Morganton Day finding success behind teamwork, competitive drive

In 2002, leadership expert John C. Maxwell published a book called “Teamwork Makes the Dream Work,” which is a phrase that aptly describes the Morganton Day School youth soccer team and its development over the past few years.

The co-ed squad has won 24 consecutive matches over the last three seasons as a member of the Burke County Recreation Department league — capturing two indoor soccer division titles as well as an outdoor soccer division title, all in the 7-8 age group (there are multiple divisions for each age group) — and the team hasn’t lost since 2023 when it played in the 5-6 age group, although no official score was kept in those contests.

Jim Clark and his wife, Liberty Middle School band director Amy Alexander, started coaching Morganton Day in 2022 despite having no previous experience playing or coaching soccer. Their son had reached the minimum age to play indoor soccer and coaches were needed, so they decided to “give it a try,” according to Clark.

“Amy, being a teacher, is an expert at making organization out of chaos, so she was able to really bring a lot of her expertise into kind of getting things structured for coaching these kids,” said Clark, who is Morganton Day’s head coach. “And we started having quite a bit of success with this group of kids, I think none of whom had ever played soccer before outside of a little bit of rec soccer with the city.”

Players must play for their respective schools unless there aren’t enough to make a full team, and while Morganton Day currently only has around 100 students, it has fielded an outdoor squad and an indoor squad each year since Clark became head coach. In those seven seasons (four indoor, three outdoor), the team has become “a very big part of the school.”

“The kids on the soccer team, they’re sort of concentrated in one class … but they’ve all been in school together really since they were in pre-kindergarten,” said Clark. “They go to class together during the day, they do every school activity together, so this team is just another extension of the academic program at Morganton Day. … Because it’s so small, we have very close family support for the team, and we also have really close faculty support. Athletics are just a very big part of the school despite the fact that it’s small.

“Our head of school is Dr. Melanie Mikusa, who is a huge sports fan and a very big supporter of athletics at the school and does everything she can to support it, and our athletic director is Lyndsay Brisson, who has been instrumental in helping grow sports at the middle school level. … We just have a lot of investment with the greater school community, and we feel very close to what they do as students at school, so that makes the program a little unique.”

Morganton Day most recently posted an 8-0 record during the indoor season to win the Division 2 title — ages 7-8 had four divisions in 2025 — with the team continuing to build on the success it has enjoyed in past seasons. Players included Bruce Tilem, Silas Schotte, Asa Alexander-Clark, Cole Margo, Leilan Genwright, Bodhi Feduke, Jacob Coulter, Charlie White, Oakley Bristol, Emory Cato-Chapman, Grayson Short, and Halle King.

“After we got through that first season, we had more kids who were old enough to play once the fall outdoor season rolled around and had a couple other students join that class, and they were all good athletes,” said Jim Clark. “So, we just kind of started developing a program where every season we were building on this team, and the fact that it was such a small group meant that we had more or less the same players or the same core of players every single season. And that’s another difference with some of the bigger schools here in Morganton is they might have four soccer teams, so the roster is a little bit different every season that they play, but for us we have the same group every time or close to the same group.

“It really makes it easy for us as coaches because we have the same group of kids, so every season we’re building on what we were working on the last season. That’s a huge advantage for us because we really do feel like we’re building a program rather than just every season you’re not sure what group of kids you’re gonna have or what their skill set might be. So, we’re developing the whole team and continuing that development every year, which again kind of makes it similar to what’s going on when they’re in school.”

Clark pointed out that Morganton Day has had success in soccer before, winning two other age group championships prior to his arrival. However, “what has been unique (to the current program) is we’ve been able to keep this core of kids together and stretch building the program across multiple seasons.”

Clark and Alexander are also close to the other members of Morganton Day’s coaching staff, assistants Justin Margo and Susan Cato-Chapman. Both of their sons play on the team as well, adding even more togetherness and camaraderie to the mix.

“It’s just been very rewarding,” said Clark. “We all work together as coaches, and as a coaching group are tight-knit. We are invested as a group of parents and educators that really believe in the program, so we’ve had some really, really good help with working with the kids.”

Nonetheless, despite Morganton Day’s success, Clark made it clear that the coaches “try not to overemphasize winning.”

“This group of kids is highly competitive, and one of our biggest challenges in practice is to not have the kids injure one another when we scrimmage because they go so hard and are so competitive,” said Clark. “They’re not old enough yet to dial it back, they just get on autopilot, and they don’t know anything else but going hard. So, it’s important to them, but we don’t want them to think that it’s all about winning. I mean, one of the greatest lessons about sports is learning how to accept defeat and learn from defeat and grow as a person and as an athlete, so we certainly don’t have a philosophy of ‘win at all costs.’ But we’re proud of the success that they’ve had because by the same token they’ve worked hard for that, and it’s nice to see them get that reward.

“… It’s a part of our philosophy to make it about the whole team and we develop the whole team, and we like to feel as though we could put any combination out there and they’re gonna play well together. We want everybody to have success, we want everybody to score goals, we want everybody to do well on defense. We try very hard at that, and I think we do succeed. And I feel that really is a big part of our success because we don’t have to just rely on a couple of kids. Our whole team knows how to play soccer, and we work hard on positions, passing, where they are on the field and what they’re doing, and we’ve been doing that going back to when they were little, tiny kids playing 5-6.”

The Morganton Day coaching staff has also learned a lot from Lobo Lucero, who was an accomplished soccer player in Mexico and now coaches a team in the Morganton Soccer League that Asa Alexander-Clark and Cole Margo played on for three seasons prior to this year.

“We were able to learn, even though we weren’t coaching, by just watching him coach and bringing some of that to our team,” said Jim Clark. “He was very much a mentor to all of us, especially for those of us that haven’t played. Justin had played before but myself and Amy and Susan, we’re new to soccer, and for Amy and I to be able to learn from someone that accomplished, that was really helpful. So as coaches I think we got up to speed maybe a little bit quicker than we would have if we had just been trying to completely figure it out on our own.”

In addition, Clark pointed out that it has been beneficial being in Morganton, where the “Latino culture is very prominent” and soccer is an extremely popular sport.

“Several of the kids that have played on this team have played on club teams in a variety of different leagues in and around Morganton and have had an opportunity to become connected to the Latino neighborhood in our community,” he said. “… For us to be a competitive team among a culture where soccer is so important and emphasized so strongly is something that we’re really proud of, and it’s a real honor to be a part of that. And for a Latino culture to look at our program and consider it successful and consider it a good program, that’s very special to us.”