Fahey Bank Athlete of the Month: River Valley's 2-sport star Gabe Douce earns rare honors

rob mccurdy, marion star

Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 4:00 AM·6 min read

CALEDONIA — The Fahey Bank Athlete of the Month Award has been given to Marion County high schoolers for more than 40 years. At River Valley, the plaques of every winner hang on the wall near the cafeteria.

"I remember looking up ever since my freshman year and seeing we only had one soccer player up there on that entire wall. I always told myself I was going to be the second one on it, and it came true," RV senior boys soccer star and cross country standout Gabe Douce said.

Indeed it did come true, as did something else.

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Down the hallway and around the corner outside the south doors into the gym hang portraits of the school's All-Ohioans since the district's founding in 1962.

"That’s another wall, and I look up and I want to be on there. Seeing no soccer players up there kind of made me sad," Douce said. "Of course, I wanted to be the first one. That was a huge motivation."

Douce was named Fahey Bank Athlete of the Month for October and last week became the first soccer player in school history to make all-state, earning a second-team nod in Division II.

"It motivated me a lot," he said. "Our school had never really been known as a soccer school. I always feel like soccer gets a little underappreciated here. I wanted to show everyone that we’re legit, and we have a good soccer team. We’ve gone up there and taken a step in the right direction."

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Accolades and records

In six matches in October, Douce played in 93 percent of the team's minutes as an offensive-minded midfielder. He scored eight goals and added five assists, representing 45 percent of the team's scoring in the span.

More so, he broke the 28-year-old school record with seven goals in a 13-0 win over Pleasant. He also owns the season and career assists records at RV. Douce made first-team All-Mid Ohio Athletic Conference and first-team All-Central District in D-II, plus helped the Vikings to a 13-5-1 overall record and a runner-up finish in the MOAC for the first time.

He was a model Viking, according to boys soccer coach Joel Richards.

"I’ve coached a lot of people in life, but I’ve never had somebody who takes care of himself and prepares himself for sports as well as Gabe has," Richards said. "I use him as an example. This is how you do it, the way you stretch and condition and run. He is constantly pushing himself to get better. That’s why he was able to accomplish so much his senior year and take it to that next level."

River Valley's Gabe Douce (9) runs along with a Crestview soccer player during a match earlier this season. Douce was named Fahey Bank Athlete of the Month for October among Marion County boys.

Douce doesn't stop

Douce plays soccer for River Valley and also at the club level with Columbus United, a squad comprised of central Ohio standouts who tour the state and Midwest playing other elite soccer clubs in the National Premier League and even some in the higher level Elite Club National League.

Besides soccer, he's involved in show choir and holds a 3.9 grade point average while taking college-level classes. He's also a middle distance runner with aspirations of making a state track appearance.

And that last bit of personal trivia is why he decided to double up his fall activities by taking on cross country.

"It was a lot to handle for sure, but managing it wasn’t too difficult. We had understanding coaches so that helped tremendously in the long run," Douce said.

He came up with the idea on his own after talking to college coaches who told him their 800-meter runners benefitted from competing in distance races in the fall. Richards encouraged him to try both sports, and Aric Smith, who is the cross country and boys track coach, was game.

"You can run anytime you want, but I’d like you to practice one day a week if you can and run the races and run a little on your own," Smith said. "I said you’re smart enough and diligent enough that you know what your body can handle in a certain day and what it can’t. He ended up running more races than I thought."

He proved to be a natural at cross country. He finished sixth in 16:46 at the MOAC Championships to make first-team all-league in that sport, too. At the D-II district in Hilliard, Douce was 13th in 17:22, which was one place and six seconds from earning a regional appearance.

"He wasn’t bad," Smith said with a laugh. "I had a feeling he was going to run pretty well, but you never know until you know. It’s that third mile in a cross country race that gets those kids who haven’t trained, and he did fairly well. That goes to show what he’s done his whole life."

River Valley's Gabe Douce runs during the boys race at the Marion Harding Cross Country Invitational this season. The senior competed in cross country for the first time this year and made first-team All-Mid Ohio Athletic Conference.

Leaving a legacy at RV

Richards isn't surprised by the success Douce enjoyed throughout his career and especially as a senior.

"It’s always easy for a player with that kind of talent to rest on that talent and say I’m good and I don’t need to put the work in," Richards said. "That’s why I tell people at these (all-league and district) meetings that he’s left his fingerprint on our program that will last longer than his four years at River Valley because he taught these guys."

Douce juggled two sports simultaneously and was still the first to practice and the last to leave the soccer field. On his own time, he ran and lifted weights.

"You always hear these stories about generational players. In the summertime, everyone else is leaving and he’ll go out and put some cones down and work on ballhandling drills by himself. Slowly but surely you see other guys doing it as well," Richards said.

Douce is the second soccer player at RV to win a Fahey Bank Award, and he's the first to get All-Ohio honors, but his coaches feel if others follow his lead, he won't be the last to earn that kind of recognition.

rmccurdy@gannett.com

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