Jesus Muñoz and Jose Torres

When the Marshalltown boys soccer team makes its season debut on Monday at Urbandale, there will be a new head coach calling the shots on the pitch.

Scott Johannes takes over the Bobcat program for his first season after coaching the freshman team in the past, and with a new coach comes a new approach to the season.

“We’ve been pushing the team concept more than ever and they are thinking ‘team’, it’s great,” Johannes said. “We are focusing on one unit from varsity down to freshmen with three squads. We are three individual groups but we are all in this together. We are only as strong as our weakest link, which theoretically could be our freshmen. We want them to push the JV, the JV to push the varsity and then the varsity to push each other and at the same time turn around and support the freshmen.”

Having coached the boys before has been an asset for Johannes, as he said he was able to come right in from day one and start on making them better.

“We have been challenging them, raising their game and they have met that challenge,” he said.

“When you challenge student athletes they can go a couple different ways, but our guys are not backing down. They are loving the challenge, so it’s been fun and it feels like we are doing the right things as a coaching staff.”

Johannes takes over a team that finished 9-7 last year and suffered a close 2-1 loss to Ankeny Centennial in the substate playoffs. Though he was around with the previous regime, Johannes said he and assistant coach Bobby Shomo aren’t just sticking to the same routines of the past.

“I said from the beginning that with Bobby and I coming in, we are different coaches and we are going to do things differently,” Johannes said. “I basically told them I don’t want to hear, ‘oh we haven’t done this before,’ because you’re right. Nothing against the coaches that have been in the past, we are just different people.”

While there’s been turnover on the coaching end, the Bobcats boast a whole group of players who either started or contributed last year and are back for another season. Johannes said it’s even more encouraging that the bulk of his returners actually have at least two more years left.

“We are excited about what we are bringing back, and at the same time I’m even projecting to the future and thinking about getting our guys as many minutes as we can because we are fortunate enough to bring back the guys we are and we have a good group that will be back the next year as well,” he said. “That core we have are juniors, we’ve got just a handful of seniors that will be starting even though we have some others that will be definitely coming off the bench and giving us great quality minutes.”

Leading that group of returners is junior Jose Torres, who had a team-high 17 goals and seven assists a year ago. Torres was 12th in Class 3A in goals scored in 2018 and his 41 total points were 13th in the class.

Johannes said Torres is once again primed for a big year on the pitch, but it’s actually his development as a leader that has been most impressive so far in practice.

“Jose, as he works and leads, I see him speaking a lot to the other guys on the side saying, ‘hey, this is what we are doing, do you understand what we are doing here?’ and just taking that time,” Johannes said. “Jose is hard on himself, too, so we want to keep his head up and remind him that he’s a junior, he’s going to make some mistakes, it’s not perfect every time out. The more positive he can be, the better it will be.”

Torres’ attitude is just one byproduct of a philosophy that Johannes said he brings to the team, one of focusing on being good people as well as good soccer players.

“We are fortunate enough to be able to teach these kids some soccer, but really soccer is just a part of life,” he said. “If we can teach them to work with one another, respect one another on and off the field, that is one of the things we are looking for. Character counts, on and off the field. We keep our cool, we don’t blow up, we don’t yell negatively to our team, we build them up and it stays here. That’s a philosophy in soccer and a philosophy in life too.”

So far the boys have responded well to the ways Johannes and his staff are approaching the season, so much so that he said they can’t get them off the practice field.

“One day last week we had four or five guys staying after our practice to work on some skills they saw during practice,” he said. “That was not coach-directed, it was something that they wanted to work on.”

With Torres leading the way for the forwards, Johannes said there actually isn’t much drop off on the other parts of the pitch from a leadership or skill standpoint.

“From back to front, we have guys returning in every line. And then the guys that left, we have guys that have played plenty of minutes in that role,” Johannes said. “We’ve got a couple of untested sophomores that are up here but they played great minutes and were leaders on the freshman team last year.”

In the midfield will be senior Brandon Ordaz and junior Rene Hernandez leading the way, two players Johannes said have played together for so long that they almost think as one.

On the backline are a trio of defensive returners, senior Caleb Summers and juniors Austin Shomo and Kabba Pins. Marshalltown only surrendered 25 total goals last season, their lowest since 2014, and with that group of returning defenders Johannes said he expects that number to be even lower this year.

“With three of the four of them returning, I have kind of told them that we don’t want our goalie to touch the ball,” he said. “We want him to be the most bored person on the pitch. He’s like a police officer, you want him to go to work and do nothing, that’s your goal.”

Manning the posts this year will be Jesus Munoz, who saw quite a bit of time in goal last season as well while splitting with Ricky Ibarra. Munoz had 43 saves and allowed 13 goals a year ago, and Johannes said the team has complete faith in Munoz’s ability in the net.

“On the chance that somebody gets by our defense, which we know will happen, we have a lot of confidence in our keepers,” he said.

While the boys are working hard on the pitch to get better, Johannes said one of the biggest things that leads to success for Bobcat soccer is the support the community gives for the sport in general.

“A large part of our culture is soccer and I think about the sacrifice that so many of our families go through to get these guys out on the field,” he said. “Some of these guys take care of their siblings during the school year, but during the season there are changes that happens. Some of these kids quit their jobs that they work 10 months out of the year so they are free during soccer season. I’m not sure if that happens in other sports, since I don’t work with them as much.”

Even though this is his first season, Johannes didn’t back down from setting the team’s goals high considering how much it returns this year.

“Our goal is really what I’ve thought for several years, we need to be challenging to get into the state playoffs and not really be satisfied saying, ‘hey, we made it,'” he said. “We want to be playing on June 1.”

Marshalltown starts its quest for a state tournament appearance with its first regular season game on Monday at Urbandale, starting at 7:30 p.m.