The Fountain Hills High School girls soccer season came to end last week. The Falcons did not have the season they expected or even hoped for, going 0-9 after making the playoffs last year.

The Falcons may have played a road game yesterday, Tuesday, Feb. 1, at Phoenix Country Day. As of Thursday, Jan. 27, head coach Nick Goodman was unsure if he’d have enough players for the last game of the year.

The season was surrounded by uncertainty since the beginning. At first, there wasn’t a coach and there weren’t enough players to fill a team. Goodman and Cassandra Rodgers stepped up to coach the Falcons, and the veterans recruited some rookie players. Despite those early efforts the Falcons’ roster shrank from 15 players to seven due to a variety of reasons.

“It was a lot of going with the flow, basically,” sophomore goalkeeper Jeneya Boone said. “Every week we’d get new news, and it’d be good or bad. It’d be unexpected but we just went with it, honestly.”

Boone was an honorable mention for 3A region honors last year as a freshman, but this season was tougher on the talented goalie. In the last home game of the season on Thursday, Jan. 27, the Falcons held Veritas Prep to just one goal in the first half. The Falcons had four fewer players on the field than Veritas Prep, and they couldn’t keep up in the second half. The one-score game quickly devolved into an 8-0 win for the away team.

“It fell downhill in the second half,” sophomore Erin Hooley said. “We were all tired by the second half and all of us were hurting.”

Despite the constant losses, the Falcons were in good spirts regarding the season. Hooley said that as the team got smaller, their teamwork got better.

“On the good side of things for us, I feel like as we got smaller, we started to really learn what teamwork was,” Hooley said. “It’s kind of just for fun now, instead of a competition at this point because of how many people we lost.”

The Falcons got through their ups and downs by communicating and making sure everyone’s opinion was heard. The Falcons’ offense struggled mightily, but they scored their first goals of the season at BASIS on Tuesday, Jan. 25. Sophomore Peyton McAloon scored the first goal, and then Hooley scored two more in the Falcons’ 5-3 loss.

Hooley and Boone described the goals as impactful, and they said it was nice to accomplish something the team had hoped for all season. They also said their expectations were lowered earlier in the season, but it was fun to finally score.

“When we had our team meeting [at the beginning of the year], we had some good veterans and some new girls, and we were optimistic about how the season would go considering they did pretty well last year,” Goodman said. “Then that first loss really stung. The second loss stung even more, and at that point, coach Cassie and I recognized that this is not going to be the season we had hoped for, so let’s just work on skills and having a good time.”

The Falcons were rebuilding this year, something Boone was much more familiar with than Hooley. Though they are both underclassmen, Boone was a starter on the rebuilding volleyball team last fall, and Hooley finished 34th in the state cross country championship last fall.

“It’s a lot of shoes to fill, I can say that,” Boone said. “After the graduating seniors left, just knowing what shoes we had to fill was a struggle but one I’m willing to take head on.”

Looking ahead, both girls have high hopes for their spring sports. Boone plays beach volleyball and Hooley runs track, but once again, they are uncertain about the future of the girls soccer team at Fountain Hills.

“To be completely honest, I don’t see there being a girls program next year,” Boone said. “As hard as that is to say, I don’t know if there will be enough people involved to want to do it.”

Hooley said that 10 or so girls who like soccer would have to magically appear for them to view the soccer program’s future any differently. The Falcons could possibly combine with the boys to become a coed league, but it’s too early to say right now. What is certain, is the Falcons kept trying to win and kept having fun despite all the challenges they faced this season.