Vega was on target quite often

The Prep Rally: Best in the West series will highlight the all-time best players in western Arkansas as selected by the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Jose Vega was a little stunned when he not only made Springdale High’s boys soccer team as a freshman, but he earned a spot to play with the varsity Bulldogs that year.

“I was going for it,” Vega said. “I knew if I put the work in, I would get on the team but I didn’t think about being on the first team. But because of my hard work, I got there.”

Vega followed the footsteps of his cousin Nelson Landaverde — another great soccer player at Springdale — then he surpassed them. He finished with 74 goals and 25 assists during his four years with the Bulldogs from 2016-19, and capped it by helping

Springdale earn a Class 6A state championship in 2019.

He earned all-state honors three times, and he became only the third boys soccer player in Arkansas to be named Gatorade’s player of the year in back-to-back seasons (2018-19).

“Jose was similar to Nelson in some ways,” Springdale coach D.J. Beeler said. “He started for me as a freshman and played every game all four years, and I don’t remember him missing a game or missing a start. But he was a different type of player.

“For me, Jose was a goal scorer, where Nelson was a field general and somebody I wanted to get the ball started out of the back and set the tone for us. We relied on Jose to finish for us, and he was an unstoppable force.”

Vega began honing his skills at the age of 3 while he still lived in El

Salvador, where he mostly played against older players. He then moved to the Springdale area when he was 13, where he later began playing for the Bulldogs and scored six goals his freshman year, including

one against Springdale Har-Ber that helped Springdale reach the Class 7A state championship match.

The “unstoppable force” in Vega began to emerge when he scored 14 goals as a sophomore. He followed that with 30 goals his junior season and 24 more as a senior while dealing with double- and triple-teams from opposing teams.

“Every time he had the ball on his foot, anywhere around the goal, he was a threat,” Beeler said. “If you asked the other coaches in the conference while he was playing, especially his last two seasons, it took everything you could do to slow him down or stop him.

“And in most cases, it didn’t work.”

And it didn’t work on multiple occasions. Vega scored multiple goals 10 times, including five hat tricks, during his junior year as he Springdale went 19-2-1 and reached the state semifinals. The Bulldogs then went 19-2 and unbeaten against in-state teams during Vega’s senior

season, including a 3-0 victory over Bryant for the Class 6A state championship.

“Sometimes, players on the other team will be pulling on my shirt,” Vega said. “They ripped my shirt one time, and the other team had three players defending me. So every time I would get the ball, they would already have three guys on me. It was hard at times, but I managed to get it through.

“It’s mostly about my mind in the field. I’m always thinking about what is the next step, the next pass or the next play, and talking to my teammates about it. It’s about going forward, but if we can’t go forward we’ll go back with the ball and have patience and not let things go crazy.”

Vega continues to follow his cousin’s footsteps these days, but in a different fashion. He played last fall at Neosho County (Kan.) Community College, where Landaverde previously played and now serves as the team’s assistant coach.

Vega