Brophy’s Lennon achieves 3-peat as state’s top player
big schools player of the year
It's become a necessity. Like breathing.
Goals have become the air to Riggs Lennon's soccer career. It seems he cannot step on a field without scoring them. It's an addiction.
As if every match is a meeting and Lennon, a Phoenix Brophy Prep senior forward, stands up and admits:
“Hi. I'm Riggs Lennon. And you have a problem.”
For Lennon scores goals the way a swimmer gets wet. Inevitably.
He scored 59 goals in 25 matches this season to help Brophy Prep win the Division I championship, topping last season's 51-goal performance, which bested the 35 he totaled his sophomore season. Like the previous two seasons, Lennon again proved to be the state's best player and earn azcentral sports' Big Schools Player of the Year. He is the first to ever win the award three straight seasons.
“Winning it for the third straight year is incredible,” said Lennon, who will go on to play at Virginia. “I never thought in my sophomore year that I would get Player of the Year. But I got there and since then I've made it my goal to be the Player of the Year every year I come out. I knew I had to perform to get it. And the team played really well, they helped mea ton knowing the goals I wanted to get and we succeeded in everything we did.”
Lennon wanted to score in every game this season. He went scoreless in just one. He had two matches with seven goals, two others with six goals, one with five goals, three with four goals and five matches with three goals. The amount of two-goal games doesn't even register with him.
It also wasn't just the amount of goals he scored. It was how he scored them.
“Some of the goals he scored the past several years would just make me scratch my head,” Brophy Prep coach Marc Kelly said. “He can strike it with his left foot from anywhere within 35 yards. It was folly to allow him any space whatsoever. Against (Phoenix) North in the first round of state, he made an incredible 1-v-1 move on their excellent goalkeeper, to his right, and it was a silky statement. He could and did score with both feet, and routinely. … Simply outstanding.”