Pleasant Hill striker Adrian Arellano has boys state scoring record in his sight

PLEASANT HILL — Through a pandemic-shortened season and wildfire evacuations, roster changes and a freshman season riding the bench, Adrian Arellano has had one constant in his soccer-playing career: goals.

Arellano can score, and he’s getting closer to being the best to ever do it in the state.

The Pleasant Hill senior striker is three goals away from tying the OSAA all-time, all-classifications boys scoring record.

With three games left in the regular season, Arellano has 81 career goals going into Monday’s 4 p.m. home game against La Pine.

He already has the second-most goals all time and is now trying to track down the record of 84 first set by McMinnville’s Frankie Lopez from 2003-06 and then tied by Edgar Monroy of Corvallis between 2016-19.

“I’ve always loved soccer, always loved playing it and I’ve always loved scoring goals,” Arellano, 17, said. “Scoring goals has always been my favorite thing to do.”

Nearly half of his career total came during an extraordinary 2021 season when he recorded 40 goals in his first full season as a starter as the Billies went undefeated until losing in the quarterfinals of the OSAA Class 3A/2A/1A playoffs.

With that, Arellano became Oregon’s No. 3 all-classifications single-season scorer, just four goals off the record of 44 set by Brooking’s Luke Beamon in 2018.

Arellano was aided along the way last season by a talented group of veteran midfielders who were able to set him up for scoring chances.

“They would just feed the ball to Adrian and that really helped him,” Pleasant Hill coach Ryota Sugitani said. “By the middle of the season, they just had this thing going on. They knew all they had to do was pass the ball to Adrian.”

With his career total at 58 goals when his junior season ended, Arellano began to eye the all-time state scoring record.

“In the back of my head, I was like, it’s a possibility,” he said.

But he also lost several of his set-up men to graduation last year, creating some uncertainty as to whether he would be able to be as prolific.

By mid-September, Arellano was off to another hot start and he knew then the record could be his if he stayed on course.

Through 10 games, he has 23 goals, though he’s been in a bit of scoring funk by his standards with only one goal in the last two games. Of course, he also had three goals in each of the previous five games, so when he gets hot, the scoring comes in bunches.

“In my limited time in coaching, he is by far the best player I've had at finishing,” Sugitani said. “And he can kick equally as good left or right. … He just loves soccer more than anything in his life at this point, I think.”

That’s always been the case, said Arellano, whose family lives in Oakridge and where access to soccer fields is limited, so until he got his driver’s license he had to take advantage of any opportunity to get in some touches.

When his mom would drive into Springfield to grocery shop, he would get dropped off at the Willamalane fields on 32nd Street to practice by himself.

When Arellano’s dad, who works a 7 a.m. shift at the Springfield Utility Board, dropped him off at Pleasant Hill High at 6:30 a.m., Arellano would bring a soccer ball and head to the field as he waited for the school doors to open. He’d be back on the field after school too, as he waited for his dad’s shift to end at 4:30 p.m.

“I got a lot of work in,” Arellano said.

It’s paid off, as Arellano was able to move into a starring role on the team despite not getting significant playing time until the final five games of the 2019 season when he was a freshman.

He still finished with four goals and went into the offseason expecting to contend for a starting spot in 2020.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic and remote learning. Once again, Arellano was often on his own in Oakridge until the the Billies played an abbreviated season in March of 2021. He returned and scored 14 goals in eight games.

Five months later, with school back in session for his junior year, Arellano erupted with his 40-goal season.

“He’s a hard-working kid, no doubt about it,” Sugitani said. “Players who get that good, it’s not coaching. It’s how much they catch that soccer bug and practice off the pitch.”

Arellano’s senior season got off to a scary start as he and his family had to evacuate their Oakridge home in September when the Cedar Creek Fire came dangerously close to the town.

The Arellanos stayed with friends in Pleasant Hill until it was safe to return.

“It was tough,” said Arellano, whose older brother was on the Cedar Creek fire-fighting crew. “It got 5 miles away and it was crazy to think that the whole town could burn down. I’m glad it never happened.”

In the weeks since, Arellano has been able to keep his focus on soccer as his team hunts for a postseason berth and he nears the state record.

Arellano admitted if he sets the record, he’d prefer to do so at home either Monday or on Oct. 17 in the regular-season home finale vs. Central Linn, as opposed to on the road against Siuslaw in Florence Wednesday night.

But he also wasn’t going to call his shot.

“I try to be humble,” he said. “I never like it when people ask me before games, ‘How many goals are you going to score today?’ I just like to play and what happens happens.”

Follow Chris Hansen on Twitter @chansen_RG or email at chansen@registerguard.com.

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This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Pleasant Hill boys soccer player poised to break state scoring record