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‘The Lion King’

Cassidy captains ‘Beest to third title

Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2006

He is the Sandy Spring Friends School’s all-time leading goal-scorer in boys soccer, but that’s just a part-time gig. Starring on the lacrosse field in the spring doesn’t define him, either.

He’s also a counselor, guitar player and actor, works at a fitness club, and has a passion for architecture — far from your typical high-school athlete. Olney resident Kyle Cassidy is a renaissance man. And yet, that’s his biggest problem.

‘‘That’s the thing — I don’t really know what I want to do after this,” said Cassidy, who wrapped up his high-school soccer career as a three-time Potomac Valley Athletic Conference tournament champion with the Wildebeest’s penalty-kick shootout victory over Covenant Life last week. ‘‘I kind of consider myself a jack of many trades, master of none. ... I’m not sure if I’ll ever necessarily play soccer again.”

What?

That comment seems outrageous coming from someone who scored an astonishing 84 goals in his high-school career. But Cassidy is not only multi-dimensional; he’s also realistic. Sandy Spring Friends is a small Quaker school. And while he and the ‘Beests’ have owned the PVAC, Cassidy isn’t sure where he fits in at the collegiate level.

There’s no question about his performance, specifically in his last two years, when he scored a combined 57 goals. A year ago, he was part of what at Sandy Spring Friends is known as ‘‘The Dream Team,” which went 18-0-0. He notched 33 goals and 10 assists for a team that won both the regular season and playoff tournament in relatively easy fashion.

The championship road was rockier as a senior, with several of the dominant players on that Wildebeest squad, including leading goal-scorer Chad Henry, having graduated. But Cassidy embraced the captain label passed on by 11th-year coach Eduardo Polón, and took the young squad under his wing on and off the field. As a camp counselor in the summer, he was well-prepared for the mental part of the role, writing weekly pep talks on his coach’s Web site for the whole team to read.

On the field, Cassidy was just as ready. Leading the PVAC with 24 goals, he combined with the team’s Most Valuable Player, midfielder Ethan Price-Chu (who led the Beests with 19 assists), to lead one final playoff run. In the conference semifinals against St. Anselm’s Abbey, Cassidy headed in a cross from Price-Chu just outside the box, eclipsing Henry’s school-record 82 career goals in the process.

‘‘The best place to start when talking about Kyle Cassidy is his moniker in our community — he’s ‘The Lion King’,” Polón said. ‘‘One, as the captain, he’s the father figure, and it’s also reflective of the floppy golden mane on top of his head. He’s a real specimen physically at 6-foot-1 and 190 pounds, and a very predatorial type of striker, in that he would just go through teams. He is a unique man-child for a boy his age.”

But now that the season is over, Cassidy is approaching the most important decision of his life — where does he want to go to college? He has no answers right now, though preferably for him, the school would be able to cater to his various endeavors, which are as eclectic as you will find from a 12th-grader:

Cassidy plays the narrator in the school’s production of the musical ‘‘Urine Town,” which requires several days of rehearsal each week. In his little down-time, he plays the rhythm guitar and sings lead vocals in a cover band formed by classmates that took part in a ‘‘Battle of the Bands” competition. Immediately after lacrosse season ends, he counsels at the Shiloh Quaker Camp in Virginia, where he not only mentors, but climbs rocks and canoes for nine weeks.

So sports are not a definite for Cassidy. Unlike previous Sandy Spring Friends stars like Henry — who signed on to play at St. Mary’s College — one of the premier players in PVAC history doesn’t seem to love the game any more than his other hobbies. He has taken a recruiting visit to Haverford (Pa.) College, a Division III school. But in fact, one of his top choices of schools to attend, Bennington University in Vermont, doesn’t even have a soccer team.

‘‘He’s a very, very unique individual, so when he says he may not play again, I think he means that very humbly and without regret,” Polón said. ‘‘I honestly think he has the talent to do so at the [next] level if he wants to. But he’s someone who didn’t play soccer for himself as much as the quality of experience with others that it afforded.”

That unselfishness can be summarized in the final game of Cassidy’s illustrious four years at Sandy Spring Friends. In the PVAC Championship game against Covenant Life, the Beests found themselves in a penalty-kick shootout. After the first of five shots for each team, they had forged a 1-0 lead. Cassidy then stepped up — and missed.

The most reliable finisher in the history of the school had struck the ball poorly, leading to an easy save. Fittingly, it turned out to be the defining moment of Cassidy’s career, ahead of all the goals, records and individual accomplishments.

‘‘I’m so thankful for my team, that’s what it’s all about,” he said. ‘‘Because I know when I don’t perform, they have my back. When I missed that shot I said ‘Screw it, I’m putting my faith in you guys now.’”

Ashton Imlay and Sam Records sunk consecutive penalty kicks for the Wildebeest, giving them a one-shot lead with one Covenant Life shot to go. Goalkeeper Sam Schneider dove to save it to clinch the title.

‘‘All year long, everybody looked to [Cassidy] to be the savior, and here was a time where the team reflected the leadership he gave them all year,” Polón said. ‘‘It meant more to him than anything he’d accomplished by himself. After the game, he told me that he knew they would carry him across the threshold. The players bailed out their captain, where he had bailed them out for years. There was a romance to it that was so palpable.”

That moment may be the legacy of Kyle Cassidy at Sandy Spring Friends. Despite all his accomplishments, in the end, it was only the team result that mattered.

‘‘It’s not that this was my last soccer game, but my last experience with my team that hurts,” he said. ‘‘It’s going to be hard to replace that.”