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written by
www.coppellstudentmedia.com
COPPELL COWBOYS SOCCER SPECIAL EDITION
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THE SIDEKICK
Aubrie Sisk and Kelly Monaghan, Staff Writers
On the outside, one can see that the Coppell boys soccer team won the Class 6A State Championship, but there was a lot more to it than just the undefeated season. The brotherhood between 2016 District 7-6A MVP Nick Taylor and 2016 District 7-6A Newcomer of the year Wyatt Priest goes beyond just the field.
1. What was the biggest thing that led to both of your successes in the attack this year? Nick: I think the biggest thing that led to our success was developing the family-type relationship within the team and the strong chemistry so we were basically all brothers. Wyatt: We had a brotherhood the whole season. We didn’t play for ourselves, we didn’t play for the amount of goals or assists we had, we played so we could make the team happy. We all knew we wanted to go far and win state this year so we just played for each other.
2. Would you say being close as teammates helped your execution on the field? Nick: Yeah, of course. Like we said, that brotherhood relationship really helped. We wanted to be around each other all the time, and we enjoyed every single moment. Wyatt: We also fed off each other’s energy, so if one person started getting hyped it would push everyone to go harder and that really helped us out.
3. How did the game plan with both of you at forward evolve during the season as you both emerged as starters for the team? Nick: When Wyatt moved into that midfield role, since he’s a very good distributer of the ball, it allowed our play to move more fluently and we also got different ways to attack and that helped the various amounts of goals that we scored. Wyatt: Well, we started off both playing forward and then I moved more into a center midfielder role and then we also got to bring in Tanner Traw at forward which that helped us with speed.
4. It is a pretty big deal to win state as underclassmen, so what are you looking forward to for the team next year? Nick: Next year I’m looking forward to another run at state, and I think the upcoming team for next year is also very talented. As long as we keep this establishment of a brotherhood within the whole entire team, I think we have a chance at winning state again next year. Wyatt: We have a lot of talent coming in and a lot of talent staying as well. I think that we have to stay confident, but not cocky because we won state, and go into each game knowing that any team can win and that we have to play our hardest. If we stay humble and focused then I think we can make a good run next year.
5. How did your team ritual start? You are known to dab, row and have handshakes to celebrate. Nick: I don’t really remember how it all started. Wyatt and I started dabbing in the beginning of the season when we were just messing around and then we eventually decided that after every goal we were both a part of we would dab. Wyatt: I think we’ve done it like 20 times this year. In the FIFA video game we see celebrations and so we’ve always just wanted to do our own celebrations, Tanner has his where he kind of flops around and we also all did the rowboat. It’s just a fun thing to do and I’d say it’s kind of an incentive to score because we get to do the fun celebrations. Nick: It also brings a lot of energy to the game, it gets everyone hyped. Especially the rowboat, that was crazy.
Nick Taylor, Wyatt Priest on their success, rituals
Wyatt: Yeah, especially because that was on senior night too. Nick: I think that all that energy allows us to play even better.
photos by
Ale Ceniceros