Local Rotary Club learns about NHS soccer program

Nashville High School soccer coaches MiKayla Clift and Eric Perez were the guest speakers at this week’s Nashville Rotary meeting.

Clift is in her first full-year of coaching the Scrapperette soccer team. She took over after two conference games last season, but ended up leading the team to the 4A state soccer tournament for the first time in school history.

Clift said, and I quote, “We have a lot of new faces this year, filling several key roles. We will have a lot of young players getting some big minutes. There will be some lumps early but we have high expectations and will continue to improve as the season goes along. With all the new faces excitement is always high.”

Clift said this year’s team consists of two seniors, eight juniors, 15 sophomores and 15 freshman. She said 14 of her players have never played soccer before.

The Scrapperettes started the season 0 and 1 following a loss to 6A Cabot on Monday. They will play Benton today and host El Dorado on Monday at Scrapper Stadium. The game will start at 4 pm.

Perez is a Nashville High School graduate and studied at Southern Arkansas University before coaching one year at De Queen.

Perez said there is a lot of talent in the area. He commended the parks youth soccer program and mentioned there is a travel soccer team.

Perez is the third soccer coach at Nashville during the six years of the program. He said expectations are high this season and he thinks they can make a deep run in the playoffs.

Perez stated Nashville’s conference consists of Hope, who is expected to be pretty good this year, Mena, Morrilton, Arkadelphia, Malvern, Bauxite and De Queen, who is the cream of the crop. Perez this is the reason Nashville’s conference is considered on the best in the state in all classifications.