OXFORD — Talawanda’s new girls’ soccer coach is familiar with the players he inherits for this fall’s schedule and he looks forward to the challenge of bringing the team back from a disappointing 2012 season.

Dustin Crothers was the team’s junior varsity coach last fall and was recently named head coach of the Braves after Steve Thompson stepped down.

Prior to his year with the Talawanda junior varsity team, Crothers was an assistant for 10 years coach Fred Hibbs at Ross, where Crothers went to high school. He played for the Rams in soccer and wrestling as well as playing Little League baseball and junior basketball. He said he gave up basketball, “When I found out I was not going to grow any more,” and got interested in wrestling in sixth grade.

Prior to his 10 years as an assistant coach at Ross, he was JV coach at Northwest High School and coached wrestling.

Talawanda finished 3-12-2 last fall with a record of 0-6-0 in the Southwest Ohio Conference. One of the Braves’ wins came in the postseason, a 2-0 win over Wilmington, a team that had beaten them 1-0 in the regular season in SWOC play.

That followed a 9-3-3 season in 2011 in which they were 4-1-2 in the Fort Ancient Valley Conference, good for a second-place finish in the FAVC West Division.

“The season last year was not what we anticipated,” Crothers said. “(This year’s) team is better than expectations.”

The last-place finish in the league last fall, coming after a second-place finish a year earlier was a big disappointment, largely brought on by lack of scoring, although defense could have made up for that, he said.

“We scored (16) goals. Some teams have players with that total. It’s an intensity sport. You could have a great season, even get to state, with (16) goals but you need the right defense and a goalie with Super Glue fingers,” he said.

Adjustment to playing on the turf field at the new high school was one players had to make last fall, and the new coach said it took a lot of time. The style of play on turf is vastly different from grass, he said, and it takes playing in games to get the feel of the change. Practice alone is not enough.

“You get totally different passes on turf. The ball moves faster,” Crothers said. “The size of the field makes a difference. Some football fields are not 120 yards long. The skills need to be more precise. The ball will travel.”

The weather is also a factor. Water makes the turf field more slick, as it will grass, but turf is even faster.

“This sport is player-centered, not coach-centered. The kids out there have to make the calls. You have to have kids who make those decisions,” Crothers said. “This is the only sport where you show up and nothing is the same. In basketball, the gym is indoors and always the same size. In soccer, you have to show up and make adjustments.”

That includes the size of the field, grass or turf, wet or dry. Many high schools are going to turf fields, he said, which gives some consistency but variations remain.

“If we do well and get to Columbus, we will be back on grass at Crew Stadium. It is great grass, but grass,” he said.

He said a lot of the problem last fall was the adjustments needed for the new field and size of the field.

“The midfield needs to adjust first because that where everything starts. Then, the defense gets better,” he said. “We ran out of season before we got the offense where we wanted to get.”

As an example, he cited the season-ending postseason loss to McNicholas.

“It was 0-0 until the 74th minute. The goalie was tired and they ended up beating us 4-0. The fight we had was good,” he said. “I’m happy with the foundation. The girls work real hard. It’s a good group. The eighth grade girls coming in work hard. It will be good if they all decide to come out (for the team).”

The 2013 team will be senior-laden as 13 girls on the squad now are juniors, while only five were seniors last fall. The freshman class next fall could be large, too, if all those eighth graders show up to play.

“I like the senior class. They are sharp girls,” he said of next fall’s group. He is also happy to be coaching Talawanda. “I like this community. It’s a good community. The parents are involved. I hope the same girls are back.”