Every year, players on South’s Boys’ Varsity Soccer team face the same challenges: rebuilding their lineup, relearning their struggles, and becoming leaders. High school sports are unique in the way that the most reliable thing about them is change. 

There’s a popular saying: “If you don’t win, you lose.” But in sports, this isn’t always true, especially when you have a new roster every single season. It’s easy to see why the beginning of the season has a learning curve for most high school teams, and just looking at a win-loss-tie record or a score online makes it harder to see past that. For South’s varsity boys’ soccer team, this is the case, with a win-loss-tie record of 4-2-2 as they enter the fifth week of the season.

For South, the season wasn’t off to a great start with a 1-1 tie to Beaverton, a 0-1 loss to Willamette, and another 0-0 tie to Sheldon a few games after that. However, like any adaptable team, South went on to secure a 4-0 win against North Medford and another 3-0 win against South Medford soon after. 

When it comes to the art of high school sports, the mark of a great team is simply how well they can adapt to a new slate of players. For many, this is their first year in a starting role or on varsity altogether, and a big part of that learning curve is understanding the new responsibilities that come with that.

Senior Finley Thurman, who is one of the new captains for the varsity team, echoed these ideas as he noted the change in responsibility from being a varsity player to a varsity captain. 

“It’s more leadership than just another player on the field,” he said. “It’s kind of come natural to me because I was captain of my club team.But it’s still difficult because you don’t know how the season is going to go, so there’s always new challenges.” 

As the season progresses, despite an arguably rocky start, South continues to show resilience and the players know not to be rattled by a few tough games. Senior Tejas Sanghvi knows the team isn’t close to giving up on their goals, which include  “consistently just beating every team, winning league, winning state.”“We have bigger things coming,” Sanghvi said.

Article by Maggie McMillen