Oct. 14—GRAND FORKS — Mory Camara didn’t know Grand Forks Red River had a soccer team when he arrived at the school.
He had previously played soccer in his home country of Guinea in West Africa. So when he discovered the program through a friend, he was eager to sign up.
“After I realized they played soccer, I said, ‘Hold on, let me join them, we can play together,'” Camara said.
Though the American style of the sport is in his words “more brutal,” the sophomore forward has adjusted quickly.
Camara has scored a team-high 10 goals while playing on the left wing in his first season of high school soccer.
“When he gets going with the ball on his foot, it’s hard to knock him off,” Red River head coach Patrick Colter said. “The start of the year was a little bit slow for him. But as the year has gone on, the chemistry’s come out with his teammates.”
Though his goal-scoring ability jumps off the scoresheet, Camara can also create plays with his crisp, hard passing. He’s collected four assists this season.
“When I turn the ball around and give it a pass, it’s straight,” Camara said. “Nobody can stop the ball. I’ll look at the ball, and give it to you — it’s only to you, nobody can touch the ball.”
Much like Camara, the Roughriders as a whole have continuously improved this year.
Red River started with a 1-3-2 record in August. Since Sept. 4, the Riders are 7-2-2.
“We’re definitely playing better than we were at the start of the year,” Colter said. “We weren’t getting the results early in the year, but we knew that we just needed to get playing the way that we wanted to play, and about halfway through the year, something clicked. We just started playing better, and then the results followed.”
Everything will have to be clicking for Red River this week as it prepares to take on the reigning champions in the quarterfinals of the state tournament.
The fourth-seeded Riders will play first-seeded Bismarck Legacy at noon Thursday at Mandan’s Starion Sports Complex.
The Sabres went 16-0-0 in the West Region. Their only loss of the year was to West Fargo Sheyenne on Aug. 23.
“They’re obviously going to be a good team,” Colter said. “They’re going to be poised, they’re going to be good with the ball, all these things. It’s going to be a tough one for sure.”
Camara is entering his first postseason tournament with a little bit of nerves, though he’s approaching it the same way he’s treated the regular season.
“Every game is the same thing for me,” Camara said. “I just do my best, and my teammates play good, too. We all have to do a good job. One player cannot play against 11 players, you can’t do that — we have to play as a team.”
