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There’s always a learning curve for athletes breaking into the varsity team early on in their high school careers. George Perkins made it look easy.
“Our first game was against one of the better teams, and I realized I can actually keep up with most of the people,” says Perkins, who earned a starting job from the opening match of the season. “I got a little more confident and started performing better.”
That’s an understatement. The freshman winger for Baton Rouge High didn’t take long to establish himself on the soccer scene, earning First-Team All-District and First-Team Freshman All-State honors his first year on campus.
The Bulldogs finished with a 10-6-5 record in the regular season before making an impressive run to the quarterfinals of the state tournament as a No. 10 seed, upsetting No. 7 Denham Springs along the way before falling to the eventual state champs in No. 2 St. Paul’s.
Perkins scored the team’s opening goal in the second-round win over the Yellow Jackets, and by the looks of it, there are plenty more goals to come from this Rising Star.
“(This year) was really motivating,” he says. “We won a lot of games—unexpected wins—and then when we got to the playoffs, we were all confident and in-form, ready to play. I feel like I can definitely build on advancing the play more, and now that we’ve lost a lot of people, I might have to step up more and get the ball more.”
Read more Rising Stars profiles here.
