Panther soccer earns honors

BENTON – In a season that had its ups and downs, the Benton Panthers soccer squad had two players earn All-State honors while several others took home AllConference. Senior goal keep Blake Sterling and senior forward Eric Padron took AllState for the Panthers, which finished 9-5-4 overall on the season, 9-3-4 in the 5A South Conference.

Sterling was key at the net his senior season in earning his second All-State accolade. He nailed down 19 wins in two years at keeper, finishing his career with 125 saves.

“He really did a good job controlling the game from the back end,” Benton Coach Bobby Winn said, “and helping the team out for the last two seasons for us.”

Padron was Benton’s leading scorer with 11 conference goals, which was second in the South, adding five assists.

“Eric really played well for us,” Winn said. “When he had the ball, he commanded attention. He made two game-winning goals, against El Dorado and White Hall. He did a really good job of being a senior leader for us. Did a good job in practice, on trips and in games.”

Senior defender two-year starter Brennan Sterling was one of four other Panthers to take All-Conference.

“I often put him on their

best attacker from the outside and did a good job against them,” Winn said of Sterling. “Really helped us out in pre-kicks and helped on the attack on some corner kicks, which is very crucial in our game.

Fellow senior defender Uriel Hernandez, also a twotime starter, also took AllConference.

“He really did a great job in the middle by not allowing easy balls to get deeper,” Winn said. “He was a really good tackler, a smart, headsy player who the conference coaches thought was a good talent.”

Senior forward Lucas Wilbur also earned AllConference after scoring five goals with three assists.

“He moved around at different positions all year for us playing banged up,” Winn said. “He always took corner kicks and we scored 10 goals off of corner kicks (on the season).”

The lone junior getting All-Conference was Isaac Legate.

“Isaac played all over the midfield for us,” Winn said. “He probably played the most minutes out of anybody in the midfield, which is a tiring position. Isaac would take our short free kicks that we scored some goals off of.”

After a so-so start and playing some tough competition, the Panthers picked up the pace midseason after failing to finish early on.

“What we struggled with this year is finishing out games,” the Coach explained. “Losing at home to Hot Springs, who was a semifinalist, when you had a 2-1 lead. Coming back and having a chance to beat them on the road and end up giving up a goal for a tie. Just finishing up games and being mentality tough about it. Every game we were in, we just couldn’t finish them.”

After starting the season 2-1 and 2-0 in conference, the Panthers went through a five-match winless streak with two ties, though played the top teams in the South during that stretch. Winn said he let the Panthers loose and it paid off as they finished the regular season 7-0-2 to claim the South 4 seed before falling in the first round of the state tournament.

“Early in the season I tried to slow the game down a little bit so we could get more touches and distribute the ball better, but it didn’t benefit us to win games,” Winn said. “I switched it back up to my strategy of playing fast and super aggressive. We’re going to make the other team make mistakes and capitalize on those mistakes.

“The games we did lose or tie, every one of those teams went on deep in the playoffs. Lakeside was a finalist, Hot Springs was a semifinalist and Lake Hamilton was a goal from being a state semifinalist. We played in a really tough conference, but we showed late in the season we had heart and were determined not to lose games.”

Along with the seniors earning postseason honors, Benton will also say goodbye to seniors Tucker Haley, Henry Hollensworth, Chase Musser, Jaime Shipp and Tate Sparks, but Winn is confident in the future.

“We’ll be alright,” he said. “It’s kind of like this every year, it feels like. We have 10 graduate, which is definitely going to hurt, but we bring back a good group. We’re going to bring back seven lettermen, so we have kids coming back with experience, some talent in the younger group that has to grow a little bit. I think the future is bright. We may not be as big as we have been in the past, but we’ll definitely be very talented and skilled.”