DAPHNE, Alabama — The girls soccer team of Daphne High opens their 2013 season under new leadership this weekend. The Lady Trojans kickoff the season Friday at 5 p.m. with coach Jim Fawcett directing the 6A program.

Fawcett, a Glasgow, Scotland native, takes over for Rick Andrew, who has coached both the girls and boys teams the last few seasons. Andrew will focus solely on the boys club this spring.

With no seniors and five freshmen expected to start the Lady T’s eleven, the new coach said getting back to basics starting with solid defense is one key to success.

“We’re extremely young and will be in a rebuilding phase for a while,” Fawcett said. “But it’s a great group of hard-working girls and we’re all looking forward to testing ourselves against some good teams. A lot of them are familiar with the system that coach Andrew has established and had much success with. He’s been taking teams to the highest level in the state. He and the other coaches have all been so helpful with the transition. And it’s such a young team I feel like over time I will put my own stamp on a few things without making a lot of major changes right away. I think also we will simply do what we need in order to play with a basic but strong defense from the forward back because that’s where it all starts, defense. We will run a sweeper system, but also drop into a flat-four backfield sometimes. I think it helps, especially the younger players, see the field better.”

The Lady Trojans open Friday at 5 p.m. at Founders Park against Faith Academy followed by meeting No. 2-ranked Auburn at Majors Field about 8.p.m. The tournament continues for DHS at Trione Park in Daphne Saturday with Prattville and Trinity on the schedule.

He grew up playing futbol mainly as a defender and later played semi-professional rugby. “Obviously, with this lovely accent I grew up in Scotland,” he added. “As young as I can remember being, my friends and I always had soccer balls all around all the time. And I still love the game as much as ever. Now I guess my playing days are over but I enjoy instilling love for it for anyone at any age.”

Fawcett’s wife, Felicia, is a chemistry teacher at Daphne. They met at Auburn not long after they began their college studies there. Although he has worked with female athletes at the college level, he has not coached varsity high school girls before. Still, the father of four girls feels uniquely qualified.

“Well, I’m surrounded by girls at home and I love it and wouldn’t change a thing about that. It is unusual for me to coach girls at this level but it’s going great and I believe it is somewhat different compared to coaching the boys. But most of all I think they just want a coach who they trust to teach them and guide them and motivate them. As I said this group is so young, but they have high expectations as I do to continue coach Andrew’s legacy of building and maintaining the best team we can year in and year out.

“We want other teams to have the utmost respect for us but also we want our girls to have the utmost respect for whomever we are playing both as athletes and as students no matter what the score is,” he said. “I look for my students in the classroom and on the soccer field to be like that because ultimately it’s life we’re preparing them for.”