Sexton doing what he can to promote soccer

SPENCER — You’ve got to admire Tom Sexton. If anything, this New Jersey native is undaunted.

Sexton coaches soccer at Salisbury High School. He has molded the program into one of the state’s best. He believes the Hornets are always a threat to win the state 2A championship and nothing has changed his thought process this season.

Especially after beating defending champion South Rowan 3-1 Thursday night in the finals of the Rowan County Soccer Tournament. Salisbury, which is usually the class of soccer in Rowan County, is aggressive, entertaining — and most of all confident.

So why don’t more people know about the Hornets — or seem to care?

When the championship game began, a head count on one side of the North Rowan football stadium had 36 fans. There were 33 on the other.

The crowd swelled to over twice that by the second half but the attendance at prep soccer matches pales in comparison to, say, the county basketball tournament, where 3,500 fans pack Catawba College’s Goodman Gymnasium.

Why isn’t soccer getting the fan interest it deserves?

“That’s a really good question,” mused Sexton. “I just don’t think enough people have been out here. They need to be exposed to it. If you come out to see it, you’ll come back.”

No one can accuse Sexton of not doing his part. He is not only a soccer coach, but a soccer promoter.

Thursday night, he was handing out roster sheets but if you know Sexton, there was much more to read than just a list of names.

On one side was a drawing of a Hornet player with the words: “Futbol This Week” leading up to a schedule of soccer events. On the other side, is his own notebook, full of stats, history and game reports.

Many nights, Sexton is still awake when the clock strikes 12, formulating his ideas onto paper — anything that might create a little more interest and a few more fans.

“I enjoy doing it,” Sexton said. “The kids need recognition and the parents like to be informed. Daniel Butner is 16 assists away from the state record and people need to know that.

“If you want to establish a quality program, you have to do it with quality.”

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Quality is what Salisbury soccer is all about. It’s a major story when the Hornets don’t win the county title.

Sexton swears his team does not have a swagger, “because we work our tails off,” but there is one.

It comes from a 170-69-11 record over the past 13 years.

It comes from four straight years of producing a first-team all-state player.

It comes from three consecutive years of having the Central Carolina Conference’s Player of the Year and a first-team Umbro All-USA performer.

Know where I got that information? From Sexton’s pre-game notes, that’s where.

Sexton won’t settle for Salisbury playing a bunch of patsies to pad the win total. He has never shied away from playing the very best in North Carolina and will prove it again Oct. 5 when the Hornets make a trip to Swansboro to face a team that has won six of the last 10 2A titles.

And Swansboro, by the way, plays on a soccer field, not a gridiron.

So if the fans here can’t find their way to see the Hornets, the Hornets will go find the fans.

“Their football team has an open date that week so it’s going to be major event,” Sexton says. “It’s going to be raucous.”

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In this area, Salisbury is to soccer what West Rowan is to basketball and East Rowan is to baseball. The Hornets are usually the best in the county and that’s why the Hornets wanted to reclaim the title from a South Rowan team that, over the last few years, has become quite a threat to their throne.

But Sexton isn’t dumb when the topic of big crowds comes up. He knows the mentality of the average sports fan.

“What’s the old saying? ‘Americans like a lot of points.’ So we try to put up a lot of points. Against a great defensive team tonight, we scored three goals.”

And Salisbury’s defense wasn’t bad either. Sexton decided that to win, Salisbury would have to shut down South’s All-American Dustin Efird.

The Hornets belted him around, giving him a charley horse in the first half and aggravating his hamstring in the second. Efird belted back, of course.

“Soccer’s a rugged sport,” shrugged Sexton.

The battle between Efird and Hornets Bryan Goodnight and Lynden Zuniga was almost as entertaining as Sexton’s halftime speech.

“Don’t let Dustin Efird get control! Let Dustin Efird be an All-American another night!”

The bellowing continued. “No emotional breakdowns! We’re winning the air war! We’re more fit than they are!”

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All of this was said to a team that had played 100 minutes the night before in a two-overtime semifinal win over West Rowan.

It was your basic Knute Rockne speech and Sexton’s kids bought into it. They always buy into it. A coach doesn’t win 71 percent of his games unless he knows what he’s talking about.

In fact, Sexton could’ve predicted the Hornets would carry off the championship hardware before last night’s match even began.

“We tend to win this every odd-numbered year,” he smiled. “When I went to bed last night, I thought, ‘This is 2001. Hmmm.’”

Sexton will expect to win it next year too, regardless of the opponent or the even-numbered year or the number of fans in the bleachers.

This is soccer. His sport. An entertaining sport.

And he remains undaunted. In his opinion, it’s the best sport.

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Contact Ronnie Gallagher at 704-797-4256 or rgallagher@salisburypost.com .