Miraculous Journey For Fledging Soccer Program

FARMINGTON BOYS CRASH STATE FINALS PARTY

FARMINGTON -- The journey from its inaugural JV season canceled by covid to Class 4A State Finals appearance on Saturday amounts to nothing less than miraculous for the Farmington boys soccer program.

"It is really a miraculous kind of a thing, man, and I think all credit goes to the kids, first of all overcoming the fact that it's a two year program, I'm a new coach to them, I'm not a big soccer guy, and of course, just the fact that most of them play other sports," said Farmington head coach Josh Fonville.

Farmington defeated De Queen 1-0 in the Class 4A State semifinals Saturday to earn the school's first title shot in boys soccer. Fonville praised the work ethic of the boys involved in the program.

"It really is just a tribute to the work and the dedication and what they [wanted out of it], and just the mindset that they established in themselves to want to win and I don't care how many matches we've won 1-0, I'm good with that," Fonville said.

Farmington (12-2-3) takes on Clarksville in a rematch of the 4A West Conference championship won by the Panthers, 3-0, on May 6 at Clarksville in a battle for the Class 4A State championship Saturday morning at 10 a.m. Benton's athletic complex is the site with the Arkansas Activities Association attempting to centralize the finals for all spring sports.

The score of the 4A West Conference championship match is deceiving, however, because Farmington played substitutes and Clarksville scored two goals late.

For Fonville it's been exciting to see so much hard work pay off. He took the position back in December finishing up football and got started in January doing initial workouts. Finally towards the end of January they started actual practice.

"I knew we were probably going to be a little behind because we really didn't have an offseason necessarily. But, gosh, they just put in so much work and they were willing to stay extra. They worked whether it was the weight room or on the turf, they worked their tails off trying to get better," Fonville said.

Fonville defers much of the credit for the program's success to volunteer assistant coach, Mark Rogers. Rogers has drawn out the Xs and Os in a manner that Fonville describes as "just been brilliant" and really benefited the Cardinals.

"He's played to our strengths for sure. It's just been an incredible ride. I knew when I took over I said, 'Man, we've got so much talent if we can put this stuff together," Fonville said.

Early on the Cardinals were a little slow to score, but the team peaked at an opportune time with prime time wins over Wynne (2-0), Pulaski Academy (3-2) and De Queen (1-0) in the state tournament to reach the state finals.

"We were just trying to kind of find ourselves in our nonconference matches. I knew there were some pieces there that gave us a legit shot and so with that we're definitely in the position where we put it together and it's starting to really show right now," Fonville said.