Kasigh Gooden has played soccer pretty much his whole life. The senior defender has been a key player for the Queensbury boys varsity team, scoring one goal, providing one assist and keeping eight clean sheets on the season.
“My defense on soccer, they make it easy for me,” Gooden said.
But this year, he’s added another element to his game, just with the other kind of football.
When Gooden isn’t on the "futbol" pitch, he’s catching passes for the Queensbury varsity football team. In his first season of organized football, he has recorded 11 receptions for 295 yards and a pair of touchdowns in five games.
“I was nervous because, obviously, it's my very first time, very first year, so I was nervous,” Gooden said. “But then, all the other guys are all my friends, so I got used to it. Not nervous no more.”
“When Kasigh came to me with this, I was kind of like, ‘Whoa, wait, how's this going to work?' ” said Pete Crotty, the boys soccer varsity head coach.
He has coached varsity soccer at Queensbury for 35 years, and he has had several of his players kick field goals during the season for the football team. But Gooden is the first one to play a skill position – wide receiver – specifically.
“There’s been a few times I've been like, ‘yikes.’ But he's been pretty good about avoiding big hits, and they've gotten the ball in the right places,” Crotty said.
While he’s enjoying his time on the gridiron, soccer remains his primary sport. Gooden typically attends football practice if there’s time after soccer wraps up.
“Honestly, I thought it would be a little harder. I thought I'd miss more football games,” Gooden said. “So I thought there'd be more of a conflict and everything, but honestly, it's worked out better than I thought and I'm glad I did it.”
“Definitely working out in our favor,” said David Huth, Queensbury’s head football coach. “He runs a few plays of ours, starting to get the playbook more. Being a first-year guy, it’s hard to learn the whole playbook. So slowly but surely, he’s adding more and more routes and combinations to his tool belt.”
The multi-sport, in-season athlete is now working to keep this success going in the postseason. Queensbury boys soccer will face Mohonasen in the quarterfinals of the Class AA Sectionals on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Queensbury football has its regular season finale Friday night against Ballston Spa. The winner will secure the two-seed and a home game in the Grasso Division for the Class A playoffs.
“For the seniors who have worked their tail off, especially the seniors that have been with us, a lot of them have been with us for three years, to give them one more playoff at home is huge for us right now,” Huth said. “That's our main focus.”
Both Queensbury and Ballston Spa are currently trending in the right direction heading into the postseason. Both teams have won its last two games and will look to make it three in a row Friday night on Spectrum News 1.
“There is a little bit more to this one,” said Jason Ohnsman, Ballston Spa’s head coach. “We try to sell it that they're all big, but this one holds a little more weight, and and they know and we've talked about it.”
“We're trying to dial it up a little bit because a big message for us is trying to win big games,” said Brayson Cornick, a senior for Ballston Spa. “That's something we've kind of struggled with the past few years. So we're trying to really dial it in this week.”
Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. Friday at Ballston Spa High School.