Inside Madison boys soccer celebration. What the ring means and what it looks like.
Donovan Pruitte had a goal going into his final soccer season at Madison Academic. Finish with a ring.
The Mustangs won 19 games in 2022, but in the TSSAA Class A state championship game, the Mustangs lost to Gatlinburg-Pittman 3-2 in a penalty shootout after playing scoreless through two overtime periods.
One year later, the Mustangs found themselves in the same position in the championship game against Alcoa – but slightly different. In 2022, Gatlinburg-Pittman made the first penalty kick. In 2023, Alcoa missed in the first round, giving the Mustangs the advantage.
Needing a goal to secure the win, Kyle Korth, who missed his attempt in 2022, stepped into a shot. He scored for a 3-2 victory and the celebration started for the Mustangs.
“It hit me immediately,” Korth said. “I know I messed up on their second goal, I could have cleared a ball but it didn’t clear all the way. It got messy and they scored. It just felt like redemption for me.
The Mustangs are the first soccer team – boys or girls, public or private – to win a state championship in the Jackson-Madison school system.
The Mustangs accomplished their mission. They came back with a state championship trophy. The ring had to wait. Until Tuesday, that is.
The power of the ring
Madison hosted a ring ceremony ahead of the Mustangs' basketball doubleheader and welcomed back all of the players to celebrate their accomplishment and give them the rings they had earned in the spring.
Pruitte, Korth and Braden Nye each had a hand in helping design the ring with help from principal Chad Guthrie. The face of the ring has a blue “M” with “State Champions” across the top and bottom. One side features the player’s name and number while the other side features the Mustangs’ staggering 21-0-3 record.
“It looks really good in person,” Pruitte said. “It’s actually better than I thought it would be on paper.”
Korth was impressed by what he saw but wasn’t necessarily surprised.
“It was exactly what they promised,” Korth said. “I will say mine’s a bit tight, I know it’s supposed to be but I feel it might be a bit too tight.”
Pruitte was the offensive leader for the Mustangs, scoring 106 goals in his three seasons – his freshman season of 2020 was wiped away due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He scored 46 alone in his senior season. Now, he’s off playing soccer at Alabama-Huntsville, where he appeared in 14 games in 2023 and scored a goal. He said being back home to celebrate with his teammates again was big for him.
“It’s a good moment, man,” Pruitte said. “Just to be back, celebrate and see everything come to life. This is what we talked about.”
The Mustangs graduated five seniors last season, but the biggest change will be at the head of the program when the season starts in the spring.
Coach Igor Luczensky will not be returning. He had to make a jump to Sacred Heart to keep his work visa. He hails from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
But being the coach to bring the program to its biggest stage two years in a row, he was more than happy to see them get the job done – especially having been so close in 2022.
“There were two ways of seeing it,” Luczensky said. “You can either get really sad and unmotivated, or you can just be more motivated about it and use it as fuel to work a little bit harder. We knew how close it could’ve been and we knew that we would have a little more experience than last year. That motivated me to work harder.”
This article originally appeared on Jackson Sun: Inside Madison boys soccer celebration and the rings finally received
