STARKVILLE — Familiarity isn’t always visible.
Sydney Passons might use a darting look to the left to Hannah Cuevas to encourage her to pass the ball in that direction. Shelton Spivey could use her body language or a subtle nod of the head to convey to Bonner Hughes that she is going to make a run toward goal and she wants her teammate to send her the ball.
The Starkville Academy girls soccer team has used methods like the ones mentioned above this season as proof that familiarity also isn’t always heard. The players’ success with verbal and non-verbal methods of communication has helped the Lady Volunteers go 10-1-1 and has earned them a chance to kick off the postseason at home. That run will begin at 6 tonight when Starkville Academy will play host to Bayou Academy at the Starkville Sportsplex in the first round of the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools (MAIS) Division III tournament.
The game is the first of a three-step process Passons, Cuevas, Spivey, and Hughes, who recently were named to the MAIS All-Star game, classmates Hays Miller, Lauren Lyle, Savannah Hubbard, and the rest of the Lady Volunteers hope to complete to win a state title under first-year head coach Matt Sykes.
“I think we have played together for so long that we know and we can look at each other and know where someone is going,” Passons said. “With Bonner on defense, you just look at her and (moving her eyes to the right or the left) she can play it right to you. With Shelton and her runs down the line, she usually knows what to do and you basically just say, ‘One-two’ and she passes it and she just takes off. Hannah and I just work really well together in the midfield.”
Passons joked she uses
“telepathic” methods to bond with other classmates. She feels all of the seniors are like that because they have played soccer together since they were “little.”
Sykes admits it sometimes concerns him that he doesn’t hear the Lady Volunteers talk as much as he wants them to. The seniors agree they don’t need to talk as much as other players because Passons said the chemistry “doesn’t require us to scream at each other.”
Spivey said the seniors didn’t go through an elaborate process to develop their subtle ways of communicating, even if there has been a little trial and error through the years. She said it helps that all of the classmates are friends and that they hang out together off the field.
Cuevas agrees and said everyone knows the strengths and weaknesses of all their teammates. She has played with the other seniors since the ninth grade and feels that she hasn’t missed a beat helping Starkville Academy build a stronger bond with players in all classes. She doesn’t think the seniors feel any pressure to know what the other is doing because they have played together for so long. She said their chemistry enables them to work together and et past a mistake to do it better the next time.
That also is the case for Hughes, who anchors and the defense. She said she always knows she can switch the field and Spivey will be there and look up and see Passons right in front of her. That familiarity has created a style of communicating that involves finger pointing or head movements to signal the direction of a pass.
You might not see the signs. You probably won’t hear them, so you better be ready.
“If it was anyone else or the younger ones, they would probably be, ‘Where are you going with it?’ ” Hughes said. “Playing with them, they have just gotten used to it, and we all have gotten used to that.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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