NILES — When the Niles boys soccer team begins preseason practice today, it will have a new, but familiar face coaching it.

Abel Fonseca, who took over the Vikings’ girls soccer team in 2018, will replace Ryan Haines as the boys soccer coach. Haines resigned earlier this year.

Fonseca, a 1995 Dowagiac graduate, is no stranger to soccer, having coached at various levels throughout his career. He also is no stranger to the Niles boys program, having assisted Haines.

He has been helping develop youth soccer leagues in Dowagiac and Edwardsburg since 2009. He also founded the Michiana Storm Soccer Club in Edwardsburg, but he recently stepped down as the head coach.

Fonseca is coming off of his second season with the Niles girls program, which culminated with the Vikings winning their first district match in 20 years.

Fonseca said that the culture of the Niles girls program is changing for the better. He hopes to be able to build on what Haines started and continue to change the boys culture as well.

“I was fortunate to be an assistant under Ryan,” he said. “He started making the change a couple of years ago. You can see things are very similar. In taking over the boys program, I will put my little spin on it.”

Fonseca said that he was happy that Haines got the ball rolling and now he and his staff are willing to put the time into it to finish the job.

He knows that playing in the SMAC is a real challenge and that improvement may not be measured in wins or losses.

“We had that a little bit with the girls season,” Fonseca said. “We played a lot better against some of the bigger schools, but we did not see a win as the outcome. With the boys, if we can progress and cut the scores down and make them more competitive, we will at least see that we are heading in the right direction. Playing in the SMAC is really tough.”

The boys team will have a bit more experience than the girls team he inherited, which he hopes will help the Vikings get off to a quicker start than the girls team did.

He also will have a blend of experience and solid underclassmen who have travel team experience under the belts.

“We should have more of a team aspect,” he said. “We always want to be more of a team than a couple of superstars. I think we have that here going into this year because our talent is dispersed throughout the team. But we won’t really know until tryouts begin.”

Once tryouts have been completed, Niles will get its first true test when the Vikings host Dowagiac, a Division 3 district champion the past two seasons, on Aug. 19. The non-conference match is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m.