Dryden girls soccer kicks off season with new coach

For most of the 2000s, the Dryden girls soccer team has been led by Janine Bennett. She has coached many players over the years, and one of them has taken over the program.

Sara Sinnigen is the new head coach of the Lions after spending the past four years as the assistant coach for the boys soccer team under Laszlo Engel. Sinnigen graduated from Dryden in 2012 and continued her playing career at nearby Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3) for two years and SUNY Potsdam for another two years. The plan was always for Sinnigen to take the reins, and who better to do so than someone who knows Dryden soccer inside and out.

“Janine coached me since I was four,” Sinnigen said. “I know her style of coaching and how she ran things, so I feel like in that aspect, I’m just trying to kind of pick up what she was doing but also adding my own stuff into it.”

The biggest thing Sinnigen learned from both Bennett and Engel is how they structure their practices to make them efficient.

“Janine liked to choose something small and then build it up throughout the practice,” Sinnigen said. “She wasn’t jumping all over the place during her practice plans. She would build on top of a small thing and expand it out across the field. Laszlo helped a lot with picking up different drills from them that I didn’t already know.”

The Lions are coming off a strong 2023 campaign where they finished with a 11-6-1 and made it all the way to the Section IV Class B semifinals, which included their first sectional victory since 2018. But it’s a whole different and younger look this time around, as the majority of the team are new to the varsity scene.

“Over half of our team are eighth or ninth graders, so they’re super new,” Sinnigen said. “Some of them just started playing in modified. And then [for] the older girls, we have some that had played since they were in kindergarten, so it’s a really big range of skills on our team.”

While Alyson Smith is only a freshman, she has a year of varsity soccer already under her belt. She has impressed early on, scoring the Lions’ lone goal in their season opener against back-to-back Section IV Class C champions Watkins Glen. While it will be difficult to reproduce Emma Lobdell’s 22 goals last season—which earned her IAC MVP honors and is now playing at TC3—Smith could very well end up as the Lions’ top scorer this year.

“She’s going to have a big role for us this year,” Sinnigen said. “I think a lot of the younger girls look up to her because she’s obviously the same age as them, but she’s also very skilled and has a great head on her shoulders for how young she is.”

Another underclassman with some varsity experience is goalkeeper Danielle Warwick. The sophomore made 11 saves in their defeat to the Lake Hawks and has stood out for leadership both in between the sticks and with her fellow netminders.

“She’s being a great role model with the younger girls,” Sinnigen said. “We’ve got two freshmen that are interested in goalkeeping, so she’s been taking them under her wing and teaching them the warm up for goalie training and just doing basic drills with them during practice to kind of get them into that role, as well.”

Sinnigen also lauded the leadership displayed by senior Nicole Morrow, who was an IAC First Team All-Star selection last season.

“She’s a great leader,” Sinnigen said. “She’s been super positive with all of the younger girls. I haven’t seen an ounce of negativity come from her. She’s been super great with the young girls. She’s taking control of all the older girls.”

Other players to watch out for include junior captain Giuliana Pascarella, who will play as an outside midfielder and who Sinnigen also praised for being a role model for the squad. Senior defender Alexandra Lamey is also a team captain.

With such a young team, this season will be an uphill battle for the Lions, especially in a tough IAC North Large Division that now includes defending IAC champions Trumansburg. But Sinnigen is more focused on her players’ development than what record they finish with. 

“The girls and I kind of went into it knowing that it was going to be a building year,” Sinnigen said. “We’re not as concerned about what the score of the games are. We just want everybody to improve by the end of the season and kind of come into their own knowing what their role on the team is and how they can improve. I don’t want to say we set the expectations low, but we’re not as worried about scoring a million goals in a game.”

The Lions have their home opener on September 11 against Trumansburg.