Leadership is crucial when you’re building a program.
A year ago, Mary Nagy helped the New Hope High School girls soccer team establish that foundation as it won its first playoff game and advanced to the second round before losing to state power Ridgeland.
This season, the seniors and more experienced members of the squad have again set the tone and helped pass on a winning mentality to what Nagy hopes is the next group of leaders.
At 4 p.m. today, Nagy hopes both groups of players can come together and help New Hope keep its season alive when it plays at Hernando in the first round of the Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 5A North State playoffs.
Nagy credits senior captains Sarah Hern, Erica Shepherd, and Morgan Franks and junior Reagan Hern for leaving a “legacy of well-trained young ladies” who she hopes will do the same for those who will come after them.
“We have had some good leadership, but nothing like we have this year,” Nagy said. “They are leaving behind some really well-trained girls for us.”
Reagan Hern has been a captain since she was a sophomore. Nagy hopes Hern, Effie Morrison, Ashley Martian, and Erin Robertson will make up a core for next season that will continue the lessons this year’s leaders have taught the rest of the team.
Martian has learned how the captains act as “big sisters” and how important that is to the team’s success. She hopes she will be able to fill that leadership void next season.
Morrison, who is an accomplished club soccer players, said she has been impressed with the positive messages the captains give.
Reagan Hern said she loves being a “Mother Hen.” She said she has learned from her sister about how to be positive, which is especially important considering the team has so many young players and have so many things to learn.
Whenever it comes, Hern, Morrison, and Martian said they are eager to assume a bigger leadership role and to help the Lady Trojans build on what they have accomplished the past few years.
“The captain is just the name; Leader is how you act and react to the people on the field,” Morrison said.
Said Hern, “It is going to be hard watching the other captains leave because that is who I was with when I was with when I was in seventh and eighth grade when I came out for my first time. It is going to be hard watching them leave, but we have so many young girls who can take a captain band. We don’t take it as something you just get to wear around your sock during a game. It is a big deal and you’re held to a really high position.”
Nagy isn’t sure how Hern, Morrison, Martian, and Robertson developed their team mentality. She said the fact that they play other sports has helped them understand the importance of teamwork and encouragement. She said they are young, but they still understand it is vital to communicate and to support their teammates.
“There are so many types of learners, and this group seems to be a hands-on type of group, where they learn by doing,” Nagy said. “By doing what their older peers have done, the younger ones are now emulating what the older ones have done. As they get together as a cohesive unit — we have a large group of young girls that by far outnumber my junior and senior classes, so it is like they’re in training. Even without these girls will be gone and they will be missed, their leadership is already intact. It is already being left with the young girls. They have taken them under their wings and shown them ropes and how to act on and off the field.”
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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