The Highland senior class has always been a team

HIGHLAND | It's safe to say the Highland girls' soccer players know each other better than most teams they face.

Some of them have played together since they were 3 years old.

"It'll sure be different once we graduate," Michelle Geissler said. "That long with the same people, you just grow a bond."

Gordon Walker has coached his senior class since they were about 11 years old. He recalls fondly taking his team to the "rich suburbs up in Illinois" for games and tournaments when they were younger.

"I remember one time we were way up north of Chicago, the cheapest house had to be like $2 million. They've got this soccer field that is all artifcial turf and everything," he said. "We go in there and they think 'Here's these hicks from Indiana.' We ended up beating them 4-3. They were (angry), but it was nice."

Last season's semistate bid was the height of success for this group, but the focus has always been on senior year.

"It's really important because it's the last year," Karly Wolfe said. "We still have the talent, so we have the chance and I want to make it happen."

Walker's daughter, Kate, is a member of the 2011 class and an important piece of the Trojan machine. It can be difficult to treat Kate as just one of the girls, but they make it work.

"The good thing is that she's a half-way decent player, but she gets no favors from me," Walker said. "If anything, she gets a lot more earache out of me."

Kate calls her experiences with these eight girls and her dad "an adventure."

"I think it's really neat that we got to all grow up together," she said. "We've adapted to each other to be one big group."

"We've been playing together for so long that it's just natural," Nikki Goodeve said. "If we weren't playing with each other it would just be weird."

Meredith Garcia and Karly Wolfe have had the chance to play on club teams without most of here Highland teammates in the past.

"It's hard to adjust to different players and their styles and other coaches," Garcia said. "You get used to the people you've always worked with."

There're a lot of inside jokes and nicknames -- the diminutive Garcia is "Smalls" while Cori Brown is "Poker" because of a tendency to poke at the ball during her younger years. Wolfe is "Team Doc" because she's been injured often enough to learn to tape ankles and give quick medical advice. When Sam Kerber saved three penalty kicks against Munster last week, the Highland bench changed her nickname, "The Wall."

"I wouldn't pick any other girls," Lauren Czaja said. "You grow up and you don't know anything else, but I wouldn't want to be with any other girls."

A trusting relationship has developed between Walker and his team, too. He says he lets players get away with a lot more than most coaches would.

"I've known them since they were this big," Walker said. "While it is technically a dictatorship, I always ask the seniors for their input."

That trust extends onto the pitch, where Walker said he feels like he has a few assistant coaches in shorts. The brand of soccer hasn't changed much over the years.

"We have a very high soccer I.Q.," Walker said. "When they come out of the game, I'll ask them what they feel, what they think and then I'll listen to what they say."

Walker also coached teams with the class of 2010. He said melding the underclassmen with his seniors this season is the most coaching he's done in years.

"It took a while, but right now we're finally starting to come together a bit," he said. "When the other girls came to this team, it was kind of like driving a car with a flat tire."

Highland seems to have inflated that tire of late, though. And impressive 2-0 win against Chesterton gave the team a lot of confidence. Walker maintains that his team will be tough to be in October.