AJA High School Creates New Boys Soccer Team
Basketball. Baseball. Flag football. All these sports teams have more than enough players to run every year. Soccer, however, has always just barely missed the ball. The lack of interest in the sport has kept the team from forming for years, until sophomore Ari Monheit, current captain of the boys soccer team, took matters into his own hands. “I realized that we weren’t gonna have enough people,” he explained, “So I helped recruit.”
Ari took the initiative in starting the boys team this year. He contacted Coach Thomas Forbes, the coach for the high school girls and middle school soccer teams, and asked him if he’d be willing to coach a boys high school soccer team, too; Coach Thomas was open to it. However, it was not initially clear if Ari would be able to recruit enough players: In recent years, there were not enough athletes to field a team. Once there were enough players interested in soccer this year, Athletics Director Rodney Zimmerman reached out to other athletics directors and coaches to join the boys class AA league. By the time the soccer season rolled around, all the pieces had fallen into place, and the high school boys soccer team was born.
As the coach of the team, Coach Thomas understands the ins and outs of being a soccer player, and he enjoys “the opportunity to be able to teach the boys new skills . . . enhance the skills they already possess and . . . be able to give them different perspectives around the game.” He doesn’t only feel like a coach to his players, though. He also enjoys giving them “different perspectives of things they may encounter later on in life,” which gives him the feeling of being a “big brother” to his student athletes.
Like all big brothers, he has expectations, and he is proud to admit that the team exceeded them. He expected “two or three wins,” but the team has won five games.
Coach Thomas is not the only one who is surprised by how well the team did. Senior Adiel Livnat, defender, agreed, “We’re definitely having a better season than I expected.”
However, their success didn’t prompt many other students to watch the games. Coach Thomas noticed a lack of fan attendance at AJA’s home games. He wishes students would come “to see the progress the boys soccer team has made,” in addition to giving the players “an extra bit of confidence” and support through their successes and losses.
Beyond the improvement in the AJA community’s support for its soccer team, the players themselves still have room to grow. Coach Thomas does not ignore that either. He emphasizes that they need to trust “each and every other player’s ability” more. Ari stressed this need for stronger relationships between players, saying “the team can improve by having better communication. . . on the field and off the field,” as well as more overall “commitment,” such as coming to every practice.
Ultimately, the high school boys soccer team took a lot of effort and time to assemble, but it was, by all accounts, worth it. The team has a lot of room to improve, but it has exceeded expectations in terms of performance on the field. The AJA Jaguars are “on a roll” in freshman Yoav Eyal’s words, and it doesn’t look like they aim to slow down.
“Coach Thomas expected ‘two or three wins’, but the team has won five games.”
Comments are closed.