Pointers’ Delafuente churning out goals

It’s hard to argue with success. The Van Buren Pointers’ soccer team has lived on the edge a little during its five-game 6A-West winning streak. Of course, when you have someone like Isaac Delafuente, winning seems to take care of itself. Delafuente scored two more goals in Tuesday’s 4-3 win over Har-Ber. He had four in last week’s remarkable 5-4 win over Heritage. Van Buren (9-3-1) travels to Bentonville West today. Just who are these Van Buren Pointers? They’re battling Springdale for conference supremacy. “We’ve talked about it and we’ve said we can’t let our heads down,” Delafuente said. “Like on Friday night (last week) ... we were losing 4-to-zero and we came back. We picked up our heads and ended up winning 5-to-4. That’s what I like about this team, they don’t give up. “We’re losing and we’re going to give up; we’re going to keep fighting until the very end.” Just a junior, Delafuente has the type of quick feet that breeds success. It’s spilling over to his teammates, too. “These are good kids, they’re not selfish kids,” Van Buren coach Nathan Almond said. “They show up every day and they work hard, and that includes Isaac. He’s a good kid. He shows up and works. His talent is there, and everybody knows that, but he’s works. He’s very coach-able. His teammates see that; they’re willing to work with them, and he’s willing to work with them. “They’ll provide him some opportunities, and we have some guys willing to make some runs. As long as he’s able to stay healthy, I think he’s going to be able to score some goals.” Through a dozen games, Delafuente has already broken a 13-year-old single season scoring record. And with potentially a dozen games left, who knows where he’ll end up. “Our single-season scoring record was 22, set in 2006 by T.J. Rodriguez, and he’s (Delafuente) already broken that,” Almond said. “He’s at (24) with a lot of soccer left to play. That just tells you, his ability to score is incredible. We have to have five (goals) to win last Friday and he had four of the five.” “My freshman year, we had a good team but we didn’t know how to finish,” Delafuente said. “Coming into my sophomore year, we felt like we were pushing each other to become better players. The season just wasn’t mean for us, I guess.” Van Buren’s conference opener with Rogers might have rattled some teams. Not the Pointers, though. “Against Rogers, we’re up 4-2, and they came back and beat us in PKs,” Delafuente said. “That was just a lesson we had to learn from. We know we had the opportunity to win that game, but we forgot about that game and came home and played Bentonville and got a win. Ever since then, we’ve kept our head up.” The Pointers conclude the first round of conference with back-to-back home matches next week with Springdale and Rogers. “We have to make sure we don’t come out too confident,” Delafuente said. “We can’t come out pumped and expecting to win before the game; that’s not the right mentality. Any team can win; Springdale could lose to Heritage. The scoreboard doesn’t define who you are.” Delafuente said he played a lot of basketball when he was younger before going full-time into soccer. “I’ve had a lot of people ask me to move schools,” he said. “But I told them, ’No, I can’t leave Van Buren — this is meant for me. “I love being a Pointer.”

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Van Buren High School Athletics

POINTERS’ DELAFUENTE CHURNING OUT GOALS

KEVIN TAYLOR

Times Record | 4/5/2019

PHOTO CREDIT: Jamie Mitchell