By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
STAYTON, Ore.– Josiah Dessieux has really made a name for himself as a senior this year for the Stayton Eagles Boys Soccer team.
From watching and learning from athlete’s in his position through the years, he’s taking lessons learned and incorporating them into his game. Dessieux credits a lot of his success to 2025 Stayton-grad, and current Chemeketa Community College sophomore, Addison Samuell in helping him become the shooter that he is today.
“Addison was a big one because he was the first striker I played with. He taught me that it’s not about taking the perfect shots, it’s about taking every shot that you can take. That’s how you can get the ball in the back of the net constantly. Take every chance that you can get,” Dessieux said.
The Eagle striker, through 13 games on the year, has scored 20 goals. His latest two goals came in a crucial juncture of Thursday’s game against rival-Cascade. The goals helped Stayton defeat the Cougars 2-1 in comeback fashion to help put the Eagles in a familiar position:
Winning the Oregon West Conference for the sixth-straight year. And all they need to do is to beat Philomath on the road on Tuesday.
For Dessieux, to be a part of this program the last few years, playing as part of ‘The Stayton Standard’ that Head Coach Chris Shields has built during his tenure, it’s a lot, but it’s beneficial with the success that he had, and the program has had, over the years.
“It’s tough, but it definitely created quality. This program is all thanks to him and to see how much he cares, how much he cares for the program, how much he cares for the kids. It’s not about winning titles, but seeing players as individuals develop, seeing players develop, that’s very important,” Dessieux said of Shields. “We have a lot of work to do. Cascade was a great game, Newport, we got the job done, but we still got a lot of work to do.”
And Tuesday is just another opportunity to take the right step forward and achieving the goal that Dessieux and his Senior Group has in mind:
Going Back-to-Back.
“Going back-to-back is the goal obviously. Stayton is known to have a really good soccer team and doing that (going back-to-back) would be great. Just taking control of the opportunity,” said Dessieux.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
