One thing athletes learn quickly is that playing college athletics is a lot of hard work.
That shouldn’t bother Newton County’s Will Rushing, who signed to play college soccer at East Central Community College last week.
Rushing played one of the defender positions for the Cougars, who finished with a 23-2 record after a 4-1 loss to St. Stanislaus in the Class 4A championship game.
While Rushing only scored four goals for the Cougars this season, his talents were needed on the defensive end of the field.
“Will has been great for us this year,” Newton County coach Will Thompson said. “He was super important for us on that back line and held it together for us. Emotionally, what I got out of Will every day was hard work. He came in to work every day and never complained. I would say go do this, go run that and never heard a single thing from him, which was great because our younger guys saw that and kind of followed his example.”
Thompson, who also played college soccer, said East Central is getting a hard-working, versatile player in Rushing.
“EC is getting a very hard-working guy who comes to work every day to get better,” Thompson said. “Just overall, they are getting a hard-hard-working individual. They weren’t recruiting him for any particular position because in years past he has played more of an attacking role, but this year I had to put him back on defense because that’s where we needed him to be. EC is getting an all-around good player and will have options to where they put him. I think their coaches liked the fact that he was an all-over the field kind of guy.”
Rushing said he never considered anybody but East Central and is thankful for the opportunity to play for the Warrior and be close to home. Rushing said he plays to concentrate on engineering at East Central.
“I know a couple of the teachers and I know they have nice facilities and it’s really close to home,” Rushing said. “I like the idea of getting to sleep in my own bed every night and eat my own food.”
Thompson said he has seen Rushing grow tremendously in his time at Newton County.
“I came in three years ago and Will was a tenth grader,” Thompson said. “It has been tremendous to see how each year he has developed. The first step was getting him to play soccer outside of school, so he went and played travel soccer and go so much better. It all kind of culminated this year for us with his attitude, work ethic and the attitude he set for the other guys. He came to work every day, and the whole team kind of adopted that mentality. It paid off for them and carried us through this year.”
