Portales getting set for soccer transition

PORTALES — Portales’ boys soccer team begins the 2019 season with its third coach in as many years.

Out went Nathan Dodge after the 2017 season, out went his successor Juan Mendez after 2018.

Enter Michael Aunan this year — into the Portales boys soccer program, that is, because Aunan had already been the Rams’ cross country coach. When Mendez stepped down, Aunan was eager to step in and make use of his soccer background.

“I’ve played soccer for a long time now,” Aunan said, “so the transition wasn’t too hard. It was more taking what’s up top in the brain and getting it out for the players to understand.”

Aunan is originally from Spokane, Washington, but came to the area because his wife was on active duty at Cannon Air Force Base. He finished his degree at Eastern New Mexico University, began his involvement with Portales athletics through volunteer coaching before working his way into paying coaching gigs.

Aunan says his switch from coaching cross country to soccer has been made easier by his assistant coaches — Alex Lopez, and a volunteer he referred to simply as Coach Matt, mainly because the last name escaped him.

Aunan said he wasn’t able to list any key players as of Monday night, because tryouts were being conducted Tuesday and Wednesday. But, even before sorting out who’s going to play varsity and jayvee, Aunan was pleased with the wealth of options he’s going to have.

“From what I’ve seen there are a lot of highly-skilled players out there,” Aunan said, “so it really comes down to how fast they pick up the new system I’ve installed. ... We’re going to try to press the play a lot and do a lot of short quick passes and maintain possession a lot more. ...

“I think we’re going to be pretty good. We’ve focused a lot on conditioning this summer. ... We’ll start focusing a little more on skill once we’ve determined who our varsity and our junior varsity players will be.”

All the players so far have been coachable, have been excited about being part of Aunan’s program.

“They seem to be responding very well to me,” Aunan said. “I’m extremely happy with the effort that I’ve seen and the commitment to continue showing up for practices. There seems to be a lot of buy-in to what we’re trying to do pushing forward.”