High school names its new soccer coach

Mountain Home High School Activities Director Mark Cotton announced late last week that Curtis Viall will take over as the head coach of the Mountain Home Lady Tigers varsity soccer program.

"Curtis Viall has been an essential member of the Mountain Home soccer community over the years, and I truly feel that he is going to do a phenomenal job as our head coach," Cotton said. "He has coached club soccer in Mountain Home for many years and has also been the head JV coach here at Mountain Home High School. I look forward to seeing Coach Viall take our girls soccer program to the next level in 2015."

Coach Viall, who has coached the junior varsity team the past couple of years, admits he's excited about leading the girls varsity squad.

"It'll be fun," the coach said.

Viall is familiar with the girls playing soccer, leading both high school and local soccer club teams.

"Pretty much any girl that's in the program from fifth grade to a senior, I've helped coach or at least been involved with in terms of their soccer for the last six to eight years," he said.

Coach Viall thinks the future is bright for Mountain Home girls soccer.

"We have a really strong group of juniors and seniors," he said. "We have some incoming freshmen and sophomores that are definitely going to push them this year. I think what we really have to do is step up our competitiveness level -- that's the real key.

"We have the skills, we have the abilities to compete for district, we've just got to work and find a way to keep working harder and compete at a higher level," he added.

Coach Viall indicated that he's always looking for new players for the soccer squad.

"We're always looking for kids in the program, and I think it's important for the Mountain Home perspective that we build bottom up and we keep doing that," he said. "My goal is to get more fourth, fifth, sixth graders in that younger age in the competitive program so we have the skills by the time that they already get here in high school."