ROANOKE, Va. – After three straight Class One girls soccer State Championships, and graduating the seniors that helped form the team in the first place, Eastern Montgomery head coach Whittney Shaver was met with a tough decision.
“We all had a pretty good idea that there would not be a girls team this year,” Shaver said. “I know we tried up until probably about a month before.”
When the opportunity arose to coach the team and play with two of her former players, it was a no-brainer. It’s the reality many teams in Class One are facing as enrollment decreases each year.
While co-ed soccer may be new to Eastmont, it’s all Alexis Leighton has known at Narrows.
“It’s normal,” Leighton said. “I’ve been playing varsity with boys. When we go against the other teams, we play boys teams, we don’t get to play against the girls because we have boys.”
Alexis’ brother, Jackson, is also on the team, and sees firsthand how the extra talent makes an impact on the field.
“I feel like it definitely does help us, especially with the girls, because they’re just better than a lot of the guys that we play,” Jackson said. “They actually get really frustrated though, when the women shut them down, because they don’t expect it.”
“We enjoy a lot of our girls,” Narrows head coach Jay Smith said. “They’re really hard players and in a couple cases, even the last game and the game before, we’ve had other guys noting and other coaches, noting how fierce our ladies are.”
Back in Shawsville, the Mustangs are reaping the benefits of the championship experience that players like Ajia McHone brings
“Knowing that you have to work extremely hard, no matter what team you’re on, you can have amazing players, or players that are absolutely terrible, but it’s about who wants the most and fight the most and I feel like we have an ongoing team that wants to put in the work to win,” she said.
And when Ajia, Alexus, and the other girls take the field with the boys, doing the hard thing for the love of the sport, there’s one simple message.
“Girls can do anything, women can do anything, just work hard and achieve whatever you want,”