It played a boys’ soccer game.
SouthLake and Northside Christian played to a 3-3 tie, but the game seemed more like a win to the Eagles who have been idle in boys’ soccer for eight seasons.
“It was just exciting to be back out there,” said SouthLake coach Mark Apgar, who has coached the SouthLake girls since 2004.
Apgar had coached some of the players when SouthLake fielded a middle school co-ed team four years ago.
“It’s been really fun to coach some of those guys again,” he said.
Tyler Stubbs, Jeremy Silinski and Christian McArthur scored the Eagle goals.
SouthLake has 17 players on varsity and more than 20 on the middle school team that beat Northside 9-2 in its return.
SouthLake dropped boys’ soccer when it began offering football in 2003. Enrollment numbers were low then, and the school couldn’t support both sports. Even football wasn’t offered in a full capacity in those days as SouthLake began playing eight-man football.
Every year since, SouthLake officials have gauged boys soccer interest each spring, and this past year, the interest was finally high enough to again offer the sport.
Athletic director Rich Landis said the school didn’t want to return the sport until it would stick.
“The past eight years, we haven’t been at the point where I’d be confident with it,” he said. “You don’t start a program and a year or two later have to pull the plug.”
Also the football coach, Landis has had to endure the occasional joke that soccer would never return while he was leading the athletic program. Football coaches and soccer coaches often see things differently. But Landis said nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, he coached soccer in Charlotte in the 1990s.
“I think it’s absolutely great to have it back,” he said.
SouthLake’s enrollment is the highest its ever been, and the high school alone added 40 students. The return of boys’ soccer is another gradual step in the athletic program’s growth. And the Eagles may not stop there.
Later this month, Landis and others will begin exploring student interest in lacrosse. If it’s high enough, SouthLake could field a team as early as this spring.
