Last week we went to Jack’s End of Season Banquet for his high school soccer team.
As Jack is a senior, this will be his last year playing competitive soccer. It was bittersweet to see something that he has spend over 10 years doing come to an end.
He had a good 10 years, including many years with Adam as his coach.
After COVID ended Jack started high school soccer.
His Freshman year he played for the Fresh/Soph team under Coach Matt Dunaway. Unfortunately he pulled his hip flexor this year and spent most of the season on the side line.
When we got to the high school level, we realized Jack had to do more to get to the higher level teams, so that year we signed him up for travel soccer.
The next year, he was able to successfully move up to JV with Coach Matt Levine.
They had a great year! They even won the Under Armor Tournament. And Jack got an award, for Most Improved Player of the Year.
Around this time I saw an email asking if anyone would like to take over the emails and website for the high school soccer booster program. I volunteered for the position and started to work with the program.
Once the coaches got to know me they would chat with me after practices and games. I told the Fresh/Soph coach that my husband did some coaching then proceeded to tell him the story where my husband won soccer fest by finding a way to use the worst player of the team to their advantage against the best player on the opponents team.
The next day when Adam and I went to pick up Jack from practice, all the coaches descended on our car and asked if Adam would like to help coach.
Jack had a great year in 2023. He recieved another award this year, this time for Defensive Player of the Year.
His final year, he played for JV. He was awarded the Captain position. However, on the last practice before the season started, he broke his nose. He had to have surgery and stay on the sidelines until it healed.
Once he was able to play again, he still had to wear a protective mask.
Finally in the last month of the season, he was able to play mask free.
Once again Jack received an award in his final year, this year it was for Leadership.
In addition to the banners shown above on Senior Night, the booster program also gave out hoodies to all the Seniors.
Jack has already expressed an interest in playing soccer off season with his travel team. And maybe he will join an intramural team when he gets to college? So it may not be totally over for him as far as enjoying the sport, but the competitive nature, where you are hand picked because of your level of expertise, is over now.
Maybe he’s not even sad? When I was in high school I never thought about the fact that my senior year was a long series of last moments. I was too busy looking forward to the future – college!
And we are in the thick of college now. Jack has completed all his applications and is waiting to hear back from most of colleges that he applied to. Stay tuned for an update on this, hopefully soon!
I guess the real question is, will Adam still coach?!
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