FARMINGTON, Ark — “An American football coach, in a sport he knows nothing about. He didn’t know what the offside rule is, how many players are on the field, those types of things.”
“That was me.”
No, not Ted Lasso.
Meet Josh Fonville, or as Farmington head football coach J.R. Eldridge coined him:
“The real Ted Lasso,” said Farmington junior midfielder Jorge Cervantes. “Now that I think about it, it’s kind of true.”
Just like the TV Ted Lasso, Fonville’s background is in football, as he’s currently an assistant on the Cardinals varsity football team.
But in January, less than two months before the season, there was an urgent need for a head boys soccer coach.
“My athletic director came to me and said, ‘Hey, I think that we’re going to need to have some help here’,” Fonville said.
His answer?
“I took it on as a challenge man,” Fonville said.
“There was some questions early, but if I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it all out. I got online and started learning everything I could. Trying to watch videos of how to coach soccer, you know?”
With a coach so new to the sport, the sailing wasn’t smooth at first…
“Introduced them to the weight room,” Fonville said. “It’s just something that hadn’t been done.”
“Most of us had doubt in the coach, but then after we all started believing, it really just came all together,” Cervantes said.
It came together in the best way possible. The Cardinals lost only two games all season, and this past Saturday, defeated Clarksville 4-3 in the 4A state final, capturing Farmington’s first ever soccer state championship in its two year existence.
“Made history,” said senior left back Justin Logue. “Just work hard throughout the whole season, we all had the same goal in mind and won the championship.”
“Just an amazing feeling that’s never going to leave our bodies. It’s always going to be there,” Cervantes said.
The assistant coaches helped with the soccer tactics, while the first time head coach worked to instil a winning mentality, just like Ted Lasso.
“Team camaraderie, discipline, playing for others and not just yourself,” Fonville said. “I’m not as great of a coach as he (Ted Lasso) was portrayed on the show, however, those are the same ideas man. If you want a successful program, those are the things you bring in. I don’t care what sport it is.”
Thanks to a promise he made to his players, Fonville will have more than just a trophy to remember his Hollywood script of a first season.
“We were at the barbershop getting our hair dyed, and we called him and said, ‘You want to get your hair dyed too?’,” Cervantes said.
“I told them let me think about it,” Fonville said. “I called them back and said I don’t think I’m going to be able to. Then after practice I told them, ‘Tell you what, when we win the state title, I’ll get a soccer ball tattoo on my calf.”
“It has to have FHS 2022 champions,” Cervantes said. “We’re going to be on him. We’re going to take him to the parlor to get it done.”
Logue added: “I’ll go with him.”
And coach is ok with having one more tattoo than Ted Lasso.
“I mean, if this is the only year I ever coach soccer in my career, there it is,” Fonville said. “You have a state championship memory on your leg.”