Emporia’s new front line showing more footspeed,endurance
The season is young — one game young, in fact — but already, Jesus Saldana can see a couple of big advantages he and his Emporia High soccer teammates will have over some of their other opponents.
These Spartans have some guys, Saldana included, who can really run — and keep on running. In their season-opening 9-1 win over Junction City last Friday at TRYSA, the Spartans’ advantage in speed and endurance was in full evidence.
“I could see that right away, because I could tell that our guys were more conditioned,” Saldana said. “Their guys, right away... I saw some guy trying to call out one of the subs. That got to me — I was like, I guess our team’s more motivated or whatever.”
There’s more to soccer, of course, than just having guys who can outrun the opposition all night without getting tired. But the speed of guys like Saldana, Yonathan Pachacano and Erick Sandoval — and their ability to stay energized — gives Spartans coach Angel Cornejo more strength in those departments than he had on last year’s team.
“(In) endurance, yes we are better than last year, because we’ve been active all summer, and kids have been playing throughout the summer,” Cornejo said. “And this conditioning — we had a week of conditioning like two weeks before our practice, and that helped, too. Almost everyone on varsity attended that week, and that was pretty intense.”
Saldana, Pachacano, Sandoval and Christian Landaverde are the four guys who Cornejo says stand out most in the speed department, and Saldana and Pachacano each had two goals in the win over Junction City, as did Jared Schafer and Agustin Armenta. Schafer, a starter at one of the forward spots, doesn’t have that same level of speed, but he can pass, shoot and finish. Center midfielders Saul Trujillo, who had one goal against Junction, and Arnoldo Torres aren’t some of Emporia’s faster guys, either, but they compensate with good passing ability themselves to complement the Spartans’ speed demons.
In losing first team All-Stater Alex Guevara off last year’s team, the Spartans lost their best playmaker and leading goal-scorer. But in terms of raw speed, Cornejo doesn’t believe Guevara is on the same level as the fastest of the new guys up front.
“Alex had speed,” Cornejo said. “But I think the guys right now — like Christian, Jesus, Erick — they’re much faster than Alex. Yes, definitely we have a lot more speed than last year, and it really changes the game a little bit more.”
Ball control, though — one of the strengths that made Guevara such a dangerous player — is what the Spartan frontline still needs to work on the most to maximize their potential.
“The style of game that I would like to play with this team is just fast-paced soccer, which is really hard to defend,” Cornejo said. “It doesn’t matter if you have a really good defense — it’s just hard to defend when a team just passes the ball quick and moves, and when the forward has a lot of speed, it is hard to defend, no matter what. If two guys come against four, the two guys, if they can pass and they are fast, they have a pretty good chance of getting by those four. So it is nice to have that speed we have right now.”
And that endurance, too. Against Junction, the Spartans quickly found out how beneficial their preseason conditioning had been.
“Actually, during the first half, I asked everyone who was tired, and they said, ‘No, we’re not,’” Cornejo said. “And I can’t remember who said, ‘I guess the 5 a.m. practices helped.’ I’m like, ‘Exactly — that’s where it pays off, guys.’ But they’re in good shape to run the whole game.”
It’s important not to draw too many conclusions from one game, though. The Spartans will soon have to match up against better, more physical teams — as soon as Thursday, in fact, when they travel to Wichita Northwest. Centennial League play, with teams like Hayden and Washburn Rural, will bring plenty of tests to see whether the Spartans have the muscle to go with their speed and nonstop energy.
“I think they’re just waiting for a team that plays like that, so they can play like that, too,” Cornejo said. “I think we’re ready to play a physical game as well.”