Brooker’s eight tournament goals pace Demopolis soccer
The Demopolis High School soccer team is scheduled to have its home opener Tuesday, Feb. 25 against Tuscaloosa County High.
The Tigers sit at 2-2 after playing four contests last weekend in the Tuscaloosa Metro Tournament, a bracket that saw Demopolis bring home the runner-up trophy.
Demopolis got a hat trick from Adam Brooker in the opener against Paul Bryant, going on to win the match 8-1.
“We had a really good showing and then we had to face Northridge and they beat us 4-1 the same night,” Demopolis coach Brad Daniels said. “We finished up the tournament (Saturday). We beat Holy Spirit in the second round and we lost to Northridge again in the finals, 6-2.”
Brooker led the Tigers with eight goals in the tournament. Austin Brooks added two goals. Jeremy Chu, Zachary Chu, Daniel Dunn and Oscar Valdivia each scored a goal for Demopols over the weekend.
Valdivia also led the Tigers in steals while Austin Beckum racked up more than 30 saves in goal. As a team, the Tigers took more than 50 shots in the tournament and had some eight players with at least one assist.
“I am very proud of the squad with the limited practice time after the snow and rain delays,” Daniels said of his team’s effort. “A second place finish is a great start for our season.”
The season is Daniels’ first with the Demopolis program, but is not his first as a soccer coach.
“I learned a little bit about (soccer) when I was a kid, but it wasn’t a big thing in south Alabama,” Daniels said before indicating that he truly learned the sport when he was teaching in the Mobile system. “When I transferred from Vigor to Spanish Fort, I picked up the JV soccer program and was the interim head coach there when the head coach left during the season. I learned the game, learned how to coach the game there. And the next year I was the head JV coach again and assisted varsity. I learned how to deal with the in and outs of it. I got out of it when I was at Murphy. I turned down the girls job there.”
In Demopolis, Daniels has a found a developing program led by seniors such as Valdivia, Beckum, Luis Galvan and Leif Midgorden.
“They have a pretty good basis. It is just building with it and learning to use some of your kids’ natural assets,” Daniels said. “They’re all really dedicated, really mindful of what’s going on and they’re working really well together as a team now. I would say that as teammates, they are in midseason form now. They’re really into having productive practices. They’re very coachable. They want to get better and they train hard.”
As his team works its way through the 2014 season, Daniels makes no bones about his goals, both tangible and intangible.
“Our goal is to be in the last soccer game in 5A,” he said.
As for what he expects his team to embody each time it takes the field, Daniels is most concerned with successes and failures coming as the results of team play.
“Teamwork, working together, functioning as a unit instead of a group of individuals,” he said of what he expects his team to exhibit. “I saw that a lot Saturday and I was very proud of them for it. I’ve seen it in practice. The older kids are really helping with the younger kids.”