The Greene County Rams sports program will embark on its first-ever soccer season for both high school boys and girls.

The Greene County School Board approved the sport in April of 2017 to have it start this spring. Volunteer Boys Head Coach Carl Behne is a supporter of the sport, in which he’s coached in the youth ranks for about 12 years, but this will be his first varsity coaching position for soccer. He describes why he wanted to help out as a volunteer coach.

“Certainly I didn’t want finances to stop getting a program that I felt was in high demand in our community. Part of my spiegl to the Board I had shared that I would be happy to offset the cost (of a coach) and I may not be the long-term solution but for a few years to get the program up and running, and to show we had the interest, I would be happy to help out.”

Behne has 31 boys out while head girls coach Marilyn Tasler has 22 girls out for soccer. Both programs have both junior varsity and varsity schedules. Behne notes he’s excited to see soccer continue to grow.

“It’s going to give the kids another opportunity to play another sport and certainly a growing sport, and a sport that oftentimes young families moving to a community look at. Their assumption is you have a football program, you have a baseball program, but kids like soccer. And so parents do look for that nowadays. Happy to see that come to fruition here in our community.”

The inaugural match for both teams will be a home doubleheader against Humboldt in Grand Junction this afternoon. The girls will start at 4:30pm with the boys to follow. You can hear both contests on 98.9FM KGRA and streamed on raccoonvalleyradio.com.