Martin Moreno takes the helm of Harvesters Soccer

Posted

Martin Moreno will be taking the reins of the boys soccer program next season as former coach Hugo Aguillon has left the program for West Plains High School at Canyon Independent School District.

Moreno has been with Pampa Independent School District since 2016 at Pampa Junior High School, but he volunteered with the soccer program after school.

“I met with Coach A and told him I was a former goal-keeper and was interested in helping,” Moreno said. “So I would just come after school and practice with them.”

In 2018-19, Moreno became an official assistant coach when Coach Aguillon took over both programs.

Moreno had originally not planned on going for the head coaching job, but with some encouragement from Aguillon, he changed his mind. After more than a half decade learning under Coach Aguillon, Moreno feels comfortable to take the position.

“He really encouraged me to take over the boys program and really believed I could take the program to where it’s heading,” Moreno said. “I learned from Coach A that your practice needs to have something for conditioning and a drill to combine both things to touch the ball more. If you separate them, you lose ball touches; or vis versa.”

Moreno added Aguillon also taught him about consistency to individual positions on the field.

“He taught me some little things I didn’t know,” Moreno said. “My coaching IQ increased once I started spending a lot of time in his practices.”

While the Harvesters graduated a lot of key pieces on defense, Moreno expects younger players to step up and keep the pace for the Harvesters playoff run.

“We have a lot of eighth graders that are almost coming, some ready to be on varsity,” Moreno said. “So we will see some growth this year, but I will be surprised if we don’t make it to the same round of the playoffs this year. My expectations are high. We need to stay consistent with the rules, some I modified from Coach A a little bit.”

Moreno added there will be some new looks on defense to make up for the loss of senior players to graduation. But that doesn’t change the expectations, especially in a seven-team District for 2022-23.

“I’m excited for the new District, we are adding three more teams,” Moreno said. “They are gonna be competitive and a good test for me and the boys. I don’t remember the last time we had seven teams in our District for soccer.”

Moreno is married to his wife of five years Serina and the pair have two children.