CALEDONIA — The term pest should be a coveted moniker for defenders.
After all, the term typically is associated with forwards because the offense usually creates the buzz that generates the headlines.
But Caledonia High School boys soccer coach Mark Box wants to turn that notion on its ear. Box has just the player to do do it, too: Andy Blakney.
“He is kind of a pest when it comes to strikers,” said Box, who has coached Blakney the past three years. “He can get in their heads. That is always a good thing for a defensive back to do.”
After playing a key role as a pest for the Caledonia High boys soccer team, Blakney hopes to play a similar role at the next level. On Friday, he secured that opportunity when he signed a National Letter of Intent to play soccer at Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia.
Blakney figures to fit right in at Northwest Mississippi in part because he will re-join four players — Will Jones, Chandler Lester, Robert Mims, and James Longmire — he played with at Caledonia High. Jones, Lester, Mims, and Longmire played key roles this past season in helping Northwest Mississippi finish 12-7-1 and 4-4 in the Mississippi Association of Junior and Community Colleges.
This season, Blakney, who is Caledonia’s center back, has anchored a defense that has allowed nine goals in seven games. Caledonia beat Louisville 3-0 Friday to improve to 5-2-1.
Box said Blakney is so effective as a center back because he communicates well and he has “a lot of fire to him.” He said Blakney is skilled and competitive enough to recover from a mistake and make life frustrating for attacking players. He feels Blakney, who is a team captain with McKeller Fishel, should be able to be just as much of a pest in college wherever he plays.
“He has grown from a quiet 10th-grader who is glad to be out there to taking a leadership role this year,” Box said. “I think he is going to be a good college player. We had some guys go up to Northwest last year, so it is not a situation where he will go in not knowing anybody. He will be the ‘new guy,’ but he also will be at home with the other four we have playing up there. I think he is going to help them up there a lot.”
Blakney said he always has been an “aggressive” person. He said he has used that mentality to be so effective dispossessing attacking players. He said he always has been a defender type ever since he started playing soccer when he was 8 years old.
Blakney credited past soccer coaches Morri Mims and Lamine Khima, his former Division I travel coach, for helping him to get this far. He said he wouldn’t have been able to realize the goal of signing a soccer scholarship without them. Khima coached Blakney for two years with the Tupelo Football Club. Blakney’s new club team is the Division I Under-18 Oxford Flood. Blakney also played Division II soccer with Columbus United.
“I want to go to college because I am not OK with being average,” Blakney said. “I don’t like being mediocre. I want to be above the best. I want to be playing with the best. I think that is how I got this far because I am not a player who wants to be mediocre. I want to strive to be the best.”
Blakney said the recruiting process wasn’t very involved in part because Northwest Mississippi men’s soccer coach Charles Baldwin thought he was a senior last year. He said he considered other schools, but he felt Northwest Mississippi had everything he needed and wanted, so the final decision was easy.
Blakney feels he likely will play in the midfield or on defense in college. He acknowledges the speed of the game will be greater, but he is confident he will find a way to continue to be a pest.
“I know I will work my heart out to become a pest like I am now, apparently,” Blakney said. “I am just going to do my thing and play how I have been taught to play.
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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