Soccer player a Duke on the field

Photo+by+Tam+Duong+Jr.%2FThe+Pioneer

Tam V. Duong Jr.

Photo by Tam Duong Jr./The Pioneer

Jayakrishna Dasappän,
Contributor

When Duke Driggs was 3-years-old, his mother decided against daycare and put her son on his sister’s soccer team. He started as a goalkeeper and later became a defensive player to get more ball action. Driggs is now a senior at Cal State East Bay and one of the tallest players on the school’s men’s soccer team, at 6-feet-2-inches. Duke Driggs plays either the center back or the center midfielder positions and has been the team captain since last season.

“My parents came to every game this past season,” Driggs said. “At the age of three I started playing soccer and ever since then, soccer has been my passion.” Duke realized early on that he needed to work harder to excel at the sport. Determined, he trained as a defender, and now he is comfortable playing at any of the central defensive positions.

Driggs has groomed himself with constant training on the soccer field and at his house. Since 2012, when Duke started at CSUEB, he has played in a total of 68 games and started 55 of them. Duke also has a total of 4 goals while being one of the best defenders on the team.

Head Coach Andy Cumbo was Duke’s club coach prior and offered him a spot on the Pioneer soccer team. “He is a friendly coach if you understand him,” said Driggs about Cumbo. Duke has been under coach Cumbo since since 2012. Driggs managed to build a good relationship with Cumbo, who was a key factor in his growth as a soccer player. Under the coaching of Cumbo Driggs managed to stabilize himself as a defender and learned all the tips and tricks from an experienced veteran in the sport.

Driggs was still unsure which university to attend and on a recruiting camp visit, he met all the East Bay Pioneers men’s soccer squad. The team welcomed him and that was the deciding factor that convinced him to choose East Bay.

“Duke was a good captain and a great team member,” said Juan Alfaro, a defender on the CSUEB men’s soccer team. “Duke was a leader in the defensive line who organized the defense and midfield, also maintaining a good relationship with his team on and off the field.”

Driggs is a Business and Marketing major and after two decades of playing soccer, he will hang up his shoes and pursue a career related to his major. “I am done with soccer, but maybe someday in the future I might play once again.”

Driggs and his team had a rough season this past fall. “It was a new squad and took time for us to get into form,” he said. The Pioneers had recruited over fifteen new players and it took the squad quite some time to get to know each other. “We suffered a couple of tough losses at the beginning that brought our morale down”.

He will graduate this spring from CSUEB and he hopes to be known as an entrepreneur in the marketing world eventually.