Soccer coming to Byng for first time

BYNG — For the first time in school history, Byng High School will field a soccer program.

The new program is scheduled to launch this school year after funding for a soccer field was included in a district bond issue approved two years ago.

“There’s a lot of pieces to this. We’ve had a lot of soccer calls in the past,” Byng superintendent Kevin Wilson told The Ada News.

“My main thing as an administrator is I want kids involved in school,” he said. “So if there is something that we can offer that we don’t have that will get kids involved in an activity where they’re more likely to come to school and make their grades and want to be a part of it, I’ll all for it.”

Byng administrators began seriously discussing the possibility of adding soccer in 2023 after seeing growing interest from students.

“There are a ton of kids in youth leagues around Ada and a lot of them go to Byng. We met with the kids — all the students who were interested in soccer came to this meeting — so we included a field in our bond issue in 2024,” Wilson explained.

A new track complex was one of the major projects included in the bond package, making it a natural opportunity to add a soccer field inside the facility.

“When we got ready to do this bond project, we had to have a new track because ours wasn’t regulation size — we couldn’t host events there,” Wilson said. “When we were designing the track, we knew we needed to put some sort of surface in the middle … and soccer was something we’ve had requests for that’s not super expensive and it’s a sport with growing interest.”

Byng recently hired former Ada High School player and assistant coach Philip Jones as the school’s first-ever head soccer coach.

“We had to show we were serious about it and you can’t be serious about it if you don’t have a coach. He was very impressive when we talked to him and he’s a young man who can come in and get kids excited about playing soccer,” Wilson said. “We’re really excited about him. We think he’ll be able to build a program.”

Construction on the new athletic complex is still underway, but students will be encouraged to sign up for soccer when school begins this fall.

“They’re currently still working on the track, but now that we have our soccer coach in place, when school starts we’ll see how many kids are enrolled in it,” Wilson said.

Once participation numbers are finalized, Jones and athletic director Jason Wilkerson will begin assembling the program’s inaugural schedule.

“We plan on playing games in the spring. When we come back to school and see that we have enough for a girls team or a boys team or whatever, we’ll start working on scheduling,” Wilson said.

Wilson said it’s difficult to predict when construction on the new athletic complex will be complete, but that won’t prevent the program from getting jump-started.

“We have some areas here on campus where they can start practicing. But we’ve never had it, so they may have to do a lot of teaching in the classroom — what the game is all about, what the rules are — before anybody can get going,” he said.

Even so, Wilson is eager to see Byng’s newest athletic program take shape.

“We’re excited to see where it goes,” he said. “Sometimes it takes a little while to build a program from scratch, but our goal is to be playing soccer matches in the spring.”

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