Local team closes out its career on top
For Tuf-E-Nuf coaches, the girls on the local travel soccer team completed the program’s era with an ultimate finish.
The culmination of six years together, joining a couple of Texarkana Soccer Association girls teams, and giving them one more competition together was going to be a fitting ending. The Tuf-E-Nuf players assured head coach David Hicks that they would take care of the task at hand, and they won their first Lakewood Fallfest soccer tournament U18 girls championship in six tries last month at Burns Park in North Little Rock, Ark.
Fourteen players battled through the round-robin point-system event to end their TUSC careers ahead of their competition from all over the state.
“The Little Rock tournament was important to me. Burns Park is beautiful in October,
and I love playing there,” Hicks said. “We’ve played in that tournament that last five-six years and we never won it. A lot of it is the way it’s set up: there’s no championship game, its a round-robin, you get a point for a shutout, and you get a point deducted if you get a red card. But it always seemed like we’d come up one point short. Something would happen—we’d give up a goal that we shouldn’t have given up, or something would happen to drop us to second.”
Tuf-E-Nuf, which has featured players from Arkansas High, Texas High, Pleasant Grove, Liberty-Eylau, Genoa Central, Trinity Christian, and other area schools on their active roster over the years, was runner-up four other times in the North Little Rock competition.
Hicks, along with assistant coaches Tim Day and Joe Adams, all knew the Fallfest was going to be the final tournament for the team, and because of that fact it would be an emotional one for them and the girls.
“Going into this tournament knowing that it would be our last time together and the girls did it,” Hicks said. “It was close and I was thinking, ‘Oh gosh, here we go again. Something’s going to happen.’ But the girls told me, ‘We’ve got this coach David.’ And they did and they pulled it out.
“It was like watching college or pro soccer. They would pass the ball back from the wing (to a defender), switch it across the field, and the other team couldn’t even touch the ball. Our girls would see an opening, and they would just go and strike it. It was amazing and fun to watch.”
Hicks started Tuf-E-Nuf as a U11 team in 2007. The next year, Day integrated his TSA squad with Hicks’ team.
There was a boys TUSC team, coached by Tony Hartman, at the time, and there had been one other travel girls team, coached by former Arkansas High coach Kyle Davis, previously in the area.
Soon-to-be Tuf-E-Nuf players Kelsey Hicks, Caroline Byrd, and Taylor Wade were actually members of the TUSC boys team roster that first year.
“We were doing indoor soccer in Shreveport, La., that season, and we all went to a tournament in Conway, Ark.,” Hicks said. “We were taking our recreation team (league), and we picked up a few girls as guest players. After that tournament, several parents expressed they wanted to have a girls tournament team.”
With the support of the parents and dedication of the players, coach Hicks, Day and Adams organized the squad and jumped right into competitions and tournaments all over in the Four States area. The goal for the coaches was to not only better their players’ abilities but also raise the level of girls soccer in the area.
“What I experienced through everything—the hours of practices and games over the years—was with TSA, which was a great experience for us, we kept hearing that we
Texarkana’s Tuf-E-Nuf finished up its six years as a program by winning the Lakewood Fallfest soccer tournament U18 girls division recently at Burns Park in North Little Rock, Ark. Team members including, first row, left to right, Marissa Jones, Allyna Jones, Bianca Jones, Brenda Heminger, and Jordan Day; and second row, left to right, assistant coach Tim Day, Hailey Teel, Lakin Resecker, Taylor Wade, Kelsey Hicks, Kourtney Sanderson, Alex Smith, Sarah Adams, Jordan Hearn, Patricia Hale-Siedler, and coach David Hicks. Tuf-E-Nuf had finished runner-up four other times but not previously won the Lakewood Fallfest event. needed to go play TUSC to experience better competition,” Hicks said. “That’s where we were.”
Starting out, Hicks would hold two mandatory practices a week and one optional. For the majority of the times, most of the players were there all three meetings.
“What we did was to help improve soccer in Texarkana, at a higher level,” Hicks said. “We did a lot of things with the girls in the community. We might be asked to put on a scrimmage during halftime at an Arkansas High or Texas High game, just to let people in Texarkana know what these girls do.
“These girls were young, and just watching them grow was great. Seeing them being a part of that high school atmosphere at an early age, and people realizing how good they had become and how they represented Texarkana, was very important to us.”
Most of the players are in their senior years. At least nine of the Tuf-E-Nuf players made contributions to their high school teams as freshmen.
“We had nine girls (from Tuf-E-Nuf) who either started or contributed on their varsity program as freshmen,” Day said. “That was outstanding for us just to see; it just makes you proud to see their growth.
“When it comes to high school, Texarkana gets represented in a lot of different sports because we have some strong atheltic programs,” he added. “But there hasn’t been a great deal of success on the girls soccer side (as far as playoffs). Texas High got their first playoff win last year. Pleasant Grove has had one; we’ll see this year if they can sneak out another one.”
The coaches also tried to always integrate fun aspects with the team—not just winning and losing. The girls would take on a business-like persona with the opening whistle of a match.
Tuf-E-Nuf claimed a tournament title in a Dallas-area tournament one year, despite the finals being rained out. For their win, the team was invited to attend the L. A. Galaxy-FC Dallas Major League Soccer game and come out on the field at halftime to be recognized in front of the home crowd.
“The girls were on the fifth or sixth row, lined up, and (David) Beckham was about to take a cornerkick right in front of them,” Hicks said. “And all the girls had their phones out, taking a picture of Beckham. It was always about mixing in the fun, but when they stepped on the field it was all business. And they took care of it together.”
Tuf-E-Nuf began to build a positive reputation for not only how they played soccer, but also how they approached the game with respect and for their collaboration.
“For every game in the tournaments, I would have my captains, and those captains knew after the game they were going to go shake the referees’ hands,” Hicks said. “All the girls would go line up and shake all the referees’ hands. The way they represented themselves on and off the field was important to us, as well as getting better at soccer.”
It got to the point that parents from opposing teams and teams from different cities around Arkansas would comment on and compliment the Tuf-E-Nuf parents on not only the team’s technical and tactical abilities, but also the girls’ teamwork and sportsmanship.
“They just played the games at these tournament at a whole different level,” Hicks said. “We played some tournaments that, as coaches, we knew going in we probably weren’t going to win the title, but that it would help the girls get better.”
Tuf-E-Nuf also entered tournaments that it could compete for a championship. Of the fullsided tournaments, the Texarkana travel team played over the years—roughly 35 11v11 events—Tuf-E-Nuf won or placed second in at least 20. With small-sided competitions also, the team played in over 60 tournaments in five-plus years.
In that first year, Tuf-E-Nuf was the 4v4 national champions and were World Champion qualifiers in 3v3 also.
“There are so many great memories of what these kids have done together, but the end result was helping Texarkana get better with the soccer,” Hicks said. “I told the girls at the end—come with your heart and give 111 percent. My message to them (after winning the title to complete their careers together) was it was a great win, but always go with your heart and be happy with whatever you do; always enjoy it.”