Josh Hughes' debut season as Franklin's men's soccer coach offered its fair share of challenges. Perhaps the biggest was having enough players available for his first spring.

With the 15 freshmen coming in last fall — more than half the roster — there weren't but a few days to build any cohesion before the 2025 season started for real.

"It's tough to tell where the cracks are until you start leaking a little bit," Hughes said. "Last year, coming into the spring with the numbers that we had, I didn't really have a chance to test things, and so we were figuring things out on the fly a little bit during the fall season."

Despite running into that headwind, the Grizzlies were able to improve their record and lay a foundation for the future. So this fall, even with 31 underclassmen on the squad, things feel far more established heading into the second season of the Hughes era.

"It's just a lot easier to keep the culture from last year, and help transition these new guys in and help build and raise the level," senior midfielder Russell Bilohlavek said.

Bilohlavek, along with sophomores Carter Wynberry, Owen Ott and Mason Tolliver, were all cited by Hughes for their leadership through this past spring and during August training.

Though the Grizzlies remain quite young overall, several players return with quality experience. Bilohlavek, Wynberry and sophs Jacobo Alarcon Salazar, Enzo Crivari and Lane Trump all reached double digits in starts; another second-year player, Owen Ott, was close behind with eight. Each of those players logged at least 900 minutes on the pitch in 2025.

Trump tied for the team lead in both goals and assists.

That group should be bolstered by a talented group of Franklin newcomers that has already made its mark this preseason — and perhaps just as importantly, it hasn't bred any animosity among the veterans.

The goal across the board is to make the team better, regardless of who's getting the most minutes.

"Some of the new guys, right away, stamped their names on a couple of spots that used to belong to some of our older guys," Hughes said, "and that hasn't been a problem."

Franklin begins the 2026 season with the expectations still relatively low from the outside; the Grizzlies were ninth in the HCAC's preseason coaches poll. Hughes and his team have higher hopes — but as the coach notes, that's true of every other team in the league going into the season.

Right now, the primary concern is doing today what will help lead to better results down the line.

"The objective is to figure out what we can do right now ... that in three months from now is going to get me a little bit closer to what I want," Hughes said. "And that's the way that we have to operate. We have to be obsessed with the process and let the outcomes take care of themselves."

Whatever those outcomes might be, starting with Tuesday evening's home match against Wabash, the Grizzlies all believe they're in a far better place now than they were during that first spring when Hughes arrived a year and a half ago.

"We're still young," Hughes said. "We've got more that we're going to have to learn and figure out, more growing pains to go through, for sure. But I think we're starting from a higher point than we started from last year."

Ideally, that translates to finishing at a higher point come November.