Learning to Lead: East Mountain soccer camp hits Los Vecinos

TIJERAS — For the high school athletes running the third annual East Mountain Timberwolves summer coed soccer camp, the first lesson of the week had nothing to do with footwork or passing lanes. It was a crash course in classroom management.

“Our first time coaching, it was like really difficult because the kids struggle focusing,” said varsity starter Xavier Hawkins, now a three-time camp coach. “We had to learn how to keep them focused more often.”

Hawkins found that keeping the younger kids locked in required lean planning and high-energy drills—like a crowd-favorite attacking game called “Bulldog,” where players go head-to-head to win the ball and score. The experience also gave him a newfound empathy for his own head coach.

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” Hawkins laughed. “Because we’re kind of like the kids in a way. Some days we can’t focus really good, so Coach Orrd, he tries really hard to keep us focused.”

The weeklong camp, held this year at the soccer field at Los Vecinos Community Center in Tijeras, remains a critical fixture for the East Mountain community. While most local athletic camps run for two or three days, head boys soccer coach Colton Orrd intentionally maintains a full five-day schedule to serve local families during the first week of summer vacation.

The morning sessions cater to elementary school players, focusing heavily on instilling a basic love for the sport, while evening sessions transition middle schoolers into technical disciplines and the physical demands of high school soccer.

Senior Violet Wojcik agreed that learning how to explain technical concepts to children who all absorb information differently was the biggest challenge of the week.

“I was definitely the kid that had to have it explained four different times, four different ways to understand it,” Wojcik said. “So I am very thankful for all of my coaches and all of their patience.”

For Wojcik, the motivation to spend her morning coaching goes beyond community service hours. It is an opportunity to provide vital representation for young girls in the area.

“It’s good to be out in the community, and especially for girls, it’s good to show them that there are people who are playing and girls who want to be out there,” Wojcik said. “I remember coming home [from camp] and telling my parents, ‘Oh, I met this girl and it was so much fun.’ That was kind of another motivator to keep going out and playing.”

Orrd utilizes these coaching moments as a deliberate teaching tool for his high school rosters, routinely drawing parallels between the frustrations of coaching eight-year-olds and the execution of varsity tactics.

“I know especially the first year, I used it a lot when we would run a session and the high school boys weren’t understanding it,” Orrd said. “I’d say, ‘You guys now know my frustration… but you guys are like eight or 10 years older, so we can do better.’ It lets them see the other side, and see the game in a different way.”

Construction Forces Off-Campus Move and Road-Heavy Fall Schedule

The camp’s relocation down the mountain from its usual Sandia Park setting is the first domino to fall in a logistical shuffle forced by major renovations at East Mountain High School, where a brand-new soccer field is being installed.

While the promise of fresh, level grass is a massive win for the future of the program, Orrd confirmed the project’s timeline means the Timberwolves will face a grueling, road-heavy schedule when the autumn season kicks off.

“Originally we were supposed to be completed kind of mid-season. It’s not looking like we’re gonna get there,” Orrd said. “We’re probably gonna have to flop a lot of our matches. Our non-districts, we’re gonna try and push to play a lot of away games, that way next year they’ll have to return the favor and come to us.”

The varsity squad has already adjusted several home dates to Mesa del Sol in Albuquerque to accommodate the delays.

“We’ll be kind of on the road a lot this year, which is a bummer,” Orrd admitted. “But getting new grass down is going to be huge for us, and really help our style of play be able to work the ball a lot better.”