By Michael Cignoli (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Coming off its most successful season in school history, the Camdenton boys soccer team faces a couple of key challenges as it prepares to kick off this fall’s campaign.
The Lakers bid farewell to the Class of 2024, whose play over the past four years elevated the program into a bona fide district championship contender.
The graduated seniors won just four games during their freshman season, but went 19-7 last fall — and clinched the top seed in their district tournament bracket. They also held opponents to just 1.1 goals per game, their lowest such average since they won a district title in 2009.
“Our program has continued to improve and grow over the past four years,” Lakers coach Tyler Sevon said. “We have seen growth in our overall numbers each of the past four seasons and our guys are doing more in the offseason on the club side of things. The senior class that graduated really embraced what we were trying to do and did an amazing job of continuing to advance the program and lead us to our most wins in a season in our program’s history. It definitely sets the bar higher and leads to greater expectations for each class to come.”
Now it’s up to the Lakers to find a way to replace them and some other high-profile departures as they navigate their way through a new conference with just four returning starters.
“From our true starting lineup, we only have three to four players back, but we have a lot of guys that have varsity experience and have played exceptionally well on the JV,” Sevon said. “We definitely graduated a bigger senior class of players last year, but for the foreseeable future that will continue to be the trend as our numbers have been strong.”
That depth will be a strength for Camdenton as they move from the now-defunct Ozark Conference to the Central Missouri Activities Conference, turning some of their regular non-conference opponents into overnight rivals — and making the outcomes of those games that much more important.
“We are excited for the challenge to play a couple of new opponents,” Sevon said. “We already play the trio of Jeff City schools and Smith-Cotton. We were able to go 4-0 against those four teams last season, so we definitely feel like we will be able to come in and compete with the very competitive conference.”
In addition to the graduated seniors, the Lakers will also be without Ozark Conference Defensive Player of the Year and all-state honoree Garrison Thompson, who is playing his senior season at Mendoza United Football Club in Argentina.
“Our biggest challenge is reloading our defense,” Sevon said. “We graduated three senior starters, Garrison is headed (to) Argentina and we graduated our starting goalkeeper. We definitely have guys that can step in and fill the roles that they need to. We will just need to grow into the varsity game quickly on the back line.”
Senior Waylon Weber, juniors Soren Schmidt and Kaden Swanson and sophomore Colton Howe are all defenders who will see increased responsibilities this fall.
At goalkeeper, it’ll be a battle between sophomores Ezekiel Carter and Brenden Lisewski. Carter cracked the varsity lineup as a freshman, picking .
“They both do great things in the goal and will both see time in the varsity net this year,” Sevon said.
Offensively, the Lakers will have to replace their top four goal scorers – Jackson Basham, Nicholas Pasley, Thompson and Amado Banos. The quartet accounted for 52 percent of Camdenton’s scoring last fall.
They’ll look to junior midfielders Krasi Petrov-Diaz and Josh Brown, who each scored five goals a year ago. Petrov-Diaz also led the team with 15 assists, earning all-conference honors.
Seniors Donovan Parker and Logan Day, junior Eric Banos and sophomore Logan Figgins will also play key roles in the Camdenton midfield, while senior Corbin Bailey and sophomore Jace Armstrong will lead the attack as forwards.
“We have so many guys that can do a lot of different things and contribute in their own way to help us win games,” Sevon said.
Camdenton will travel to Bolivar for an August 27 jamboree against the Liberators, Branson and Lebanon. The Lakers will open the regular season with back-to-back road games at Joplin and Carthage on August 30 and 31, before returning home to face Rolla on September 3.
“We want teams to know that they are going to get a competitive game every time we step on the field,” Sevon said. “We don’t want to feel like we need to back down from anyone and feel like if we keep working hard we can compete with everyone.”
