Jacob Dederick is a freshman here at “Fort Worth” Country Day. He has been here since seventh grade. He lives in North Richland Hills and has about a 40 minute drive each day to school. Dederick is on varsity for soccer and he is a goalie. He also plays outside of school for a soccer club called the Dallas Texans. He has been playing soccer since he was a child. Dederick shares field time with the other goalie, Quinn Gibbons ’25, on the FWCD team. One of them plays the first half and the other plays the second. They are both very skilled goalies.
He also has a job outside of school to utilize his goalie skills. He is a goalie mentor for younger students, teaching the students the techniques of playing goalie, charging $20 per hour.
Dederick wants to play soccer at Stanford University once he graduates. Stanford finished 22nd in the NCAA men’s soccer rankings. Their final record this year was 8-3-5.
“They have a really nice campus and I want to play soccer there,”Dederick 27’.
Dederick and his club team had a game in Oklahoma in December against Tulsa. He had a great game by not giving up any goals as the Texans won 4-0.
Dederick’s favorite professional player is Christiano Ronaldo. He enjoyed watching him play in the World Cup last year.
“Ronaldo is the goat”, Dederick said.
Besides playing soccer for the school, Dederick plans to play tennis for the first time in the spring. He is excited to start playing a second sport for the school.
He is a big Texas Longhorn fan. He is very excited to watch the Longhorns play in the playoffs against Washington. His favorite player is Quinn Ewers. Ewers is the starting quarterback for Texas.
“ Quinn Ewers is a dawg.” Dederick said.
The Cowboys are his favorite NFL team. His favorite player is Ceedee Lamb.
“Even though he went to OU, he is still the best wide receiver and he is my favorite player,” Dederick said
Dederick really does like all DFW professional teams. He was so excited to see the Texas Rangers win their first ever World Series. His favorite player is Corey Seager who won the World Series MVP award. He was runner up for American League MVP behind Shohei Ohtani. He also likes the Dallas Mavericks. His favorite player is Luka Doncic. He also likes to watch hockey. His favorite team, of course, are the Dallas Stars.
“Playoff hockey is really fun to watch, especially in the playoffs. You get so nervous watching because there are usually really close games and anything could happen,” Dederick said.
Over the summer, Dederick broke his foot playing soccer, so he missed out on most of his tournaments and games. But it only took a couple of weeks once school started and he was back on the pitch playing goalie for the Texans.
He likes playing Fortnite during his free time. He also plays Fantasy Football with his friends. He is second place in the league with his school friends and has a very good team. Some people are jealous of how good his team is. He likes fantasy football so much that he is in six different leagues, making the playoffs in all of them.
“I just want Jacob to lose,” Parker Pullin ’27 said.
A fun fact about Dederick’s club soccer team, the Dallas Texans, is that the Dallas Cowboys kicker, Brandon Aubrey also played for the Dallas Texans and Toronto’s MLS team. He did not even play football in college. He played soccer at Notre Dame, but he played for the Texans before that. Then, he was an engineer until he started kicking field goals. Once Jerry Jones saw him kicking field goals, he realized he had found the new kicker for his football team.
Dederick also likes to kick field goals after his soccer practices sometimes. The farthest field goal he has ever kicked is 40 yards. He said he would try to be a kicker in college and maybe the NFL if he stops playing soccer. He works very hard playing soccer and deserves to have a future ahead in his life.
