The SHS Indians boys soccer team held their first offseason conditioning session on October 1, 2024. At the time, Mr. Don Wells was announced as the Junior Varsity coaching position. However, just a week before tryouts, coach Wells told the team that he had taken a job as a Technical Director and Camera Operator at FredNats, an opportunity he could not pass up. This was a shock to many of the young players.

Tryouts went by and varsity coach Tyler Robinson found himself in quite the pickle as he has even more responsibilities added up. After a few days of Junior Varsity practice without a head coach, the wait had finally ended, as 19 year old Sir-John Perkins had been hired for the job.

Sir-John has quite the history here at Stafford. Not only was he a student, but he was a standout soccer player here at Stafford as well. Ever since his Sophomore year he has been a Varsity starter and a key player for the team. The team wasn’t very successful over the course of his tenure but Perkins said, “Our results were not representative of the talent we carried. Although our team didn’t have much winning success we battled in our games until the end of whistle.”

His leadership started since his playing time here at Stafford as many freshmen then looked up to play and have a mentality just like him.

“It was my first conditioning session ever for Stafford, Me and Sir-John were on the same team and I missed easy passes too many times in a row. Instead of him losing it and crashing out on me, he decided to tell me what I did wrong and how to fix it. We then went on to play very well together later that day.” Senior Luke Pecher when talking about Coach Perkins.

During his high school career, Coach Perkins had the opportunity to play for many teams near and far. As he played for Commonwealth Cardinals FC, in the USL League 2. He was the youngest player to play for the club as he was only 16 years old.

Most recently he traveled to Madrid, Spain where he got a great opportunity to play for both mens and youth teams of AD Torrejon CF, a small but competitive soccer team in Spain.

Now after a break with some professional stints, he’s back but on a different side of the pitch, as he coaches the Stafford Junior Varsity team. Last year, Stafford Junior Varsity’s wasn’t all too impressive as they finished 2-10-2. The games were highly competitive, and could’ve gone either way.

The junior varsity has played 4 games this season. The first three have been intense and competitive losses that could have easily been won. The latest game was against Colonial Forge, where the team tied but was very close to finishing the job. They had over 5 shots, majority of possession of the ball, and played world class defence.

This season is for development until boys time to step up and represent Stafford on Varsity. With that in mind, Sir-John encourages the team to kinda show off a bit. He prepped the team before the battle with Forge by saying “I want us to play how we play, no restrictions, use our skill moves, let our shots fly, make these guys regret they ever stepped on a soccer field, and let’s show these guys what Stafford is about.”

With that powerful and encouraging speech, the boys were fired up and ready to win. Unfortunately it ended in a 0-0 draw, but showed promise.

Recently, the boys won their first game against the King George Foxes 1-0. The team wanted to win more than anything, and their performance showed it. Sophomore, Alejandro Castro hit a world class goal from about 20 yards from the goal. The Indians dominated in possession and the score could’ve easily gotten out of hand in favor of Stafford.