GREG LUCA | STAFF WRITER
GEORGETOWN — Progreso senior Juan Puentes was sprinting after the ball when he felt pain in his hamstring. The twinge reminded him of the pain he felt earlier in the season, when a hamstring injury cost him about a month of playing time.
Still, Puentes wasn’t about to stop. Not with a berth in the Class 4A UIL State final on the line during Wednesday’s game against Argyle.
He knows that playing through the pain made the injury worse, although he still considers it minor. Although the senior stopper was being helped off the field while his teammates celebrated a 3-2 win, Puentes quickly shot down any thoughts that he might miss the state final against Palestine at 2:30 p.m. today in Georgetown.
“No,” Puentes said. “I’m playing.”
Coach Margarito Jimenez was hopeful Puentes would be able to go, and with good reason. Throughout the season, Puentes has been Progreso’s rock on the back end, the most stable defensive player on the roster and one of the team’s hardest workers, Jimenez said.
“He’s my leader,” Jimenez said. “He’s my backbone on defense.”
Puentes has taken on that stabilizing role since his sophomore year, when Jimenez named him one of the team’s captains for the first time.
With age and experience, Puentes has become more and more comfortable with the requirements of the role, including directing traffic on the field.
“Every year I have grown my character, my leadership, and playing with my teammates,” Puentes said. “I have been playing with them since I was in seventh grade, and I know them better, and I know how we communicate with each other pretty well.”
In tournaments and early season play, Puentes was slotted in as a midfielder because of his quickness, decisiveness and effectiveness attacking the ball, Jimenez said.
But, when the playoffs came, Jimenez slightly tweaked his philosophy to become more defensive, focused on shutting out the opposition at every opportunity. As a result, Puentes moved back to stopper, serving as the Red Ants’ last line of defense.
“I like more defending as a stopper,” Puentes said. “I like it too as a midfielder, but it was more challenging, because I’d never played there. I got back to my position, and I think I’m doing better.”
Although he doesn’t have anything lined up yet, Puentes is hoping he can earn a spot on a college roster, where he’d like to study engineering.
The rise to become one of the elite players on a state-qualifying team has been a relatively fast one for Puentes, who didn’t discover the game until some friends invited him to play in a local park during sixth grade.
“Before that, I hadn’t played at all,” Puentes said. “I started playing in school, and I just liked it. Now, it’s my favorite sport.”