Season Wrap-Ups: Elkington Leads Soccer Team through Tumultuous Season
Travis Struble (12) has also been on varsity since his freshman year playing the position of both offensive center-mid and forward.
November 9, 2015
Senior captain Josh Elkington is one of the star athletes of the boys’ soccer team. He is one of the few seniors on the team, much less one who has started all four years of high school.
Elkington has been playing soccer ever since he was old enough to play club, which was when he turned four. His father loves soccer as much as he does, and is the one who instilled the sport into Elkington’s life.
Josh also has a model to look up to and follow to become a great player. “Sawyer ‘The God’ Lincoln inspired me to be the player I am today,” Elkington said. Sawyer Lincoln is an alumni and was Elkington’s teammate for two years before he graduated in the year 2014. Sawyer was a role model for all the younger boys on the team. This season, it was Elkington’s turn to be the team’s inspiration because of his several years of varsity experience and training. Elkington had to be the leader this year and show the younger players what was expected of them during the season, unlike his freshman year.
“My freshman season I started the majority of the varsity games and experienced for the first time good quality soccer. My senior season, I was the captain of the team and learned how to lead my teammates.”
Elkington’s skill set has changed over the years like the team. He has become more of a well rounded player and learned that “negativity hinders the productivity of teamwork”. Even if Elkington hadn’t scored as many goals as he would’ve liked, he loved to get the team out of sticky situations. He still had the ability to ‘swim’ through anything or anyone with a majestic purpose, much like a swan.
Although this year’s boys didn’t have the same skill sets as Elkington’s first high school team, yet they made up for it with the heart and great attitudes given on the field. This season the boys had played with a classic 4-4-2 formation which was easy for the underclassmen to understand. This was one of the strengths as a team; understanding what was happening and where each player needed to be during the progression of a play. Also that no matter the score, they gave everything they had on the pitch.
“Our teams strength was our heart we consistently left on the pitch. Meanwhile, our teams weakness was the amount of natural individual skill needed in varsity matches,” Elkington said.
Other than weaknesses there were setbacks happening every week of the season. Most of them were the usual injuries caused by the natural aggressiveness of the sport and the tough schedule, but there was one major hindrance in the middle of the season. A few of the varsity players were suspended due to misconduct. This caused some of the freshman and sophomores on JV to swing up to the vigorous varsity play for the first time.
Just like this year, Elkington expects there to be hardships to overcome next season with very little upperclassmen participation. But he believes that under Ted Weiss’ (11) leadership, the upcoming freshman will learn to fit into the dynamics of the team.
