All-orange Belt Boys Soccer Player Of Year
Ceballos was division’s third leading scorer
There’s natural talent and then there’s also whatever Marcos Ceballos was blessed with.
T here’s natural talent and then there’s also whatever Marcos Ceballos was blessed with. The center midfielder out of Lindsay High School is one of the best at his position in not only the area and East Sequoia League, but arguably the entire Central Valley. A back-to-back recipient of the ESL Most Valuable Player award, Ceballos helped lead the Cardinals to back-to-back trips to the Valley finals and finished with 30 or more goals in both seasons. He is The Recorder’s Orange Belt 2017-18 Boys Soccer Player of the Year.
The way Ceballos operates on the pitch is beautifully pure. With a smile permanently planted on his face, his simplistic play makes everything look so natural and effortless. And it is, because Ceballos has never trained before.
“I honestly have never trained, like physically trained, a day in my life for soccer,” Ceballos said. “Like once I [decide], like, ‘Oh yeah, let’s play soccer.’ It’s not a training. Compared to how other people take it like, ‘Oh yeah we can bring cones, or flags or little goalies.’ That’s not how I really interpret going to play. I just go, touch the ball a little, try to like keep it up or something like that.”
When asked what he would do if someone did bring cones and tried to train with him, Ceballos just smiled and said that he wouldn’t participate.
He said that the cones made him nervous and he preferred to just have a defender for drills. However he added that in college, he would be more than willing to train regardless of the coach’s method.
“It’s really not fair he’s that good and doesn’t have to train,” Ceballos’ teammate and close friend, Agustin Valdovinos said jokingly. The two have been friends ever since freshman year, despite Ceballos rejecting Valdovinos’ offer to play club ball prior to high school because like training, Ceballos doesn’t do clubs.
“I didn’t know he didn’t like that,” LHS head coach Tony Godoy said. “It doesn’t surprise me that he doesn’t enjoy it, but I think it’s interesting. Because his touch is incredible. He’s probably got one of the best footwork I’ve ever seen.”
Ceballos, a four-year varsity player, plays simple according to Godoy. No fancy footwork — no step-overs, cross-overs or nutmegs — because he didn’t need it.
“He’s definitely rare,” Godoy said. “You don’t see guys touch the ball the way he does, move the way he does. It’s just different the way he keeps the ball close to his feet, the way he turns. The way his touch works. The way he gets by guys is different... He doesn’t have any tricks, he just dribbles right by guys. It’s interesting to see that someone who plays so simple is so effective.”
Ceballos, who broke the single-season school record last season with 37 goals and still smiles with pride when its brought up, scored 30 goals this season and had hat tricks in Lindsay’s wins against Caruthers and Sierra Pacific. He led the league in scoring and was the third leading scorer in Div. IV and the seventh in the Valley.
After winning their seventh straight ESL title, reigning Division IV champion Lindsay (23-3-2, 9-1 ESL) cruised through the Valley playoffs beating ninth-seeded Kerman (11-12-1) 7-2 in the quarterfinals and fifth-seeded Orosi (17-105) 5-0 in the semifinals to return to the final for the second year in a row. In one of their closest games of the season, topseeded Lindsay was upset 1-0 by second-seeded Mira Monte of Bakersfield (25-3-4).
“After that game, I thought I should have ball hogged it a little bit more and done everything to score the score and help my team at least catch up and maybe even take
it into penalties,” Ceballos said. “That’s why I take the fall for this loss. I didn’t score. I didn’t score [and] it just made me feel like it’s my fault. I didn’t help my team win.”
And while Ceballos’s blame for the loss put a seemingly misplaced, frustrated look on his usually smiling face, his coach disagreed with his assessment of the final game.
“He played great,” Godoy said. “I think [Mira Monte’s style of play] was just more of something we hadn’t seen before and it was difficult to get by.”
Despite his two highscoring seasons, Ceballos finished both with the second-most assists on the team and was fourth in Div. IV with a total of 13 on the season.
“If I played well and
didn’t score, I thought it was a very good [game] for me,” he said. “I just wanted to know myself that I played a really good game even though I didn’t score. But there were games where I scored one or two goals and I know I didn’t play well and I wasn’t happy about that. Goals didn’t really mean much to me this season. I just wanted to play well for the people watching.”
And there were plenty of people watching Ceballos, including college scouts. Soon after the season Ceballos, and Valdovinos, verbally committed to play at the University of California, Merced. The Bobcats went 13-2-5 this season and qualified for the NAIA National Championships.
“I think having him as a teammate is really
good because I would hate playing against him and having him on our side is just great,” Valdovinos said.
Ceballos denies being as good as people say or even really having natural talent, shrugging off the compliments. Outside of claiming to be the best soccer player back when he was 7-years-old and scoring most of the team’s goals despite rarely coming to practice, Ceballos is just grateful for all that he’s been able to accomplish.
“That’s good for me,” he said about winning ESL MVP. “I was able to win it and I’m happy to win it. Twice. That’s something other people can’t do. But I mean, I don’t think I’m like that good. Just do what I can to do, try my hardest, work hard and it paid off.”