Prep sports teams have an ebb and flow, and dynasties are exceedingly rare — unless you live in Lamar.
Each sports season, schools typically see varying degrees of success. When the football team is on fire, the soccer team may be struggling. When the wrestling squad is taking teams to state, the basketball team’s biggest goal may be to just win a district game.
This fall, Cassville has had all of the former and none of the latter.
My former partner with the soccer team, Head Coach Jake Forste, pointed out an incredible stat to me on Friday as the Wildcats put up their fifth score on Monett to all but assure a win by halftime.
Cassville has six fall sports: Football, boys soccer, softball, volleyball, girls golf and cross country. Four of those sports keep win-loss records.
As of Tuesday, the football team is 5-4 and entering districts, the soccer team is 14-7-1 heading into districts next week, the volleyball team finished at 17-15-3 with a district win over Monett, and the softball team concluded at 16-15 and hoisting their first-ever district title trophy.
If you didn’t notice — all of those teams are above .500.
The Missouri State High School Athletics Association keeps online records back to 2008 or 2009, and Forste pointed out this is the first time in at least 15 years that every team has accomplished a winning record.
That is incredible. It’s even more incredible that just last year, the volleyball team won only two games; two years ago, the soccer team won just three games; also in 2021, the football team won only three games; and four years ago, softball tasted victory only four times — ebb and flow.
Cassville’s other two fall sports, which are largely individual competitions but with a team aspect, have also found massive success this season.
The girls golf team, for the first time in its history, took a team to Girls State Golf, and senior Avery Chappell capped her prep career with a sixth-place medal, her third time in the top 10 in Class 2 and best finish in those tournaments.
The cross country team has had consistent team finishes, and individual highlights include senior Ethan Bohmke’s first-place finish in Aurora — the third seniors in in four years to do so — and junior Jadyn Williams holding off a Lamar senior to take first in the Cassville Pinkout Cross Country Invitational. XC districts is Saturday, and the Wildcats and Lady Wildcats are likely to advance at least a few runners to the state meet on Nov. 4.
Success is exciting and breeds confidence for future teams, and it comes at a price. What’s led to this amount of success at the same time in Cassville? Hard work over many years, plus a few other factors people may not realize.
When I was the assistant coach for the soccer team a few years back, this year’s seniors were just freshmen. We struggled in training grasping tactical concepts and forming an identity based in short passes and possession, not boom ball and chasing.
Many of those freshmen were involved in Seven Valleys Soccer Club, an organization I helped get off the ground that plays competitively in at least four age groups in Joplin.
Because of those years of formative training and many soccer players’ dedication to the sport, the Wildcats have gone from coming onto the field in ninth grade needing to learn the fundamentals to folding into a program with a much higher bar of skill and soccer knowledge.
Sports like football benefit from Mighty Mites in the same way, and most of the highly competitive volleyball and softball teams have players who play travel ball almost year-round. Wrestling is another prime example, as their success in boys and girls grappling can be linked to their participation in the Wildcat Takedown Club.
Beyond that dedication by the individual athletes, Cassville is blessed with a fine crop of coaches at the helms of its programs. These coaches not only teach their game, they prepare their players for life, using sports as a teaching tool to overcome challenges, take advantage of skills and reach goals previously thought unattainable.
They also share in the excitement. Against the Class 3 No. 1 Logan-Rogersville last month, when Ashton Wheeler stuck in the game-tying goal with 17 seconds on the clock, Forste broke code and sprinted to the center of the field to celebrate with his boys, taking an added moment to hype up the crowd.
He earned a deserved yellow card for his actions, but man, it was fun to watch.
No matter what athletes do themselves or how much effort coaches put in, the final cog in the wheel is parents. Allowing children to play competitive sports is not cheap, and it takes up a major amount of time.
When interviewing him about Chappell’s success at state, Golf Coach Jay Rogers said his coaching of Avery was secondary to one person — her father. Time, effort, love, support, security — all of that starts at home and is paramount to any sustained success.
It’s an exciting time to be a sports fan in Cassville, and I hope the accomplishments of the Wildcats and Lady Wildcats this fall serves as an inspiration to the next groups of athletes coming through the pipeline.
Kyle Troutman has served as the editor of the Cassville Democrat since 2014 and became Publisher in 2023. He was named William E. James/Missouri Outstanding Young Journalist for daily newspapers in 2017, and he won a Golden Dozen Award from ISWINE in 2022. He may be reached at 417-847-2610 or ktroutman@cassville-democrat. com.
