A Bowie teen is advancing up the youth soccer totem pole after making it onto a prestigious club team.
Zac Ivy, the 14-year-old son of Chanda and Steve Ivy, aced a tryout for the FC Dallas 15U Club playing in the Elite Clubs National League on the regional level as the team’s lone goalie.
The ECNL is considered to be a higher level of play, with a more rigorous schedule and higher level of talent.
Ivy has been playing soccer since he was three years old, getting his start playing in the Montague County League at Pelhelm Park.
When he was scoring too much in games, his coach would put him in goal so he would not run up the score and give other kids a chance which is where he first fell in love with the challenge and pressure of being the goalie.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Zac said. “It’s fun. Sometimes I don’t like it since it’s a lot of pressure. If you mess up, it’s kind of tough, but I don’t know. It’s just fun. It’s something different than playing out on the field.”
The player he most looks up to at the professional level is longtime Mexican National Team goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa.
Chanda wanted her kids to try a lot of different things growing up so Zac spent time playing baseball, spent 11 years taking dance, still practices piano and tried basketball of course because he lives in Bowie.
As he has gotten older and it became apparent Zac’s passion was soccer, the family has had to look outside the county for more opportunities for him to play. He played for the Wise County team in Decatur, in Wichita Falls and currently plays for an indoor soccer league first in Keller and not Carrollton.
In recent years he has come back to Bowie to play on a travel team coached by Chad Word, which set up the scenario where he has had to play against his old team in Decatur.
The original date for the tryouts for the FC Dallas Youth teams were in early July, but the family was not aware of them at the time.
The coach of the team, David Hoffman, who also has coached at the University of Dallas contacted them in late July for a tryout since the team’s most recent goalie got a position in Australia.
Usually, Hoffman told them he needs about three practices to get a feel for a player before he can make a call of whether they are on the team. After the first practice, Hoffman informed Ivy he was on the team.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the weekend edition of the Bowie News.