Coach Guillermo Melendez gambled by putting Freshman Reece Elyasi on the B-CC Men’s varsity soccer team. This bet is now paying major dividends. For Elyasi, learning to walk and learning to dribble the soccer ball happened at around the same time. Elyasi was prepared to play varsity soccer as soon as he stepped into high school. As the only freshman on the team, Reece explains what it’s like, “I get a little freshman haze, but when it’s game time the upperclassmen treat me the same”.
Playing soccer since the age of three with his Dad and longtime coach, Reece has always exceeded expectations. Here at B-CC it’s been no different, throughout our interview, Reece emphasized his fervent goal to “win states this year as a freshman, I think we have the right group of players and a good coach so it’s definitely possible, we just need to keep working.”
As a freshman who’s never played for B-CC and only played at the club level, Reece loves playing for a home crowd: “I never had an atmosphere where there’s a lot of fans, people saying my name, announcers, and music.” The atmosphere has gone on to help Reece claim his first high school starting spot, and hopefully will assist him in reaching his end goal.
This past summer, Reece played over at West Ham Academy in England, a popular premier league team. Reece’s level of play impressed even the premier league coaches in London, who initiated the soccer phenom for a trial next summer. With his goals of winning a state championship and then traveling overseas, Reece has a very busy year ahead of him. He seems to be very prepared, training almost every single day by himself, with his dad, the barons, and coaches. Reece is always on the turf; he practices the fundamentals of soccer for almost twenty hours weekly. Even as a freshman, Reese shows a complete commitment to being a soccer player, ahead of almost everyone in his class, it will be exciting to see what the future holds.