Wareham High School’s girls soccer team is a month into their 2023 fall season and already showing signs of improvement, according to Coach Megan Kashner.

With only five returning athletes, the majority of the team is made up of players that are still new to the sport, Kashner said.

She said the focus this season is all on the fundamentals of soccer. The girls are also still learning how to work as a team and “play to each other’s strengths and support each other in situations where people might not have experience.”

Now that the team is playing in the Mayflower Conference, they are no longer competing with teams from regional schools who have “three times the amount of female athletes,” Kashner said.

She added the teams in this conference are more compatible.

“It's definitely a better fit, and I was a huge advocate for this change a while ago,” Kashner said. “For many of our teams, we've only won a handful of games a year — if that.”

She added, “It takes a toll.”

“The goal is always to win games — that would be great, but I think just playing good soccer, good quality soccer is kind of the goal every day,” Kashner said.

Kashner has been coaching the varsity team since 2016 and coached the junior varsity team for eight years before that.

She said her coaching philosophy is to “control the things that you can.”

She added, “Effort and focus is something I've always stressed.”

Kashner explained many of the girls on the team have not played outside of school or during the offseason, which limits the progress they can make, but putting in effort can go a long way.

“Their progress just in a month since preseason is evident to parents and people that have been watching — they can see that it's coming along,” she added.