BRADFORD, Vt. — Andrew Fisher needed soccer players and he needed them quickly.
The Oxbow High boys soccer team’s first practice had drawn just six players and one of them had his ankle immobilized in a walking boot.
So in mid-August, the first-year coach and the few competitors he had went hunting. Call your friends, call your enemies, talk to your neighbors, Fisher said. If we don’t get more players, we can’t have a season.
“And then,” he said. “Guys started coming out of the woodwork.”
Brothers Quincy and Xavier Beaudin had been cross-country runners. Now they’re soccer starters.
Fisher ate lunch at Dough Boys Pizza in Bradford while wearing an Olympians soccer t-shirt and restaurant worker Cole Nanopoulous asked about the team. He’s now its goalkeeper.
Slowly and steadily, practice participation grew.
There are now 17 Oxbow soccer players, and although the team is 0-5 and at the bottom of the Vermont Division III standings, at least the program didn’t go dormant.
“We pushed back our earlier, scheduled games with Northfield and Lyndon,” said Fisher, noting that state rules require a player practice 10 days before being eligible for games. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had enough guys and would have had to forfeit.”
Fisher promoted half a dozen middle school players to fill some of his August practices. That’s carried over to some joint workouts for the teams, the lower-level version of which is being coached by onetime varsity boss Barry Emerson.
One eighth-grader, forward Brady Nickles, stayed with the high school team based on merit.
“If you can get them hooked in seventh and eighth grade, they’re not as likely to disappear on you later,” said Fisher, a St. Johnsbury resident and Texas native who previously coached in his home state.
He teaches world geography and U.S. history at Oxbow and said he played club soccer at Arizona State.
There was a time when Oxbow soccer, coached by the late Mike Callanan, was vibrant and an annual title contender. Callanan coached high school soccer for 49 years, earning more than 300 varsity victories and two state titles at Bradford Academy and Oxbow. He then went 140-10-2 during a decade as Hanover’s boys JV coach.
Oxbow won the 1975 Division II championship and was the 1976 playoff draw’s top-seeded team before being upset in the quarterfinals. They were also top-ranked in 1981 and lost in the finals.
The 1992 season saw Oxbow claim the Division III crown with a 2-1 victory over Thetford. However, the Olympians have lost their last 14 postseason matchups, dating back to 1992.
Fisher is the latest piece to pop to the surface in Oxbow’s athletic coaching churn. He is the soccer team’s fifth coach in the last 10 years, following Ed Scribner, Emerson, Scott Torrey and Tim O’Leary.
Elsewhere at Oxbow, the football team has roughly 25 players available on any given day, depending on injuries.
The Olympians draw a few players from nearby schools such as Thetford, Rivendell and Blue Mountain, but first-year coach Chad Wescott knows where he could get a few more.
“Woodsville has always been on the horizon for us,” he said, noting that players from that area of New Hampshire compete for the Bradford Bulldogs youth football organization, but are stranded once they reach high school.
“We’ve gone to battle for it a little bit, but we could easily get 10 or 12 players from there, which gives us nearly 40 players at the high school level. That’s a huge difference.”
Sadly, said Oxbow athletic director Derek Cipriano, discussions with the NHIAA about involving Woodsville in Oxbow’s football program have been short and pointed.
“It’s a nonstarter for them,” Cipriano said. “They’re just not interested in it happening.”
Throughout the recent summer and now on occasional weekends, you can drive past Lebanon High and spy a small group of male and female soccer goalkeepers being trained by Raiders boys boss Rob Johnstone. For 90 minutes, the backstops are drilled on the fundamentals, working not on spectacular dives but proper techniques for catching, footwork, body control and angles.
It doesn’t look difficult until you try it 10 or 12 consecutive times. Johnstone invites not only Lebanon players, but some from Windsor High, where he teaches English. He’s demanding but light-hearted, dishing out amusing observations and cheesy 1980s references while sneaking in pointed advice.
“I really enjoy it because in (team) practice, we get to do goalkeeper stuff but it’s never just soley that,” said Lebanon starter Sally Rainey, who might be the region’s best netminder, boy or girl. “It’s a really fun environment so I like coming here.”
Rainey said Johnstone’s insistence on honing technique through repetition has bettered her play. If you’re in the right place, Johnstone preaches, then you often don’t have to lunge, leap or dive.
“Everyone’s doing a lot better since we started in the summer,” said Rainey, who’s headed for an NCAA Division I soccer career. “We call it the GKU — the goalkeepers’ union — and we look forward to all being together.”
Johnstone, a high school and collegiate defender who’s in his 26th season at Lebanon, said he’s studied goalkeeping and has picked the brains of former Raiders netminders who played in college programs.
Wade Fleming, a Wentworth Institute (Mass.) of Technology standout and former Elmira (N.Y.) College backstop and current Ithaca (N.Y.) College assistant coach Austin Mansell have been particularly helpful, Johnstone said.
“It’s such an important position but it’s so hard to build it into (team) training,” Johnstone said. “You tell them to warm up and then they’re getting pelted with shots. This year, I wanted to expand the training for technique and positioning and decision making to the summer.
“It’s 90 minutes, but the time flies by.”
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.