WINSLOW — Before she even showed up for the first preseason training camp of her varsity career, before she’d so much as kicked a ball or sprinted across a field of grass, people knew who Carly Warn was.
“Everybody in this town’s known it for a few years,” Winslow girls coach Steve Bodge said. “She’s a quality offenisve player, no doubt. She’s one of the fastest players I’ve ever coached in any sport over the years. She’s able to contorl the ball and do all the things a good scorer would have to do.”
Warn, a freshman, has four goals in seven games for Winslow, which is out to a 5-1-1 start after winning only six times in all of 2016.
“It’s nice that the people on the team have told me what (Bodge) says about me,” Warn said. “I was really excited. I was really happy. It’s my freshman year, and I was looking forward to playing with all these girls. I was shocked a little bit.”
Given her family’s proven soccer pedigree, she likely shouldn’t have been.
Last season as a junior captain, her older brother, Jake Warn, scored two goals in each of his first three playoff games as the Winslow boys captured their first regional championship since 2007.
“Every game last year we worked hard to not let it end,” Jake Warn said. “We’ve got 12 seniors this year I’ve been playing with since I don’t even remember when. We were probably U-10s. We definitely don’t want this season to end, either.
“We’re going to keep working hard and see where it takes us this year.”
But Warn’s senior season was almost derailed before it even started.
After breaking a bone in his foot during the track and field season last spring, Warn missed preseason training this summer and it was believed he could miss as much as half of the regular season. Instead, he missed only the first game of the season — scoring a goal in his first game back. He has been rounding into game shape, and last Saturday in a win over Erskine he hit a season high for minutes logged on the pitch.
Without Warn, Winslow is still a very good soccer team. With him, they turn back into the same explosive attacking team they were a year ago.
Not surprisingly, Carly Warn has tried to model her game after her older brother’s. Both are fast, good on the ball and able to break down defenders with their speed.
“He’s definitely been an influence on me,” Carly said. “I’ve always just looked up to him in sports and how he is as a person. He’s always tried to help me out as far as things I can do to be a better soccer player.”
“When it comes to sports, she doesn’t let much faze her,” Jake said of his younger sister. “She can just do her thing. She might have been a little intimidated coming in at first, but the girls were nice and she got into it.”
If there’s been any challenge Bodge has had with Carly, it’s trying the right place to take advantage of what she can do.
“Really, I still wonder, ‘Where is the best spot for her?'” Bodge said. “As far as our system, it’s a pretty basic 4-4-2. I like to have her up top, but there’s a little room in the midfield, too, where she can really shine. She fits anywhere.”
Soccer is the No. 1 sport for each of the Warn kids, and they play virtually year-round on travel teams and premier-level teams. Jake, who said it was before his eighth grade year that he became serious about his soccer career, was part of the Seacoast United U-19 team that won a national championship this summer in Indiana. Carly plays for Soccer Maine’s Olympic Development Program (ODP) and Central Maine United.
Aside from their style of play, there’s another way in which the Warns are remarkably similar.
“She’s your typical good athlete,” Bodge said. “She just shows up and does the work. There’s absolutely no prima donna whatsoever. It’s just the opposite of that. It’s why her teammates like her so much.”
Jake Warn, like his sister, isn’t one for talking — especially about himself.
Even as a seasoned senior captain, and not a fresh-faced incoming freshman, all he really wants to do is fit in with his teammates.
“I try not to (talk) or get caught up in that stuff. It’s easier just to focus on the game,” he said. “When it comes down to it, that’s why I’m playing, is for the game.”
Both the Winslow boys and girls teams seem to make that part of their culture.
“When I was a freshman, the Winslow seniors were pretty welcoming to all the freshmen. It didn’t matter if you were going to make the team or not,” Jake Warn said. “I never felt like I was trying to ‘get in with the team’ — everyone was very welcoming.”
With skill, speed and goal-scoring ability like each of the Warns possess, that’s not surprising.
Travis Barrett — 621-5621
tbarrett@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @TBarrettGWC
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