Team pictures of past district title winners were featured. McSwords pointed to an open space.

"This is your space," McSwords told the freshmen players. "You only get on here if you are district champions."

Last Tuesday, Marysville was two wins away from appearing in the display case. Unfortunately, the district's top-seeded team, Upper Arlington, stood in their way and the Golden Bears defeated the Monarchs 4-0 in a Division I district semifinal game. Marysville finished 9-6-4 overall and sixth in the OCC-Cardinal Division at 1-4-2, behind champion Olentangy Liberty at 6-0-1.

Although Marysville came up two games short of its four-year goal, McSwords was proud of his teams' accomplishments.

"It was nice to see it all come together," McSwords said. "It's a huge confidence boost as we showed we could play with the big boys."

Against UA, the game remained scoreless until 15 minutes before halftime, when Upper Arlington scored two goals in two minutes.

"We were still in the game," McSwords said. "Some of the girls were saying how they thought UA wasn't as good as they thought they would be. We made some adjustments to try and get some offense and we had a couple of looks, but it went right to the keepers' hands."

It was a perfect example of how the Marysville offense struggled to score this season. In 19 games, the Monarchs scored 41 goals for a 2.16 per-game average. Sam Fisher led the team with 12 goals.

She is one of 10 seniors Marysville will lose, in addition to Hilary Daniels, Katie Helfrich, Jenna Moulton, Emily Sattler, Taylor Spears, Morgan Westbrook, Ashlee Wilson, Haley Wolfe and Hannah Zacharias.

Although the senior class is big, Marysville expects to return three-year letterwinners Allison Rogers (midfielder) and KyLee Tuchfarber (midfielder), as well as juniors Sutton Hinderer (defender), Leeora Mohler (midfield), Brittany Nicholson (midfielder) and Nicole Stigall (defender) and sophomores Brooke Buckley (defender) Felicia Cuthbert (goal keeper), Alexis Hites (defender) and Cassidy Jaggers (midfielder).

Tuchfarber finished with six goals and a team-high seven assists. Rogers had four goals and six assists and Hites had five goals.

"We saw how big and strong the UA girls were and they were asking how they could bulk up," McSwords said. "We don't have time for them to work-out and recover. They have already signed up for indoor soccer and then we play in the spring and summer. We will get a lot of touches on the ball this offseason."

•In most games, the boys soccer team had three sophomore starters, as well as four juniors and three freshmen who saw a large amount of playing time.

"It's been an interesting season for us," coach Marc Kirsch said. "The program continued to grow as we had 57 guys come out for our three teams, and the j.v. B-team had one of the best records they've ever had. Across the board, we were able to get a lot of kids a lot of varsity time."

Marysville's youthful lineup reached the second round of the Division I district tournament. They lost to Pickerington Central 2-1 to finish 7-10-1 overall. In the OCC-Cardinal, Marysville finished sixth at 2-5 behind champion Dublin Jerome at 6-0-1.

Marysville will lose seniors Ryan Hembree, Riley Beeson-Kesler, Luke Ohnsman, Jean-Sebastian Poirer, Karsten Schoennegge, Jeremy Watson and Zach Zeune. Among those expected to return include juniors Nick Klingman, John Rausch, Jordan Staats and Cody Sabins, sophomores Aaron Gonzalez, Evan See and Alex Spaulding and freshmen Alex Kallinicou, Zach Kisor and Adam Spaulding

"We're looking at getting these young guys stronger, faster and work on their agility," Kirsch said. "We want to take advantage of this opportunity to grow and develop these players physically and mentally.

"Cody is going to be one of the leaders of the attack. Aaron Gonzalez is one of our center mids and he'll control the middle. Alex and Adam Spaulding and Evan were mainstays in the center of our defense."

In 18 games, Marysville averaged less than two goals a game and scored 32 all season.