Wayzata senior Brock Sorenson has three goals this season. Photo by Helen Nelson
Meanwhile, Sorenson netted his third goal of the season in a 4-3 loss to Benilde-St. Margaret’s Monday night. “Brock is more of a lateral player with good hands and good playmaking abilities,” O’Leary said.
“Both are good team guys who play good defense. And they’re giving us some goals this year, which has been nice.”
O’Leary – and the rest of the Trojans’ program -- are happy the hard-working duo made the decision to keep fighting.
“We have two guys in our regular lineup that played Junior Gold for our high school program,” O’Leary said. “So you never know what’s going to happen when you get to the high school ranks.
“We really try to talk to the kids that we ‘cut’ and explain to them that we have a good relationship with the Junior Gold program. They do a good job of keeping the kids around and developing them.”
It helped that neither player was ready to call it a career.
Waszczenko said getting cut fired him up for the challenge of proving the coaching staff wrong. He wanted to use the Junior Gold season to springboard into a varsity spot as a junior but, “I had some doubts but I wanted to prove myself that I could play up to that level.”
Sorenson also called it a disappointment, but not one that was going to keep him down either. He wanted to “show everyone that it wasn’t a life sentence. You can come up from that.”
Their journey to the varsity squad started with a state championship at the Junior Gold level under coach Jonathon Lindahl, whom Sorenson credited as “ really influential in my development that year.”
Waszczenko and Sorenson learned to be the go-to players on that team and also trained harder than they ever had before.
As juniors, they returned to the varsity tryout process with renewed hopes. As they advanced through the cuts, their confidence grew. Sorenson earned a spot on the junior varsity squad, while Waszczenko was a “swing line” player, playing both junior varsity and as the fourth varsity line.
This November during tryouts, they got even better news – both had made the Trojans’ varsity.
“It was one of the best feelings I’d ever felt in my life,” smiled Sorenson. “All the hard work paid off, but I knew I’d have to continue to work hard to get playing time.
“But it was an amazing feeling.”