Lexi Wapelhorst wears a lot of hats.
Lebanon soccer junior, goal-scorer extraordinaire, all-around good teammate.
“I really, honestly, just want to make it to the district championships this year,” Wapelhorst said. “That’s my biggest goal, just for our whole team to get there.”
Lexi’s class was the first for Matt Jernigan when he took over as Lebanon girls coach. He remembers seeing her early, and seeing her stand out.
“She’s an unbelievable competitor,” he said. “I saw her when she was in fifth grade, kicking a ball around when her brother was playing, and you could tell she was going to be something special.”
That comradery has resulted in a Jernigan having almost a second coach on the field.
“It’s really nice to know that I can trust my coach to actually listen to my ideas,” Wapelhorst said. “I don’t have to be silent and never talk to him about stuff.”
Despite being a standout on the pitch, Lexi has her priorities straight. She’s already scored a 30 on the ACT and signed to play soccer in college at Mid-America Nazarene.
“The maturity level coming in as a freshman was unbelievable,” Jernigan said. “Just her knowledge of the game was probably higher than anybody I’d had.”
That results from a childhood spent around the game. After starting her career playing in Lebanon, she was asked to guest-play for Springfield Soccer Club when she was seven, and she’s played for them ever since. Also, it helps having an older brother just as in love with the game.
“My brother got into it,” she said. “We practice all the time together.”
Lexi hasn’t wasted any time re-writing the record books. She was the first Lebanon girls soccer player to be selected to All-State after her sophomore year, set the LHS single-game goals record with six, and has already set the Lebanon career goals mark with her 78th goal, and sits at 89 so far this year.
But, according to Jernigan, that last number could be even higher.
“She had 38 goals her freshman year,” he said—that was also a record, which she broke the next year with 40. “But it could have been about 55 if she hadn’t hit the bar. We called her Crossbar Queen for a year.”
Lexi backs up the story.
“I hit so much crossbar,” she said, still exasperated at the memory. “I think I hit it seven times in one game one time.”
But she’s not struggling it anymore, and she’s leading a Lebanon girls squad with high hopes, so Lexi Wapelhorst is the latest Arby’s High School Athlete of the Week.
