Firebirds reap benefits of strong senior class

Free State High's Alex Clayton, left, Erik Slan (18) and Andrew Heck are just three of several senior soccer players who, through hard work and increased ownership, have turned last year's six-win season into a distant memory.

Free State High’s soccer players may wear green, but their unofficial color might well be gray.

With nine seniors on the 22-man roster, the team has more graybeards than coach Jason Pendleton knows what to do with and, at least once, one of his experienced players made the gray analogy even more appropriate, on another level.

Earlier this season, after Pendleton addressed the team about issues the players needed to improve upon, senior forward Alex Clayton tried to re-emphasize his coach’s point.

“Yeah, boys. Shades of gray,” Clayton said.

Although no one was sure what Clayton meant at the time (or even now for that matter), the phrase stuck. “It kind of became emblematic of this group,” Pendleton said.

“If each of them is a unique color on the big spectrum, you put them all together and it kind of becomes shades of gray – they become part of a bigger whole,” the Firebirds coach said. “Individually, when you have them, it wouldn’t necessarily work, but when you put them together they morph into something that seems to work pretty positively for us.”

Following their first-round regional victory over Lawrence High on Tuesday, the Firebirds are 11-5-1 on the season and could find their way to the state tournament a year after winning only six games.

“It’s a good group of kids that responded to some adversity from last year,” Pendleton said, explaining that the team had “renewed focus starting in the spring” and the offseason work they put in after the disappointing 2006 campaign helped jump-start this year’s successful run.

“These kids have invested tons of effort in the offseason, have put something in the bank, and now hopefully in the postseason we can begin to make some withdrawals,” Pendleton said.

Senior midfielder Andrew Heck said he and his teammates took authorship of the program with offseason work.

“We all put in 100 percent effort at the beginning of the year conditioning-wise to get us ready for the season,” Heck said. “Every senior stepped up in some way.”

Pendleton thinks that as many as six of his players could play collegiately, at least at a smaller school or junior college, when their Firebird playing days are through.

That group is led by forwards Erik Slan (14 goals) and Clayton (11 goals) and includes Heck, defenders Greg Glatz and Auston Jacobsen and goalkeeper Frank Hurtig.

“That’s pretty significant,” Pendleton said of fielding a team with that much senior talent. “As a group, our seniors have bought into just about everything that we’ve asked them to do.”

Slan said their time together on and off of the pitch has led to great team chemistry.

“We’ve all been playing together about four years in high school,” Slan said. “We’re seniors, and it seems like when you’re a senior you automatically get pretty good. We’re good at working together, and we’re building on that.”

Not as heralded as their senior classmates, keeper Stephen Klamet, midfielder Nathan Ideus and defender Jordan Williams also have played integral roles in the team’s success.

“We all have a really good relationship off the field,” Heck said. “It’s easier to translate on the field.”

Of the three unheralded seniors, Pendleton said Klamet could start at a number of high schools, Ideus is a mentally tough player who raises the team’s intensity level and Williams is unselfish.

“Just an absolute team-first kind of guy, positive attitude, always wants to do what’s right for his teammates,” the coach said of Williams.

Pendleton said this large senior class has helped solidify the Firebirds as a winning program.

“They know we have, not just a team, but a program in place and they are huge assets in terms of what we’re trying to do from a program perspective,” he said. “Their experience and their leadership helps pave the way for everybody else to know how to conduct themselves.”

Now all they have left to do is figure out what exactly Clayton meant by “shades of gray.” And they might make a run in the state playoffs while they’re at it.