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Earlier this month, Grace Christian Academy announced the hiring of new soccer coaches for both boys and girls soccer teams at GCA. Carlos Becerra will take charge of the boys soccer program and Jennifer Becerra will take charge of the girls soccer program as they hope to not only grow the sport of soccer across the community, but build a successful program with the Cougars.

Carlos Becerra currently works with the Bainbridge Decatur County Recreation Authority and has been in charge of the soccer program since January 2019. Under Becerra, the program has won several soccer GRPA district and state tournaments, with the most recent ones in December 2022. Carlos played for BHS and Andrew College and helped coach BHS in 2014 and 2015 as well as coaching at Toluca Atlanta Soccer Academy during his career so far.

Jennifer Becerra has been playing soccer since she was 12 years old. She played middle and high school and earned All-Region honors and team captain her senior year. Jennifer has coached at the YMCA and the Rec Dept. from U4 age groups up to U17 age groups.

During the first few weeks of practice, Coach Carlos has been thoroughly impressed with the progress his team has made. Their willingness to learn and attention to detail has stuck out to Becerra and has made this group extremely coachable.

“When GCA reached out to me asking if I would be interested in coaching, I didn’t hesitate to say yes,” said Becerra. “I am very excited to work with them. I have been working for a few weeks now and both teams have players that make it easy to work with. They’re all willing to work hard and learn. My only hope and goal is that I can grow the soccer program at GCA and make it consistent to have teams each year.”

For Becerra, one of his goals is to give his players lessons and skills that they can use outside of soccer. Becerra especially places an emphasis on being able to communicate and work as a team, getting every player involved and serving a role that can help the team find success.

“I hope they take away the many different life skills they can learn through playing soccer,” said Becerra. “Such as hard work, decision making, problem-solving, and communication. Through healthy competition they can also learn the importance of teamwork and good sportsmanship. Most importantly I hope they all enjoy the beauty of the game.”

Among all the sports, soccer is the most global sport in the world. Soccer has been able to reach more countries and communities than any other sport, and Becerra is excited to further grow the sport of soccer in the Bainbridge community.

“It is very important for me to help grow soccer in our community,” said Becerra. “When I started working for BDCRA we were not even hitting 100 kids in our rec program from ages 3-15. This spring season will be our biggest one yet with over 200 players from ages 3-12 and not including our two academy teams.”

The GCA Soccer teams will kickoff this month and begin playing games within the coming weeks.