Girls’ soccer gets new coach in Jonatan Hernandez
The ARHS girls’ soccer team has a new coach this year, Jonatan Hernandez, and they are off to a steady start with 4 wins and 5 losses.
Hernandez was born in Mexico but moved to Texas when he was young. Hernandez lived in a small college town named Belton, Texas, similar to Amherst “but not as busy.”
“It has one big college instead of the three in Amherst,” he said. Hernandez also said that summer in Amherst is much better than in Belton; it is much cooler and easier to manage.
Hernandez has been playing soccer for his whole life, starting as a striker then moving to a midfielder and then a defender at times. He was successful enough in his talents to play soccer in college, playing at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor (UMHB, a Christian university in Texas).
Hernandez lives with his wife, who works for a non-profit organization, and his two kids, who both play soccer at the local club team, FC Stars. It was his kids that got Hernandez into coaching in the first place.
When practicing with Coach Hernandez, you can expect the practice to follow some sort of schedule. Generally, they start practice with a technical drill to improve players’ ball skills. Then after that, they shift the focus of the practice into some transition drills, to have the players be able to swiftly transition from offense to defense. Then lastly, he ends practices with a drill or two focused on shooting.
Although this outline is what you will see a lot of the time, Hernandez implements some rules into his practices to make them more challenging: the main one is that when their team loses the ball, “they have to win the ball back within three seconds of losing it.”
This rule can be seen in the players’ favorite drill called “Crossing the River,” a transitioning drill where there are three teams and two of those teams have to keep the ball away from the other team in the middle.
As for their 4-5 record, Hernandez believes that “unluckiness” has played a big part in this record.
While watching one of their games, spectators will see the team set up in a myriad of formations. While on defense, the team can be seen in a 4-5-1 formation, with the wide players moving back to help the defense, but when they win the ball back, they look to transition into a 4-3-3, having the wide players move up to help the offense. Another formation they have used this season is a 4-4-2, due to it being a well-known and easily adaptable formation.
In Hernandez’s first season as the head coach, he has a lot of goals. “One of my main goals is to compete in the state tournament this year,” he said. Besides competing in States, Hernandez wants his players to “improve on their ability to play soccer by the time the season ends.”
Team captain and senior Maddie Hockman said she is proud of what the team has achieved. “This season feels a lot more intense,” said Hockman. “We have a lot of changed values that have bettered the team.” She believes this is a good sign for the program for years to come.
Hernandez agrees. He hopes that since they have a young team, there will be freshmen and sophomores that step up to the challenge of high school soccer and the girls’ team will only improve in the years ahead.
