SHELBY — New Shelby coach Cristian Arellano is hoping to instill a confident mentality into his team, believing they have the skill to compete with the top teams in the West Michigan Conference.
Arellano, like predecessor Damian Gonzalez, is a former Hart Pirate. He has plenty of assistant coaching experience, is involved with the Hart rec program, and aided Gonzalez with his Muskegon Drift futsal (an indoor 5-on-5 variant of soccer) team last year. He now has his eyes on improving the Shelby program after last season’s 6-13-2 mark.
The Tigers start the season strongly reliant on keeper Oliver Gorton, who had a great freshman year and was named first team all-conference. Despite his age, he’s already a team leader.
“Even the older players look up to him,” Arellano said. “He’s played at all levels and he’s going to bring a lot of leadership to the defense especially. We have a brand new defense and lost some players. He’s been a great leader, and not only to our defense but our other keeper. We’re all learning from him.”
Three standout players in early practices for Shelby were Christian Llanas-Lumbreras, Kobe Trejo and Wesley Huls, who’s one of the team’s few seniors. Llanas-Lumbreras is likely to be a key part of the offensive attack, with Trejo possessing good defensive skills and Huls ticketed for the midfield.
So far, the team is confident in its abilities, though Arellano said he’s had to push some younger players to come out of their shells and assert their leadership skills. A good sign, though, was turnout for summer conditioning. Arellano said over two dozen players came to those gatherings.
“They all want to learn,” Arellano said. “I see it in conditioning. When I played, I hated conditioning, but they surprised me.”
The hope is that mentality is transferable to some of the top opponents on Shelby’s schedule, like North Muskegon and Ludington. Arellano said he’s been around the game enough to have seen teams enter the field already defeated against better opponents, and he doesn’t want to have that happen to his team. Someday, with work, he hopes to have his team be the one inspiring defeat in others.
“Great teams, they don’t stop playing the whole year,” Arellano said. “They’re always together, and that’s what I try to talk to the kids about. If we want to become great, we’ve got to practice during the season and out of the season, because that’s what makes teams great. Not only that, but we’ve got to push each other.”
Arellano believes a winning record is a reasonable goal for his team - Wednesday’s 2-0 victory over Cadillac was a good start - and the Tigers are confident they can trip some teams up that won’t expect it.
“I think we’re going to be a pretty solid team, and I think we’re going to be a surprise to a few other teams,” Arellano said.
