Roskelly new head coach of Mavericks’ soccer program
The Anderson County High School Mavericks’ soccer team will open the 2017 season on March 13 with a new head coach — Ron Roskelly.
A sixth grade science teacher at Lake City Middle School, Roskelly takes over for Travis Hutcheson, who left the program following the 2016 season to be principal at Briceville Elementary.
Roskelly previously coached middle school soccer and competitively for FC Alliance. For the past four years he has been the volleyball coach at LCMS, a role he will continue to fill.
He is optimistic about the Maverick’s chances this season.
“I think we’ll do pretty well. The goal is to break .500 because we were 3-8 last year. We’re just trying to build it up,” Roskelly said.
“It really comes down to gelling. We’ve got good guys. We’ve added two or three new guys so we return some experience but they haven’t played a whole lot compared to the Knoxville teams who start playing when they’re five years old. A lot of our guys don’t start playing soccer until they’re in middle school or even high school,” he said.
The Mavericks have a couple of club players on the squad this year from FC Alliance, Crush, and K-USA.
“But a lot of them don’t play together so we’re trying to move forward and build not only with the clubs but also develop team chemistry,” Roskelly said.
Chris Templeton, the SRO at LCMS, and Jacqueline Watkins, a math teacher at ACHS, will serve as assistant coaches.
He also wanted to express his gratitude to Chris Curtain, head coach of the Lady Mavs, for his assistance, particularly for his help with the recent soccer jamboree at ACHS.
Roskelly is the third head soccer coach at ACHS in three years and hopes to bring stability to the program - former head coach Sammy Woodfin retired after the 2015 season.
“I plan on it being a long-term commitment — as long as I’m at Lake City [Middle School] I’d like to keep coaching the Mavericks,” he said.
A 1999 graduate of Clinton High School, Roskelly graduated from the University of Tennessee.
