Granville Christian's Leija honors fallen classmate, boosts young Lions with inspirational play
NEWARK ― As the lone senior on Granville Christian Academy's youthful soccer team, not to mention a four-year starter, goalie Jayden Leija is teaching the Lions a thing or two about the game. And how to deal with grief.
Right before the season, his best friend and classmate Luke Wilson, who played basketball and baseball for GCA, died in an ATV accident. Leija and the Lions have played with heavy hearts, but are also honoring Wilson by wearing his LW initials on the back of their cleats.
"It happened in the pre-season and everyone was pretty devastated, but I'm doing everything I can to honor his memory," Leija said. "Every game, I play for him. I shot a penalty kick earlier in the season, and I dedicated it to him."
"He touched both his heels (for the initials) and pointed to the sky after he scored," coach Phil Hubbard said. "It was pretty emotional. He also came up with the idea for the initials."
Wilson would no doubt be proud of the way Leija is leading GCA, which improved to 7-4-1 Tuesday with an 8-1 win against visiting Mansfield St. Peter's at Evans Athletic Complex. Sophomore striker Gavin Pound, in just his second season of soccer, registered a three-goal hat trick. He gave a lot of credit to older brother Landen, a junior.
"He's the reason I'm playing," Gavin said. "He's really, really good. He's always looking for me. He got it to me on two of my goals."
Brianna Hubbard, the coach's daughter, got the Lions on the board first less than a minute into the game when she drilled the ball off a Spartan defender in the box and followed her miss into the net. Gavin Pound then scored all three of his goals in a row, on a pair of breakaways and a rebound shot when Hubbard's blast caromed off charging St. Peter's goalie Angelo Gasper. Wesley Arnholt was there to poke home another rebound, on Landen Pound's attempt, as the Lions went up 5-0 with 8:49 before Maggie Chamberlain got the Spartans on the board with 5:30 in the half.
Barely a minute into the second half, Landen Pound found the net and GCA netted two more goals, by Luke Holt on a diagonal shot and Drew Dennis with the left foot. Zac Stump was credited with three assists, Holt had a pair and Porter Cook and Landen Pound added one apiece. Gasper turned in a stellar effort in goal for St. Peter's, making several diving saves as the Lions bombarded him with 23 shots on goal. The Spartans had only two.
"We worked a lot on change of direction instead of funneling everything," said Hubbard, who has coached soccer for 27 years. "We do a lot of 4-on-4 in practice. We want to possess the ball as much as we can. We have six or seven juniors, four or five sophomores and three freshmen, and our goal is to bring a love for the game into everything we do. It's supposed to be fun."
"We're a really young team," Leija said. "We lost five seniors from last year, and it was a lot of leadership and talent. We've had to re-group and figure it out. We've come a long way since the start of the season, and there's been a lot of growth. Gavin has a lot of promise. He pushes hard in practice, and that makes his teammates push hard, too."
The Lions have been hurt by lack of numbers in recent years, but that's something coach Hubbard aims to change. His older daughter, Hannah, is in charge of the junior high program.
"Every Wednesday, we don't practice, because we're out at our academy helping the younger kids," he said. "It's grades 1-4, and there's 28 of them. They play at halftime of our junior high games, and there's like three goals going."
The future looks bright for the program as all but Leija will return next season.
"These next two years, the team is going to grow a lot," Gavin Pound said. "Next year, we'll be senior dominated. But obviously, Jayden is going to be a big loss."
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This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Granville Christian's Leija boosts young Lions with inspirational play
