Are You Ready for Some Futebol? Friday Night Lights for Boys Soccer

Senior captain Tanner Creelman

With Weston’s (American) football team away on Friday evening, it’s time for the other futebol (you know: the one you actually play with your feet) to take over Proctor Field. Thanks to some extra outreach from Athletic Director Mike McGrath, Boston Latin has agreed to push back the scheduled boys varsity soccer game to 6 pm on Friday night.

This means the Wolfpack is coming for the Wildcats, and the ‘cats hope to have a great home crowd cheering for them. No word yet on whether Boston Latin is bringing their impressive cheerleaders, but the home team is hoping that Weston students, families and community members will take the place of a cheerleading squad and make some serious noise. Bring your pompoms; it’s your choice on the short-shorts. Never leave home without an empty milk gallon with change in it.

Let’s go!

For those who have not kept up with Ted Lasso (first season), a soccer terminology session will be run at 6:45 pm by one of the varsity players. This will be important stuff like the pitch is not a pitch that you throw, and if anyone makes a mistake on our team, you yell “unlucky!” and never ever “you missed it, big guy.” Note that soccer is “futebol” in Brazil and “fútbol” in much of the rest of Latin America, and yeah, it’s football other places too. Maybe Europe. Who knows? It does make sense, you know. Foot. Ball. If it moves, kick it. If it doesn’t move, kick it again.

For your advance knowledge, there are two 40-minute halves, and one time out per half for each team (these are MIAA rules). 11 players are on each side, with one being like a duck in a shooting gallery, aka a goalie. Weston fields a varsity team of more than 20 players of which 13 are seniors–senior captains are Luca Berardinelli, Tanner Creelman, Kevin Joseph, Eunho Lee, and Ray Wang. The ‘cats are coached by Andrey Asparouhov, who has been the Boys Varsity coach for the last eight years.

Coach Andrey with some of the team

The Owl caught up with Coach Andrey last night and here’s what he had to say:

“It is a very tough year for the team as we are the only Division 3 team in our league and have to compete with much larger schools, ” said the coach. “Boston Latin is one of the schools that we love playing against as they have a similar philosophy to ours and want to play fast soccer with lots of ball control.”

The Wildcats play hard, and substitutions due to bonks and crashes are normal. You can pretty much count on Rizz having some taping up of someone to do–if he gets bored, he may have to make tape art. Let’s hope he is bored.

Come on out and cheer on the Wildcats! With luck, other Weston teams will also have a chance at Friday Night Lights–we see you, Girls Soccer and Field Hockey!

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Boston Latin Wolfpack vs Weston HS Wildcats, Friday October 1 at 6 pm at Proctor Field. Go ‘cats!

On the way to the field. Photo credit: Monique Burns Thompson

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