Fall Preview: St. MIchael-Albertville Boys' Soccer Ready to Face Big Boys on the Block

The St. Michael-Albertville boys' soccer program returns nine varsity players and six starters to a team that finished in the middle of the pack in the Mississippi 8 last season and was knocked out in the section quarterfinals.

This year, coach Darek Dewey's club is going to face some stiff competition, in a year that the Knights make a transition to a different road to that elusive State AA Tournament bid, joining 8AA.

"We could finish on top, or we could finish as far back as fourth. But the tools are there. We have a lot of soccer intelligence on the field. We have 11 seniors. The guys are coming in a bit ahead of where we've been on the first two weeks of practice in the past. So we should be solid," Dewey said.

The Knights start the season this weekend at the Irondale Tournament. They'll take on East Ridge today, with the winners and losers of each of the games today squaring off tomorrow in the four-team challenge.

The team is led by captains Matt Silbernagel, Ben Bridell and Steven Jones, all four-year varsity players and all three-year starters. In the middle, Winn Nyanseor is a small junior who has come up big.

"Winn is a guy who just came out of his shell, and we expect him to do some great things for us this season," Dewey said. "He's just a really talented player."

With the two games of the Irondale tournament are three games next week, including dates with Cooper on Monday (at home), and at the Orono Tournament. The entire season is challenging, with huge games all over the schedule.

"We'll get up to speed quickly," Dewey said. "It's not going to be all about wins and losses. It's going to be measuring our success on the field, and playing the way we want to play. If that happens, wins will come, and we'll be better as a team later on, when the games really start to matter."