Athlete Of The Week: Derek Carothers

Derek Carothers played the entire game Tuesday. That's saying something, because the Metea Valley senior goalkeeper has been splitting time with junior Gabe Gongora since the beginning of the season.

Mustangs coach Josh Robinson wanted it that way—until this week when Robinson named Carothers the full-time goalkeeper. With Carothers in his new role, the Mustangs tied South Elgin at 1, allowing an own-goal. It was the Mustangs' first game under the new look since reaching the semifinals of the Pepsi Showdown on Saturday and then playing in a consolation game of the tournament Sunday.

Carothers' role on the defense is even more important lately, because the Mustangs' offense is struggling to score.

Congratulations on the run Metea made in the Pepsi Showdown. Describe that experience. We play on a team and we're gonna lose as a team, obviously, but we try our best when we're out there on the field. everyone communicates to each other and if we have an opportunity and we score, everyone's together and we congratulate the person that scored. But lately we haven't been able to finish. In the back, we try to communicate as well as we can but we kind of gave up some easy goals lately.

Another big event of sorts is coming up. What will Senior Day mean to you? Saturday at 9 we play Lake Park, and they're a pretty hot team right now. They've only lost a couple games. ... It's obviously a big game for the team. It's a conference game and we really do need to win (for good placement in the league standings and good seeding in the postseason tournament) at the end of the year, so we're gonna go into the game, play hard, fight through it as a team and pull out the victory.

What school would you have graduated from had Metea not opened? I would have graduated from Waubonsie. ... When I was a freshman I was on the sophomore team and my actual coach was Josh Robinson, as I have right now. But I don't really communicate with
those kids anymore. They're off to college and I actually didn't really see them after that season. They were in a completely different building as me as a freshman...

Would you have liked to have stayed in the Waubonsie program? It didn't really matter because Josh (Robinson) came over and all the people that I really knew through soccer and club soccer came over to Metea as well, so we joined up together and we actually
got a good team going now at Metea and hopefully we finish strong.