Familiar faces took lead for boys soccer

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first of a two-part series on Garland County soccer players who were already showing promise before the season was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the first game of the season played just 14 days before what might be the last, soccer players across Garland County were only getting started before the Arkansas Activities Association called for a "dead period" banning all high school athletes from practicing or competing.

While just three Garland County schools compete in the sport, several athletes were showing promise, despite just a handful of games having been played.

Senior Grant Viscardis and sophomore Imanol Barragan were the top two goal scorers for Lakeside in their first six games this season. The two combined for 12 of the team's 16 goals with Viscardis scoring in 7.

The senior striker has scored in five of the team's games, earning braces with two goals apiece against Dardanelle and Pulaski Academy while knocking in one each against Van Buren, Greenbrier and Russellville.

"He's one of my strikers," Lakeside head coach Craig Moses said. "He's a goal scorer. ... Just for the no time we've been playing, he has definitely scored a lot of goals for us."

Barragan opened the season with a brace against Dardanelle before picking up a hat trick against Hope, and senior midfielder Bobby Rhodes has been an asset all over the field with a goal and an assist.

"[Barragan] is a guy that steps up and does a lot of goal scoring for us," Moses said. "Bobby Rhodes, who's a senior, has really stood strong and stepped up for us so far this year."

While the Rams' offense has helped the team come away with a 4-2 record, the defense has been just as strong, allowing just six goals while producing three clean sheets. Leading the defense have been junior sweepers Daniel Gaston and Josh Porter and senior fullback Kade Tarbet. Seniors Ruston Ashley and Jacob Little were both competing for the starting goalkeeper job.

"Josh Porter is a junior that has just come on as a defensive player for us," Moses said. "He's a transfer in from ... Gospel Light, and he has been a really good asset for us. Kade Tarbet has been another good asset. He's a senior, and he's been really strong in the back. Daniel Gaston, he's another junior; he's stepped up a lot for us. ... Those guys have really stepped up and played well for us so far this year."

Moses said that he feels like the team had a good chance to win the school's second state title.

"We can go as far as we want to," he said. "Like we've told them all year long, you're as good as you want to be. I could see them in the state playoffs, and I could see them going to the state championship game, and I could see them playing for that and winning that, but at the same time, it's also a group that could possibly get beat in the first or second round. ... They have to be ready to play every game like it's the last game."

Moses said that he has encouraged the team to stay active and "touch the ball every day" during the mandated break.

"They know they've got to stay in shape," he said.

In their first season under head coach Cito Dickson, Lake Hamilton got off to a strong start, going 4-1-1 in the first two weeks of the season.

Juniors Dereck Strong and Eli Shields, along with seniors Peyton Spencer and William Ziegler, stood out early for the Wolves. Strong, the team's leading scorer last season, was leading the team offensively before the break with 7 goals and 2 assists while Shields tallied 2 goals and 2 assists while forcing 19 steals in the midfield.

"The biggest difference I've seen in Dereck is just his calm for the game," Dickson said. "Last year, he would get frustrated a lot, and for whatever reason, maybe the different strategy as far as a team as a whole or maybe a different formation we ran, it put him on an island a lot. He tended to have to play a lot by himself, and it was just really frustrating. I'm trying to change the mentality of the team and trying to set a new culture, and part of that culture was your behavior on the field. ... He's matured in a way that he understands that it's bigger than him, and that when he does take a play off to ponder a mistake that he's really affecting the whole team, not just himself."

Shields, who trailed Strong by a single goal last season, has "stepped up and really taken the role of leader on this team seriously."

"He's a team captain, chosen by his teammates, not by coaching staff, and he's really stepped into that, and he's doing a really good job of keeping his teammates accountable," Dickson explained. "He wants to play at a higher level, and he's pushing his team to get to that high level as well. I think doing things halfway is no longer acceptable.... They realized nothing's guaranteed, and if we're going to play at an elite level and get recognized as playing at a higher level, we need to take advantage of every opportunity we get."

Dickson, who was a volunteer coach last season, has been pleased with what his is seeing from Ziegler and Spencer as well, especially not having worked with them before.

"They both play defense but different roles, and they've really embraced [it]," he said. "They've shown some really amazing things in the short games we've had, and they're first-time for me. They came to the team for the first time this year as seniors, so I didn't know them that well. But they've really kind of stepped up as seniors to take those roles of authority on the field."

With the team being unable to train together or use the field, Dickson has several things that he has done to help keep the players active during the break. He has given them conditioning workouts to keep them in shape, but he also wants them to focus on their ball skills.

"The other aspect I think is important is the touch, how comfortable they feel with the ball on their foot," he said. "I actually got a digital soccer ball, and they pass that around. You use an app, and it requires you to make a lot of foot skills. So you place a camera in front of you, the whole thing's interactive. ... But the main thing I told them is get a soccer ball, get in your driveway, juggle that ball, keep that ball on your foot because that's the main thing. They've got to be comfortable with that ball on their foot. ... I said, 'If you come back still in shape and you come back more comfortable with the ball on the foot, we lost nothing.'"

Hot Springs has a strong offensive presence this season, but the team struggled somewhat in its tournament, going 1-3-1 before the hiatus.

Senior Christian Jovel, who played in a floating position last year, has seen time all over the field in the Trojans' first five games.

"We've moved him around a little bit," said Hot Springs head coach Geoffrey Hedrick. "So far this year he's seen a little bit of everything -- defense, midfield and forward. He showed great promise when we put him up at the front, creating two goals in 10 minutes, the first 10 minutes we moved him up top. We were moving formations around, just kind of tinkering with things before the season started. Those tournaments and those types of games are where you get it done."

Sophomore Walter Martinez and senior defender David Carter were also making themselves known.

"Walter Martinez, he just came here last year," Hedrick said. "He's a 10th grader, 6-2, 6-3, pretty tall and pretty physical. He's going to be one to watch the next couple of years. David Carter, he's a team leader."

Hedrick said his players are just "chomping at the bit" to return to the field, but he encouraged them to run and work with the ball daily to keep themselves in shape and ready for the remainder of the season.

"They should be training, individually," he said. "There's no way to really enforce that. Just hope that you've taught them enough for them to know that when they get back out there -- we're mid-season and they're not mid-season ready, then we're in trouble."

Hedrick said that he has no idea where the season will go from here, but he hopes that the team will be ready regardless of the decision by the AAA.

"We'll be ready for anything, or at least we like to think that we'd be prepared for anything," he said. "There's a lot of cancellations everywhere. It would not surprise me at all if they said tomorrow that spring season's canceled.

"[My seniors] are gonna be disappointed. Most of them have prepped for quite a while for this season."

Sports on 04/06/2020

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