By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
The piece of history for Southeast Alamance’s boys’ soccer team came with a rapid molding of a team in its second year of existence.
The Stallions became the school’s first conference team champion in any sport last week by winning their final nine league games to push their overall winning streak to 10 games.
“We’ve been grinding ever since before school started,” forward Edgar Carbajal said.
The team’s accomplishment came just two nights before Southeast’s football team nabbed the league title as well.
One team had to be first.
“They show up every single day and work their butts off,” soccer coach Jackson Brooks said. “These guys have earned it. I’ve always believed in these guys.”
Carbajal and fellow captain Bailey Frye are among seniors who had been Southern Alamance players before the Alamance-Burlington School System’s redistricting ahead of the 2023-2024 school year. They helped form the core of Southeast’s team when the school opened last year.
Now they’re champions.
“We knew we had to win it this year,” Frye said.
The Stallions were no slouches last year, placing second in conference play with a 10-4 mark.
That began the process of securing a Mid-Carolina Conference championship. Overcoming Jordan-Matthews, which had won league titles the previous four years, would be required. The Stallions lost 5-0 to the Jets on September 18 in Siler City.
About a month later, Southeast gained revenge by winning 5-3 and taking over first place. Jordan-Matthews (15-7, 10-2) didn’t lose again in league play.
“It’s an amazing thing,” Carbajal said. “Jordan-Matthews has been winning it for a long time.”
Southeast notched an 11-1 league record, ending last week at 15-6 overall. They’ve outscored opponents 103-33 this year.
The championship is what they strived to achieve.
“It means everything because we worked so hard,” Frye said. “The first year we had a lot of potential. We kept working hard.”
Southeast’s team is a blend of players who mostly arrived from Southern Alamance or Eastern Alamance.
Coach Brooks, a Western Alamance alum whose brother Camden Brooks coaches the Warriors, said he saw signs of something special soon after he was hired as coach.
Carbajal, Frye and sophomore midfielder Elio Anguiano have all reached the 20-goal mark. Nine other players, led by Edwin Anguiano’s seven goals and Zwe Maung’s five goals, have scored multiple goals. Senior Justin Whitfield has primarily handled the goalkeeping.
Then it was a matter of pulling it together.
“Keeping the energy up,” Frye said. “We’re always on each other at practice. We want so much to be better than everybody else.”
