STARKVILLE — Sydney Passons isn’t good at disguising her emotions.
That’s because the Starkville Academy senior often is her worst critic on the soccer field. If she is a touch off on a pass or doesn’t hit a shot just right, Passons is apt to show her frustration in a variety of ways. In addition to contorted facial countenances, Passons has a habit of using her hands to show her displeasure.
“When I make a bad pass it makes me mad, especially when I have a shot and I shoot it straight at the goalie,” Passons said. “You can probably tell when I get frustrated.”
Passons’ frustrations didn’t prevent her doing her job as playmaker and scorer for Starkville Academy on Thursday, as she scored three goals in a 5-0 victory against Heritage Academy in a Mississippi Association of Independent Schools (MAIS) Division III North, District 2 match at the Starkville Sportsplex.
Hays Miller and Hannah Cuevas also scored for the Lady Volunteers (6-1-1), who secured one of the two playoff spots from the district. Starkville Academy first-year head coach Matt Sykes said his team has a nearly insurmountable advantage in goal differential against district rivals Heritage Academy, Kirk Academy, and Columbus Christian Academy with district matches remaining at Kirk Academy and at Heritage Academy.
Neither Miller nor Cuevas was as demonstrative as Passons, though, when it came to reacting to scoring opportunities. Passons had chances to add to her hat trick in the first and second halves, but goalkeepers Kat Sykes and Haven Tuggle stood tall and denied her on at least two shots. In the first half, Passons held both of her arms to the side with her palms turned toward the sky after she didn’t convert what looked to be an ideal scoring chance. Her gesture suggested she was asking the soccer gods how she missed that one.
Passons nearly repeated that movement in the second half after she created space by chesting a pass from Amber Bock forward and powering past a defender for a one-on-one opportunity against Tuggle. But Tuggle came out to challenge th shot and was right in the way of Passons’ shot.
The result didn’t please Passons, who pressed the palms of her hands together over her head as if she was a football official indicating a safety. She then broke her hands and extended them to her sides above her shoulders in a gesture that suggested she was at a loss for what she had to do to score.
“Mostly it is frustration,” Passons said when asked if she is angry with herself or frustrated when she shows her emotions. “Sometimes I laugh at myself because I don’t understand how I miss something like that. It is a lot of frustration when the goal is in front of you with one person to beat and you don’t at least put it on frame.”
Thankfully for the Lady Volunteers, Passons and her teammates didn’t suffer through 80 minutes of that kind of frustration. Give-and-go play between Shelton Spivey, Passons, and Hannah Cuevas led to the first goal in the 10th minute. Miller added the second score in the 17th minute, and Passons added her second goal with a strong right-footed shot late in the first half.
Passons also showed in the first half frustration isn’t the only emotion she can display. As one of seven seniors, Passons exhibited the kind of encouragement Sykes enjoys seeing when she clapped for a strong scoring effort of a teammate whose shot went just over the crossbar.
Sykes, who played soccer at Heritage Academy and is the brother of Kat Sykes, said Passons is a player any coach would love to have because she can do so much on the field.
“She can control the game with the ball at her feet,” Sykes said. “A lot of the one-twos went through her. She just controls the game. She definitely is a high scorer and a person we look to for assists. If I looked back, she has quite a few assists compared to goals. She is definitely a playmaker. That is what her role is along with one of many roles on the team.”
Sykes said Starkville Academy likes to use Passons as a target player because she is so good with the ball and can shield defenders to give teammates time to run off the ball. A change in the team’s warmup prior to the game Thursday helped accentuate that skill. Sykes said the team switched from 11 players (two defenders) in a big square to six players (three-on-three) in a smaller square to simulate the action of quick touches and moving off the ball. The Lady Volunteers translated that work before the game to the match with a lot of one-touch, angled passes that enabled players to move into space away from defenders.
Passons thought the change in the warmup translated well to the match.
“I thought we were able to keep our heads up and we made quicker runs and our passes connected more,” Passons said. “When passes connect, good soccer happens.”
Starkville Academy controlled the match thanks to the play of Passons and Bock up top, Cuevas in the middle, Miller and Spivey on the flanks, and Aubree Campbell, KarLee McNeel, Mary Margaret McReynolds, and Bonner Hughes on defense. Sykes hopes the Lady Volunteers can build on their performance, especially since a match against Pillow Academy on Tuesday was rained out. The team will return to action Tuesday at Kirk Academy.
Sykes is confident the Lady Volunteers will be able to build on their latest effort because many of the players are hard on themselves like Passons. He said he tries to encourage the players not to be satisfied and to take an approach similar to the one that Alabama football coach Nick Saban, who always asks his players to work toward perfection.
“We are not going to get down on it, but it means we have to work that much harder to get what we want,” Sykes said.
Passons showed she is more than capable of doing that when she put her frustration aside and went right back to work orchestrating scoring chances for her teammates and delivering a hat trick.
“It is always fun to have a hat trick,” Passons said. “It is nice to see hard work pays off.”
The loss dropped Heritage Academy to 5-6. Tom Velek, the team’s first-year head coach, felt his team didn’t play with the same sharpness it showed in victories against Kirk Academy and St. Joseph’s Academy and in a 3-0 loss to Lamar School. Heritage Academy lost to Lamar School 9-0 in its first meeting.
Still, Velek said the Lady Patriots are one win away from reaching the playoffs. The top two teams from District 2 will advance to the postseason. Having split two matches against Kirk Academy, a tiebreaker between those teams could come down to goal differential. If that is the case, Velek hopes his team will learn from the loss to Starkville Academy and play with more determination.
“We have to think more as a team in our defensive third how as a team we’re going to work together to transition this ball,” Velek said. “When we get the ball to the other third of the field, we have to think how we’re going to keep possession.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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