working with AmeriCorps.
The soccer complex was built in 2007 in honor of Zachary Garwood, who died of cancer in late 2002. It’s expanded to five fields, which are among the best in the Mahoning Valley, and is home to the Crestview Soccer Club.
“When the program originally started we were pretty good,” Kinkead said. “But we never really put it together. We never really had a feeder system where kids play together for consecutive years in middle school.
“It’s something the community’s pushed, which is nice especially in a football area.”
The kids introduced to the game years ago in the recreational leagues are now driving the high school program.
“A lot of the fundamentals are brought up there, coming up through seventh and eighth-grade years,” said junior midfieler Clay Linhart, who began playing at age seven and is now an All-District honoree. “Everything from passing, shooting all honed in there and it carried on. Down there right now, they already have games going. My little brother’s already starting to play down there and it’s great for them.”
As part of a very strong group of coaches at the school, which emphasizes athletics as “an extension of the classroom,” Kinkead is enjoying the ride as head of a burgeoning monster in area soccer.
“A lot of these guys live, eat, breathe soccer,” Kinkead said. “I coach to watch these guys get excited about the play-offs and about the league title. I like watching these guys get competitive and coach them how to be competitive.”