It was the end of an era for Austin summer soccer, and the Austin U18 girls team had to settle for a scoreless tie against REVS, a team based out of Rosemount, in Wescott Athletic Complex Monday.

The game signaled the final contest for Austin coaches Tom Wuertz and Jeff Grev, who had coached the team since they were a U9 squad. The team has Tom’s daughter Maya on it, and he has also enjoyed getting to know the whole squad over the last decade.

“It’s fun to be able to coach the same group of girls more or less for the last ten years,” Tom said. “We’ve watched them progress and improve as soccer players, but probably most importantly we’ve watched the young women that they’ve become. The best part is the camaraderie and the family feeling that we have together. We’ll miss it for sure. We had a lot of fun road trips over the years and lots of fun memories.”

Maya had multiple shot attempts in the first half and Austin (4-3-3 overall) had eight shots on goal as a team in the tie. Maya said the team was well aware of the fact that it would be their last game as a group after they’d spend several summers together.

“In the beginning, we were talking about how it would be our last time playing together and it was pretty emotional. My dad’s been doing it for awhile,” Maya said “I’ve always liked having my dad as my coach. He’s not easy on me and he always tells me what I need to improve on. It’s been nice having him to look up to and help me improve.”

Myia Hoium had three saves in the first half for Austin and Robin Weaver had four saves in the second half. Austin had to play much of the second half underhanded as it suffered an injury and had no reserves available.

Maya said the amount of minutes the Austin U18 team logged in over the summer will help them in the fall.

“I think because we played short most of the time, that will help us with our endurance during the fall,” Maya said. “We won’t take having subs for granted and it’ll be a lot nicer to to have people to give us breaks.”

Grev said he’s enjoyed coaching summer soccer with Tom and he’s seen some big improvements in the facilities Austin has to play on. With the recent addition of field turf to Wescott, Austin now has one of the premiere soccer fields in southeast Minnesota.

“We get a lot of compliments on the fine soccer facilities we have here in Austin,” Grev said. “This represents Austin very well. We used to play out on the fairgrounds, where the dandelions might have outnumbered the blades of grass.”

Tom said he’s seen the Austin team make strides over the years, and he’s looking forward to watching them play in the fall.

“We’ve seen some improvement,” Tom said. “We used to get blown pretty good, but we’ve managed to hang in there and the whole girls program is coming around. We’re not to were we want to be yet, but we’re getting there.”