Sovan Shrestha ran towards the stands on the far side of the field as he and his teammates won their second straight Alabama State Soccer Championship in his junior year of high school. His face lit up as he looked to his friends and parents, who looked down on his team from the stands. He grabbed his teammates and embraced them over the shoulder as they walked back toward their bench. He couldn’t stop smiling, but this simply didn’t compare to the tears rolling down his cheeks later that night.
Just after his game ended, he climbed up into the stands, where he had just been celebrated, to watch his sister, Shadie, play for her state championship. While Sovan played, he always seemed not to think, knowing innately what to do and where to be on the field, in the stands; he couldn’t stop fidgeting as he watched the women’s team win their game four to one. He was not the loudest supporter, but he never looked away for the 80 minutes the game was played. He was the first to greet his sister when the women’s team left the field, and the first to take a photo with her, holding two trophies the siblings had won in one night.
“Looking back on the moment, it was one of the happiest moments in my life,” Shretha said. “I was lucky enough to not only win at something I love but share the experience with my closest friends and my sister.”
Now living in Madrid, Spain, while studying abroad at IES and majoring in business and economics, in a city known for its soccer prowess, Sovan tries his best to stay in touch with the game he loves. He never brings up his awards and his two state titles, but he is more than happy to talk about them if anyone asks. At his home University of Tulane, he still plays on the club soccer team, where he continues to excel while focusing on his studies. Sovan loves to play club now, as it is much less stressful than high school soccer or his options to play in colleges across the country. While he loves the game and the team environment, Sovan has decided to focus on a career in finance rather than soccer, so his choice better fits his lifestyle.
In Madrid, he scours ticket sites on weeknights, deeply searching for low prices to Atletico and Real Madrid games. So far, he has been to six games while living in Madrid. He also plays in pickup games, where, even though not much is expected of Americans, he often dominates. To stay in shape for club soccer back home, he goes to the gym six times a week while in Madrid and runs whenever he travels to stay in shape and enjoy the city he is visiting.
At one pick-up game in the eastern outskirts of Madrid, he played his natural position of center back. In the first minutes of the match, he used his large frame, over six feet two and built, to nudge an attacker off the ball, then calmly turned and passed to a teammate. When his teammates applauded in Arabic and Spanish, two languages that Sovan cannot fully speak, he
gave a shy smile, a thumbs-up, and continued to play. During the game, other players were constantly yelling at each other and arguing, but Sovan always walked away and focused on his efforts.
Former high school teammate Gibson Goodrich recounts how that story exemplifies the way he plays on the field. “He seems unshakable. Nothing ever seems to cause him any stress; he just keeps making the right play every time.” What stuck out most to Gibson now as he rewatched Sovan’s film was his coolness under pressure and his everlasting poise.
Another former teammate and close friend of Sovan, Gus Colvin, attended an Atletico Madrid game with him in early March. “Even though he isn’t playing all the time anymore, he still analyzed every move in the game, offering his opinions as we watched,” Colvin noted that Sovan seems to understand on a deeper level than even his coaches did at times.
Sovan brought the same energy he had on the field into the classroom, according to Colvin. “We always knew he was destined for great things. There is a reason he is such a great student at Tulane now. He always seemed to be working either at school or in the field.”
“To have a player with such great skill on the field and be so accomplished in other areas as well.” Sovan’s former coach, Rik Tozzi, echoed the same sentiment about his former player.
Tozzi remembers one instance where he realized Sovan’s true commitment to both his studies and our team. “He called me just before practice started, saying he would be late because he needed to meet with a professor for one of his AP classes.” Tozzi thought he would go home like any other team member at the end of practice, but he saw him stay late as he drove away to make up for what he had missed. “I feel so lucky to have coached Sovan for four years.”
When Sovan graduated, Tozzi gave a heartfelt speech about every senior on senior night, detailing his experience. For Sovan, according to both Goodrich and Colvin, he seemed to ramble on forever.
“He may not have been the loudest or most outspoken teammate ever,” said Colvin, who was the other captain of the team their senior year, but “you could tell he was a leader by the way he carried himself and those around him looked up to him.”
In the final game of Sovan’s senior season, the team lost in a playoff game, but Sovan gave everything he could on the field during the game, according to Colvin. Early in the game, he was involved in a hard collision with a teammate that knocked him out briefly. He soon re-entered the game, visibly shaking off the injury as he jogged back to his position on the field.
“I probably should have stayed out of the game,” said Sovan, “but I wasn’t going to leave my teammates in maybe our last game together.”
He played every minute of the rest of the game, including extra time and the penalty shootout, just like he had almost every game the last three seasons. In a twist of fate, Sovan missed the penalty that cost his team the game.
“Just looking at how his teammates rallied behind him told you all you need to know about his character,” Tozzi said.
“I think he would have simply given everything for this team and our teammates,” Goodrich remarked.
