OPINION: Mustangs soccer has proven it’s among the best in the state

Madison’s soccer program has long been one of the standards for the world’s most popular sport in rural West Tennessee.

The Mustangs and Lady Mustangs are one of the few programs you can almost use an ink pen for when writing down preseason predictions to make it to the state tournament in Murfreesboro.

But this year’s Mustang team is something special.

As I write this Wednesday morning of Spring Fling, we’re still a few hours away from their semifinal game against Gatlinburg-Pittman.

But just look at what this team has accomplished so far.

They’re at the state tournament with an undefeated record of 18-0-2.

To get to Spring Fling, they defeated Scotts Hill 9-0 in the region semifinals and then won the region championship at Loretto 8-1.

They hosted Republic High School from Nashville on Saturday in the sectional and made that 8-0 win look easier than it was.

Donovan Pruitte scored his 100^th career goal in that game. It looked at times as he might get more than enough to reach that milestone as his teammates found him open multiple times in the first half behind the Republic defense.

By the way, those 100 career goals, have come in less than three complete seasons because he didn’t get to play his freshman year because of the COVID-19 pandemic shut down all of TSSAA spring sports in 2020.

The Mustangs continued this string of top-level play on both ends of the pitch with a 5-0 shutout of McKenzie in the state quarterfinals. And the Rebels entered the state tournament with a respectable record of 11-3-2.

This semifinal game is a rematch of last year’s state championship, which was a victory for Gatlinburg-Pittman in PKs, so we know this run Madison is on isn’t a fluke.

The fact that a school that’s known for its academics that is the only JMCSS high school that hasn’t added an athletic block to its class schedule because of the academic credit requirements can still field an athletic team that competes at this level is a testament to coaches Igor Luczensky and Jeremy Young and the players who have gotten the program to this level.

I’ve been to a couple of scholarship signings for Madison soccer players this past semester, and the fact that nearly every player on both the boys’ and girls’ teams showed up for both signings (one from each team), shows the camaraderie among the players, which only galvanizes the team and strengthens the program.

So no matter what has happened or will happen the rest of the week, Madison soccer has certainly earned its way into the final days of TSSAA’s soccer season.

Brandon Shields is the managing editor of The Jackson Post. Contact him at brandon@jacksonpost.news. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon or Instagram @Editorbrandon.