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Cougars Kicking It
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The Chattahoochee boys soccer team is off to a fantastic start. The Cougars won their first sixteen games, giving the team a sparkling 16-0 record before losing a heartbreaker to Roswell, 1-0, this week. The Cougars are ranked No. 1 in Class 6A. Coach Les Meenan, in his sixteenth year at the head of the program, is having a great time, coaching, what he calls, a great bunch of kids who never give up. The coach changed from a 4-4-2 setup to a more diamond shaped 4-2-3-1 configuration. The change has proven itself very effective this year, allowing his players to play with reckless abandon and a more attacking type game. As far as putting the ball in the net, the Cougars are led by team captain Shane Burke, who has scored 11 goals, and Drew Catapano, who has also scored 11. In the goal for the Cougars is Dara Mansouri, a senior who's helped pull out several wins including three games that went to shootouts. Coach Meenan had no idea his team would blossom this year into such a force on the pitch. “At the beginning of the year, if we had won ten games and qualified fourth for the playoffs, I would have been delighted," the coach said. But the Cougars will accomplish way more than that....Chattahoochee won the state title in 2011, and while the coach says that team and this year’s teams are very different, one thing both squads had in common was a big time desire to win and a never-give-up attitude. The loss to Roswell stings, but sometimes losing a game late in the regular season right before the playoffs can propel a team to greatness. The coach says his state title team of 2011 lost one late and it turned into a plus, as the team sharpened its focus on the playoffs. As the playoffs kick off next Wednesday, look for the Cougars to be right in the thick of things.
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