‘Stay, Start, Stop’: How Grove City girls soccer team found its chemistry
Thursday, October 15, 2026
By Michael Rich
mrichnotwealthy@gmail.com
Madilynn Holt (center) has moved into various positions in her high school career to help the Grove City Greyhounds be successful. Photo: Kevin Rouch
Stay, start and stop are three words that have defined the success of the Grove City girls soccer team this season.
It was born out of a journal prompt that coach Chelsea Hyatt uses early in the season to help teammates get to know one another on a more personal level.
The Greyhounds also use it during games, and it’s helped them to a lot of success.
“Sometimes in a huddle, people get all over the place and start yelling things and it just brings us down,” senior midfielder Madilynn Holt said. “This is a more logical approach on how to fix our game. I think that’s helpful.”
When Hyatt took over the program before the 2023 season, one of the things she wanted to establish was a culture where her players cared about each other.
She had a vested interest after all. Hyatt played for the Greyhounds before graduating in 2008.
What is a stay, start, stop?
“We removed soccer from it at first,” Hyatt said. “What’s something in your life that you want to stay doing? (It’s) something in your life that already makes you happy, that brings you joy or that you’re doing well.
“(What’s) something in your life that you want to stop doing? Sometimes it’s as simple as ‘I need to stop staying up so late.’ (And what’s) something in your life you want to start doing?”
She’ll split the players into small groups so they can share together and then bring them together as a team.
“Especially for incoming freshmen, (it) can be a very vulnerable experience to share these kinds of things with their teammates,” Hyatt said. “But I think there’s power in it. They write them out, think about them and then we let them share them in small groups at first. And then we give them the opportunity to share them with the whole team. It’s kind of like an icebreaker.”
Stay, start, stop has been used during games to help players identify these things on the field.
Sage Ford has been a stalwart on defense for the Greyhounds, who are currently in the top ten in Ohio’s Division I. Photo: Kevin Rouch
“I think for our team, we needed to provide communication all over the field,” Holt said. “It’s something that was kind of recurring during huddles that we were talking about. At some point, it just clicked. I felt like when I was on the field, I could just hear everybody. It makes the game go a lot smoother when you can hear everybody.”
The success is apparent.
Despite coming off a 5-0 loss at Olentangy Berlin on Oct. 13, the Greyhounds are 11-2-3 overall and are seeded sixth in the Division I district tournament.
Grove City, which closes its regular season schedule at home against Olentangy on Oct. 15, opens postseason play Oct. 22 against 21st-seeded Central Crossing.
The winner will face either seventh-seeded Delaware or 23rd-seeded Licking Heights for a district title Oct. 29.
Grove City was 9-0-3 in its first 12 matches. The Greyhounds are ninth in the latest MaxPreps Division I state rankings.
Berlin is second and Grove City’s only other loss was a 2-0 decision to sixth-ranked Upper Arlington on Oct. 1.
They’ve also tied eighth-ranked Dublin Coffman (1-1 on Sept. 1) and Division II second-ranked Watterson (1-1 on Aug. 18).
Grove City won the OCC-Ohio Division at 4-0-1 for its first league title since 2019. It was the Greyhounds third league championship overall, also winning one in 1983.
But the season hasn’t been without adversity. Holt has been filling in on defense for junior Sophie Sweigart, who suffered a season-ending knee injury against UA.
Sweigart has been a key part of the Greyhounds as a center-back for the last two seasons.
“(Sweigart) is so loved by her teammates and they actually wore her No. 17 on their wrists for our game (against Worthington Kilbourne on Sept. 8),” Hyatt said. “(Holt) can do it all.
“There was a point when (Holt) was on JV a few years ago where she ended up in goal because they went down a goalkeeper. She’s the kind of kid that will do anything for you and do it at 100%.”
Grove City’s Stella Weber (7) has 13 goals and four assists to pace the Greyhounds this season. Photo: Kevin Rouch
Junior forward Stella Weber has 13 goals and four assists, junior midfielder Ava Blount has six goals and seven assists, senior forward Heidi Keeney has seven goals and four assists and junior forward Delaney Waller has three goals and five assists to lead Grove City’s offense.
Junior goalkeeper Lorin Gabriel has 19 saves and has combined with her defense of juniors Sage Ford, Lexi Rose and sophomores Lucy Burlingame and Tessa Bibler for six shutouts.
“A lot of our girls are really hard on themselves,” said Ford, who has two goals and an assist. “They tend to talk negatively or have negative self-talk at points during the season.
“Our coach has this thing where if she hears somebody saying something negative about themselves … she has them say three nice things about themselves before they can move on.”
Making mistakes is part of sports and life. Everybody makes them.
“It’s not so much a struggle with low self-esteem,” Ford said. “It’s facing adversity. They end up reflecting inward instead of viewing it as a collaborative thing.”
One example of external adversity happened Sept. 3 when the Greyhounds traveled to Marysville. The game was suspended because of the weather.
The next day, the weather still hadn’t cleared. So, Hyatt used it as an opportunity to bring the team together inside for some journaling.
The team wrote down some goals, like winning a league championship or scoring two goals or more per game and allowing one or fewer.
But then Hyatt wrote down each player’s name on a separate piece of paper and had each team member write down one nice thing about them anonymously.
“It was just to show that this is what your teammates see in you,” Ford said.
Holt made sure her teammates knew that they’re loved. She remembered the one she wrote for her goalie Gabriel in particular.
“I told her she’s saved our butt so many times,” Holt said.
Tessa Bibler (4) is part of the Grove City defense that has posted six shutouts this season. Photo: Kevin Rouch