Current HHS Soccer Coaches Jason Burke and Matt Lentz, along with youth soccer coaches Vince Vitale and Adam Pollard, are excited to announce that the program will be hosting an alumni game fundraiser set for Saturday, Aug. 22,at 5 p.m. at the Hillsboro Sports Complex. The game will be open to players from graduating classes from 1993 to 2026 and will be open to both men and women who are alumni and interested in participating. The plan is to use the date, which is two days prior to the official kick-off of the boys varsity season which starts Monday, Aug. 24, to get fans and players alike excited and ready for the season.
“This is something we’ve been wanting to do for a while and people have been excitedly asking,” Toppers boys coach Jason Burke said. “We wanted to do it last spring, but it made more sense to use it as a springboard to our fall season and a cool way to get people thinking about and excited about the season. If it works, maybe it can become an annual event.”
Although the team did not become an official school sport until right around 2000, high school aged soccer players from Hillsboro participated in club teams, with home games being played at the lower soccer fields on the HHS campus since the early 1990s. These teams paved the way for the program expanding into a sport offered at the high school level and why coaches wanted to make sure these alums could participate as well.
“If it wasn’t for these teams and players, we wouldn’t be where we are today in terms of boys and girls being able to play at HHS,” Topper girls coach Matt Lentz said. “Coaches like Earl Juston, John Gusick, the Holt family, the Rev. Matt Ferguson and Cindy Huber were soccer enthusiasts who got it started with this age group and often had teams larger than some of the area schools have today. This is a way to honor those past teams as well and we couldn’t be more excited about this.”
Sign up sheets are available on the HHS website, as well as on social media platforms, available for pick up at Gianni’s and MCR Realty Professionals and also available The Journal-News website. Sign-up fee is $40 and includes participation and an event shirt. Spectators will be $5 and concessions will be available. If response is great, a second game and field may be added.
