Last year, the Aragon boys soccer team ended the season 4-4-6 in the Peninsula Athletic League and placed third in the Central Coast Section playoffs.
The soccer team’s former coach, Greg Markoulakis, stepped down this season for family business. To take Markoulakis’s place, Nasser Abdulkariem came to Aragon to coach the boys team. Abdulkariem has been coaching soccer for 20 years and previously coached at Crystal Springs High School for eight seasons. He is excited to help the team and plans to focus on offense as the key to success.
“We’re just looking forward to the boys scoring a lot of goals, and I just want us to be the team where people are strategizing against other teams,” Abdulkariem said.
“[Abdulkariem’s] style of coaching is definitely a little different than our previous coach. He likes to make us play with different tactics, like different styles of play. Not just one play or one style the whole entire season,” said senior midfielder Sergio Zavala said. “That’s going to be a huge thing to adapt to for the whole team.”
Due to poor air quality from the recent fires, the team was unable to practice outside.
“Because of the smoke … we have been practicing indoors. We have been doing what we can, keeping our fitness and conditioning up,” Abdulkariem said. “The good thing is that it’s for every team, not just our team. Every school is facing the same environmental challenge that we are right now.”
Senior goalkeeper Jesus Lopez said Abdulkariem has high expectations of his players.
“He just wants us to be intense at all times, and he wants us to work harder … for just a simple workout drill, he wants us to be at 100 percent,” Lopez said. “I’m just looking forward to finishing strong with the team, because it’s senior year and my team and I just want to go out and play … We are definitely looking forward to the season because we have high expectations of ourselves.”
We are definitely looking forward to the season because we have high expectations of ourselves
Comparing last season, 2017-18, to his sophomore season, 2016-17, Zavala wasn’t satisfied with the team’s results.
“Last year wasn’t a great season, but it wasn’t a bad season either,” Zavala said. “We finished off with more ties than wins, so I guess we had a decent team.”
However, Zavala regrets that the team was unable to beat Carlmont, a notable rival.
“Whenever we played Carlmont, we would struggle with them, and that was the opponent that we really wanted to beat,” Zavala said. “We didn’t get the results that we wanted both times that we played them.”
However, the Dons beat Menlo Atherton, who finished 9-2-4 in the Peninsula Athletic League, both times they competed against them. But Zavala’s teammates agree that they could have done better.
“Even though we had a lot of great talent all around, I feel like we didn’t get to the potential we wanted to be.” Lopez said.
To get ready for the season, the players practiced during the off-season in their respective clubs in addition to practicing individually.
“As a senior dealing with not winning CCS championships three times in a row… I would definitely like to win the CCS playoff game, and maybe go further than that,” Zavala said.
