Due to past events Boys Soccer team has experienced some changes, making the younger team (team A) in better conditions to be able to succeed winning HS Copa Columbus.

Boys soccer team was divided into team A  and team B. Team A composed of 9,10,11th graders and the team B composed only of seniors. During Copa they were in different groups and ended up playing against each other during the semi-finals. Things like not going to practice and being divided had a poll on the seniors performance during the tournament.

“In general the team did not train, not only the seniors to see that people did not train the others were demotivated,” said Santiago Velez team B captain.

Events such as the fight that the happened during binationals, heavily influenced the performance of boys soccer team (see article covering that event). After such events the team changed completely, seniors stopped going to practice because they were discouraged and because they couldn’t fulfill their ultimate goal of winning.

“It (the fight) affects a lot, apart from the fact that they were demotivated because it was a team that had a clear objective of being champions in binationals, and they could not get it and they got into a huge problem with the fight,” said head coach Urbano Mesa.

Something that determined the performance of the team was the unity that both teams had. Because team A was a newer team, they were just started to play together, and learning to play with each other. Team B had been playing together from a long time and they had a different mentality.

“Team A were much younger players but they played more as a whole, and they had in mind to know each other and win the tournament, in contrast, Team B had more individual characteristics,” said Mesa.

One thing that the seniors needed to cope with was losing in their last year against the younger team. But they were mature enough to handle it with pride.

“We [seniors] were a very good generation in soccer, and it was not something difficult to lose against the younger team, the difficult thing in general was to lose,” said Velez.

Thinking about the future of the team it changed with new members coming in and trying to make the soccer team what it had been years before.

“We [team A] had more in mind to know each other because we knew that those who were going to participate in Copa are the ones who are going to participate in Binationals in November,” said Simon Pelaez Team A captain.