Arnold’s Boys Soccer Preparing To Dominate New Season

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) - The Arnold boys are preparing for their quest to an appearance in a 3rd straight State title game.

The team won state in the 2020-2021 season but fell 1-0 to Belin Jesuit in the title match last season.

In the 6 years Head Coach Jonathan Hammond has been there, Arnold as gone 114-18-5, so they’ve garnered some pretty high expectations.

The scary thing is, Hammond says they haven’t even reached their peak.

“I think we have the most talented team we’ve ever had, that’s saying a lot because we’ve been to the state championship the past 2 years, won 1. But we also realize that talent doesn’t always equal success right. We put in more work than our opponents. We’re not going to be outworked. There’s a saying that we kind of live by, “somewhere out there they are training when we are not, and when we meet they will win.” We don’t ever want that to happen so we will outwork opponents.”

Junior Christopher Lebdaoui says this success wasn’t easily come bye and definitely isn’t easy to maintain.

“Probably a ridiculous amount of set piece plays that we have to memorize. A lot of tactic practices, this year it’s going to be 6 days a week probably, in the past it’s been 5 days a week with film directly after. Sometimes 5 hours straight. Really really specific and long film sessions and just a lot of hard work overall. Everyone expects to go to State because we’ve played so long together. I don’t think it’s too heavy on their minds.”

They kickoff their season at home against Bay on Tuesday at 7:30pm.

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