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Playoff preview: Eastside vs. Whitewater
Coach Young
Coach Champ Young speaking to his players on the next event in practice.

A five hour trip down to Wayne County – the No. 1 seed Eastside’s boys soccer (10-6) was set to play – turned into a first round upset for the Eagles, pitting them against Whitewater (12-2-1), one of the best teams in the state (ranked fourth in Class AAAA by maxpreps.com).

The Eagles are in for a good one, and an even bigger upset if they can pull it off when they face Whitewater Wednesday night at 7 p.m.

During practice Monday, EHS head coach Champ Young had his team working on taking care of the ball and working for each other. Young told his team that they needed to practice at a high level so that they would play at a high level.

The Eagles didn’t play at a high level in the first half of their game against Wayne County last week. Young says the team was sluggish (a five-hour bus ride will do that to you).

“We’re fairly athletic so we were able to contend with a lot of their combination play. But in the second half once we opened up and started playing we definitely took over the game,” Young said.

Fortunately for Young and the Eagles, Fayetteville is just an hour away so the team won’t have to combat sluggishness in Wednesday’s game. Young says he wants the team to show up and play like they’re supposed to. He says that if they do that, they'll be just fine.

“I feel like there’s so many games we let go,” Young said. “If we play at the level we’re capable of we could be a top-10, top-five team in the state, I feel. We just have to play at the level we know we’re capable of. If everybody’s on the same page and everybody’s working we’re pretty dangerous. Hopefully, that’s the case. The last few training sessions we’ve had have looked like that so hopefully it’s starting to carry over a little bit more.”