From inquisitive middle-schooler to senior team captain, Marco Diaz has been heavily involved in all things Aiken High soccer for six years.
It started with his eagerness to learn how to play and be part of the team as a seventh-grader, and once he stepped onto campus as a freshman he started meeting with head coach Roger Carpenter once or twice a week to ask questions and talk about the game.
He took the lessons learned from his older teammates, switched positions and has fought through injuries - and it's all led to an opportunity to play at the next level. Wednesday, Diaz was honored for signing with St. Andrews University.
"It's exciting. It's just a blessing," Diaz said. "I'm thankful with God, mainly. He gave me an opportunity to get an offer from St. Andrews and being able to commit and having a signing day. That's the main thing."
Diaz was drawn to St. Andrews, where he plans to major in business, because of the coaching staff and the foundation on which the program has been built. It's a winning program that feels like family, and Diaz likes that combination of it feeling like home while also providing an extra push to keep working harder to be successful.
Diaz has enjoyed building bonds with different sets of teammates during his time with the program, and he said he learned from his older teammates to put in the work to make both himself and the team better. As he grew, he found that he enjoyed being a leader to his teammates the way others were to him before.
"He's really been involved with the team the whole time," Carpenter said. "This year he's one of our senior captains, so he's been a good leader. He's really grown into his position. He started off as a goalkeeper, then transitioned to a field player. He had good skills on that, too, and that's what we needed here."
Diaz said he hopes what his younger teammates have taken from him is a team-first attitude built on helping, leading, growing and supporting one another in pursuit of the same goal.
"Just leading and being able to be vocal with one another and teach one another how to play together as a team," he said. "A team involves 11 people on the field, not just a separate player out there. It's not his team. It's everybody out there on the field helping one another. You win a game with 11 on the field, not just one player."
Diaz has a few more games left, starting with a 7 p.m. first kick Friday at home against South Aiken, to display that to his teammates, but his influence on Aiken's program won't end there. Carpenter has seen him set an example for his teammates to follow for years to come.
"He plays hard every game. He goes out hard and gives it everything," Carpenter said. "He had knee surgery back last fall, so he worked really hard just to be able to be out running and playing. So he's come back from that. He strained some ligaments against South Aiken the last time we played them a month ago, but he went and had some therapy and he's been trying to play through that, as well.
"Being able to play through some adversity and some pain shows you the level of commitment that he has, that you can still be beneficial even if you're not 100%. You can still go out there and do stuff. He's always there every day at practice. He's one of those guys that's always around, there to the end, helping to clean up stuff and put stuff away. Just a good all-around player and person."
