As of Friday, January 17th, the boy’s Junior Varsity Soccer team officially achieved a 10 win season. This milestone was accomplished following their 2-0 victory against Lancaster High School, which marks the official halfway point of the season. This also puts the team at a 3 game win streak. Last season, the boys finished their season with a record of five wins, seven losses, and three draws. It is truly amazing to see that our team has improved so much, which brings hope for the future of the boy’s soccer program. This is largely due to the efforts achieved by the new coach, Charles Gordon.

For the past couple of seasons, the junior varsity program was run by Coach Ryan Carper who focused largely on conditioning. With the addition of coach Charles Gordon, the team has been able to focus on the technical aspect of soccer, given that coach Charles Gordon has proven to be an extremely successful coach over the years. For example, he coached his 2002 boys club soccer team to win first place in the Gold League, and they went on to win the nationally recognized State Cup. It’s safe to say that the boys are in good hands with Coach Charlie.

The boys soccer team is captained by defender Damon Smith, as well as midfielder Davien Karanikolas and forward Johnny Arciga. The team consists of a majority of freshmen, though it does include a few sophomores and juniors. The boys have been putting in lots of time and effort into their training, with the goal of becoming “the strongest JV team Quartz Hill has ever seen.” The boys are truly not far from it. Coach Charlie states, “I’m very pleased with the team’s performance to date, given that each individual player, as well as the collective team, has shown strong development. As the team has progressed through the season, it has been very rewarding to watch them unite together and play for each other.”

As far as the team’s strengths and weaknesses go, it is hard to point out flaws aside from the lack of chemistry or experience of playing together. Coach Charlie said, “The team has numerous strengths. However, the biggest is their desire to play together and compete to their best ability daily. As well, our biggest area of growth is improving daily as we are a new team needing time, on task, together.”

In all, with the addition of Coach Charlie, the JV team has a bright future ahead of it. Coach Charlie is “very proud of these boys” and we should all be. Good luck for the rest of the season!