Warriorettes building an identity before season opener

The White County Middle School girls soccer team may not enter the 2026 season with the most experience, but head coach Cameron Dronebarger believes that doesn't have to limit what this group can accomplish.

Instead of focusing on wins and losses, Dronebarger has spent the offseason building something he believes will have a lasting impact: a team committed to improvement, hard work and learning the game the right way.

White County opens its season with a playday in DeKalb County on Saturday before officially kicking off the regular season Monday night at home against Cumberland County.

Now entering his fourth season leading the program, Dronebarger said one of the biggest keys to this year's team will be leadership from captains Ana Dronebarger, Piper Green and Tinsley Keen, while also challenging the rest of the roster to embrace leadership opportunities.

"We are always hoping for our captains to take large leadership roles, both on and off the field," Dronebarger said. "At the same time, I am hoping to see some of our other experienced girls take a leap this year in leadership because I am a firm believer that any successful team has to have complete buy-in from all players."

That buy-in has already shown itself throughout the summer. Dronebarger said the team's greatest strength isn't necessarily found in a formation or a particular skill set. Instead, it's the attitude the players bring every day.

"I would say that this team's biggest strength is that they love to practice and take pride in practicing well," he said. "This has been something that we have put an emphasis on all preseason."

With a roster that entered the summer relatively inexperienced in the finer points of soccer, nearly every aspect of the game has been a point of emphasis.

"We truly have had to work on it all," Dronebarger said. "From fundamentals to complex formation tactics and beyond. This was a team coming in that was pretty inexperienced in their soccer knowledge, so we have really worked on the cerebral part of the game a lot. They have to understand the game to be able to play at a high level."

Because of that learning curve, Dronebarger isn't measuring success by the scoreboard. Instead, he wants to see steady progress from the first whistle of the season to the last.

"With an inexperienced team, it would be unfair to judge success by wins and losses," he said. "The way that I will know that we were successful is if from day one to the end of the season, we continually grew and raised our level of play."

He believes the team has already shown that kind of growth since beginning offseason work in June. However, that growth has yet to be battle-tested. The biggest unknown is how this year's Warriorette socccer team will respond when adversity inevitably arrives.

"I think a concern with most teams in any sport is how they will respond to adversity," Dronebarger said. "When they get down, do they keep fighting or do they accept their fate? This is why the mental side of the game is so important."

For the Warriorettes, teh hope is that the identity they've been developing over the summer continues to present itself front and center throughout the fall - especially on game days.

"Our identity is to be the hardest working team in our district," Dronebarger said. "We do not want to have a single day where we leave the practice or game field and feel like any team in our district competed with us. Our girls have truly learned to love putting in a day of hard work on the practice field, and with that mentality, it is sure to be the same when the games come around."

For Dronebarger, this season isn't about chasing a certain number of wins. It's about building confident, knowledgeable players who compete relentlessly every time they step on the field. If his team can do that, the scoreboard will take care of itself.