Bethel Christian's young soccer core to develop in 2019

By Junious Smith III

For Bethel Christian soccer, it’s all about improving with a young roster.

The Trojans’ varsity roster is comprised of no seniors, two juniors, two sophomores, two freshmen and six eighth graders. Bethel Christian head coach Nathan Pridgen said the team will take their lumps throughout the year, including a 9-0 loss to Greenville Christian on the season opener Tuesday, but there’s plenty of potential.

“We’ve got some good young talent,” Pridgen said. “We’ve got to plug holes on defense and get better with ball possession, but our biggest thing now is gaining experience. We’ve been practicing for about a month and this is what we’ve been working toward, playing the game. We’ve got some work to do, but our goal is to keep improving.”

Josh Banks, an eighth-grader on the team, said the team has the ability to improve and practices will help.

“On offense, we’re doing a lot of drills like passing and shooting,” Banks said. “I think we have a lot more potential and later on we should be able to score more goals in the games.”

Fellow eighth-grader, Nathan Armsby, will look to shore up the defense and said the future could be great.

“We’re trying to get better each time we go out there,” Armsby said. “We have to work on spreading out a little more on defense, which would help, but hopefully we can win games (as time goes by.”)