SOBOs soccer: 2024-2025 season & Senior Night
The SOBOs face a rough season, but their new roster shows promise, showing hope despite their graduating seniors.
This year has been rough for the South Beloit SOBOs boys' soccer team, scoring five goals so far this season, with at least two games left in this year's season.
The SOBOs soccer team has shown improvement, however, despite these stats, with this year being 0-11 so far, last year being 0-14, and two years before that being 3-14. Though the past two years have been winless, the team's history has been mixed in with wins now and then.
This year, the SOBOs have managed to keep their goals against stat at 76, an improvement from their 103 last year. The SOBOs also have a new goalkeeper, Josaiah Placensia, who retains jersey #44 from former goalkeeper and graduating senior Joel Sanchez. So far this year, the SOBOs have had two goalkeepers, Emmanuel Alvarez, a new freshman, and their current goalkeeper, Placensia. Both have jumped between midfield and goalkeeping over the season.
Besides Alvarez, new freshmen this season are Cristobal Ortega, and Alex Salgado. Ortega is one of the two forward players for the SOBOs, having scored one goal so far this season, and Salgado is a midfielder, occasionally playing defense. When the SOBOs coach, Alex Bautista, was prompted on how he felt these freshman had performed thus far, he had this to say:
"Excellent players, they do what they're told, give it all on the field, no matter the score."
Coming up as the last game before the SOBOs go to Regionals, the South Beloit Boys' Soccer team has their Senior Night this Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 4:30 p.m. The graduating seniors this year, in addition to Sanchez, are Ian Picot, Marcos Manuel, Dylan Goodwin, and Jonathon Pelayo. The coach had this to say on how the team will continue with the loss of these four players:
"If we bring everybody back, and with incoming freshman, I think this team can do better than what they are this year."
For Senior Night, the team will face Oregon's Hawks, who beat the SOBOs 8-0 the last year and are currently on a two-game win streak, with eight wins, two tie games, and seven losses this season.
Josaiah Placensia is a sophomore at South Beloit High School, where he is an Honors English student. Besides reporting for Rockton-Roscoe News, he is involved with soccer, track, Academic Bowl, and theater.
