The Sealy Tiger soccer team is set to open its regular season this weekend in Giddings at a tournament with first-year head coach Joshua Kirton at the helm.

Kirton is in his second year of coaching at Sealy High School and assisted on the sidelines intermittently last year where the Tigers embarked on their longest postseason run in program history. He was previously a coach at Port Isabel High School where he was the boys’ head soccer coach for two years.

The new head coach’s familiarity with the program has aided his transition after former head coach Juan Perez stepped into an advisory role.

“I teach at the high school here, I taught at junior high down there so it was a little bit different dynamic,” Kirton said in a preseason interview. “I didn’t get to see the kids every day, I didn’t get to have the interactions like I do here which is really good because it just helps build those relationships with those kids when you get to see him in the hallway or when you get to have them in the classroom.”

In those interactions, Kirton has said the returners from last year’s team are hungry for another shot at a deep playoff run this year.

“There’s at least 16 of them that participated last year on the team so there’s a lot of experience, a lot of kids returning from last year’s squad that finished second in district, they made it four rounds deep,” Kirton said. “They’re hungry. They got a bad taste in their mouth from how their season ended last year so they’ve been working really hard in practice to get better at every facet of the game from the little things to kind of having a better understanding of how the game supposed to be played. They’re hungry, they’re passionate for it.”

Their first opportunity to face someone with another jersey came Dec. 13, 2021, when Sealy scrimmaged Richmond Foster who competes in UIL’s Class 6A.

“Bigger school, very good soccer team, but these kids, they just work their tails off,” Kirton said. “I was looking at our roster, I think nine of the 11 starters for the most part last year are back so there’s not going to be too much new blood.”

Still, there was plenty of participation in tryouts before the season where the coaching staff worked to whittle down the roster.

“We had over 50 kids come out for tryouts and then had two days of that and of course, from there, we reduced numbers to get a team and we got about half of that,” Kirton said. “I think I’m carrying about 25 right now. About three to four of those kids are goalkeepers just to have a little bit of depth and obviously building towards the future there because that’s definitely one of the hardest positions to replace if you don’t have somebody waiting in the wings.”

After this weekend’s tournament, the Tigers will head to another tournament in Huffman next weekend where Kirton said all of the other teams participating qualified for the playoffs last year. Following an open early part of the week, Sealy will open district play against Hempstead Jan. 21.