Coach metamorphosis

By Nile Hosni –

I don’t know if we can tell this, but once Lighthouse threw an eighth grader onto their high school soccer team for one game.

It was the guy who is now coach of the varsity team, Hosea Ashcraft, who has turned a bottom-table team into mid-table.

In competitive soccer, teams have been known to cheat, putting older kids up against younger ones to exact an advantage. Never (until now) do they put younger kids on.

It was many years ago now. Lighthouse Christian Academy was playing a conservative Jewish school (even more conservative than Lighthouse!). When LCA showed up with its co-ed team, the Jewish school coach said they were prohibited by their rabbi against playing girls. They offered to forfeit.

There had been no previous conversation about this snag, so it was not foreseen. The Lighthouse folks didn’t answer immediately but went to consult among themselves. Did the team want the W? Or were the girls willing to opt out to let the boys get some play?

The Saints opted for the later. The girls graciously bowed out.

But there was one catch. Since the Jewish team was being unreasonable, Lighthouse would bend reasonably the rules. (Its girls were some of their best players.) It would put Hosea on the field in one of the kit of a girl who had a gender-neutral name, Wisdom.

Hosea was deadly. Born and raised on soccer as a missionary’s kid in Guatemala, he had the instinct for goal. His coaches called him Messi from age 6.

Messi didn’t score that day against the high school boys, but he did draw a foul, which led to a penalty kick, which his older brother, Robert, converted. LCA lost the game but got the satisfaction of standing up to a superior team. (It probably wasn’t a foul, but because Hosea was so little, refs awarded it when a defender knocked him over.)

When Hosea grew into high school, he could legitimately play. He was deadly. During one season, the Lighthouse clinched the league. (There was a Turk, a Japanese and three club players who made for a dominant team).

Hosea played through a power run in soccer for Lighthouse. Then he graduated, and Coach Jack Medford moved on from Lighthouse. LCA fell into a soccer slump, Covid killed the sport at LCA.

When LCA emerged out of Covid like a bear out of hibernation, would they restore their soccer program? And if they did, who would coach?

Hosea was chosen to lead the team.

By now, he was an adult. He was married and a handyman. He could fix things that experts couldn’t, like the time he fixed a magnetic lock door at the apartment complex where his dad was manager (two experts previously hadn’t been able to fix it).

Hosea took a bunch of beginners and began to teach the basics. That first season, LCA won only two games.

This season, the Saints have gone from losers to winners.

Just this past week, they defeated a team 6-4 that had previously beaten them 1-7. That’s a turnaround.

“A huge portion of it is morale through the game,” Coach Hosea observes. “Being able to have key players who can hype the team up as we play helps the rest of the team perform better.”

Yup, that’s what happened Wednesday against Pilgrim. In the first half, they were beating us but only slightly, 1-2. At half time, we players hyped each other up realizing that we weren’t woefully underclassed. We could take them.

Lighthouse came out of the halftime break with knives drawn, hammering home four fast goals in 12 minutes to make Pilgrim’s heart sink.

Why did he take on the coaching job?

"I'm grateful to Lighthouse for everything they gave me, and I wanted to give back," Hosea says.

About this writer: Nile Hosni is the LCA goalie. The editor of this article, who teaches journalism at LCA, is Coach Hosea's father.