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Soccer wins the battle but not the war.

HED: Soccer wins the battle but not the war.

BY: ANDREW TURNER

Staff Writer

Steps were made Tuesday night, to give recognition to the middle school soccer program.

Jeff Cowsert and Greg McCulloch addressed the Harrisburg School board at the regular board meeting to discuss making, their aptly named "Southern Illinois Middle School Soccer Club" a school-sanctioned athletic program.

"We are loosing kids to other sports because they want to represent their school," Cowsert said.

During the spring of 2015, Cowsert and McCulloch started the soccer program. What started out as an idea and a few teams, quickly progressed to adoption by teams from all over Southern Illinois.

Boys and girls teams from Anna-Jonesboro, Carterville, Centralia, Harrisburg, Herrin, Marion, Massac County, Mt. Vernon, Murphysboro, Salem and Vienna all participated in the inaugural season.

There were 17 teams representing about 300 area sixth, seventh and eights graders who participated during the spring.

This included 32 players on the Harrisburg boys and girls teams. Teams from Carbondale, DuQuoin, Mt. Carmel and several other towns are also in the process of developing teams for this coming spring season.

"We would love to say that Harrisburg started soccer as a school sport," Cowsert said.

The soccer teams play between mid March to sometime in May and the state tournament was held at the Harrisburg Middle School soccer fields.

According to Cowsert, Kentucky has had soccer as a school sport for a number of years, though it is not sanctioned by the state.

The group pushed, at Tuesday's school board meeting, to have middle school soccer as a school sport, to have the sport listed on the HMS website, continued use of the HMS soccer fields, be involved in school sport recognition events, the ability to place team trophies in display cases at the school, and have the teams pictures put into the HMS year book.

"We are blazing a trail here," Cowsert said. "We eventually want this to get state sanctioned."

The club's initiatives were supported by many of the teams current players and their parents, who were in attendance at the meeting.

After the presentation, the school board continued with its agenda as planned, later passing a motion unanimously in favor of the soccer club.

The motion that passed granted the club the ability to display team awards in the school display cases, and granted recognition to team members at sports banquets.

The team will still be considered a "non-school club team" and will not be recognized as a "school sport or school club." The district also will not provide any financial support or liability insurance coverage.

Though not all demands were met, this still puts the Southern Illinois Middle School Soccer Club one step closer to its goals.