Connor Cherry '21 Recruiting Profile

     My name is Connor Cherry and I am a goalkeeper/captain for the Lake Norman High School (LNHS) JV Soccer Team and the Lake Norman Soccer Club (LNSC) Force Black Classic Team in Mooresville, N.C. My interest in soccer began during the summer of my 5th-6th-grade year. I had just recently stopped playing basketball, baseball, and football simply because they did not interest me anymore. The World Cup was playing in July of 2014 in Brazil and I began watching it on TV and getting more and more interested in the sport. At the end of the tournament, I decided to try out for the Lake Norman Soccer Club team. I made the team in August of 2014 and I was not yet fully committed to a position. So one day I was in practice and my coach shot a ball at me and instinctually, I saved it. At that point, I decided to become a goalkeeper.

I have been training and playing with LNSC for the past 3 years. Coach Jason Strange is my goalkeeper coach and he is the Assistant Soccer Coach at Davidson College. Jason Strange is also the Goalkeeper Director with LNSC in Mooresville, N.C. and he played goalkeeper at UNC. I have improved over the years as a goalkeeper I have been attending 1-hour training sessions 2-3 times a week which has drastically improved my skill as a goalkeeper. Over these past few years, I have had a few injuries to overcome. I recently fractured my thumb in warm-ups preparing for a game and played the entire game as a goalkeeper with a broken thumb. That injury sidelined me for 2 months as a goalkeeper but I was able to play the field the last 4 weeks. The doctor finally released me back to play goalkeeper and I slowly recovered but I had to work extra hard to prepare myself for the end of the season. During the summer of 2017, I attended every voluntary soccer conditioning at Lake Norman High School. We had 3 weekly sessions, to include lifting weights, for 7 weeks. I attended try-outs and made the LNHS JV Soccer team during the first week of August of 2017.

I graduated Mount Mourne IB School (an IBO World School) in June of 2017 with a 3.9 GPA and I earned 2 credits for High School in Math and Spanish. I have several goals for the next 4 years of High School. I will be taking Honors classes my Freshman year and I aim to take AP classes the following 3 years. I will aspire to maintain a 3.5 - 4.0 GPA or higher in High School and I am looking forward to attending College. I want to do the best I can during the next 4 years in High School so I will have the opportunity to get the best college education which will lead to a successful career. I am open to all possibilities when it comes to choosing a college and I hope to improve over the next 4 years, intellectually and in my soccer abilities, to propel me for College.