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By KEVIN ECKLEBERRY

Daily News

The Sea Turtles, a LaGrange-based travel soccer team, returned to action last month and took care of business.

The Sea Turtles competed in a three-on-three tournament in Montgomery, Ala. and captured the championship in dramatic fashion.

In the championship game, the Sea Turtles rallied from a late two-goal deficit to win 6-5.

The players, who were either from Troup High or LaGrange High, included Pearson Knight, Davis Knight, Ty Ormsby, Romans Outland, Cole Partain and Chris Moore.

The Sea Turtles soccer program was created in 2018 by Shane Pulliam, the boys’ soccer coach at LaGrange High.

The summer is usually a busy time for the Sea Turtles, with teams in a handful of different age groups competing, but things have obviously been a lot different this year because of the coronavirus.

After a lengthy break teams were able to start playing again in June, and the Sea Turtles made the trip to Montgomery on July 26 to compete.

The Sea Turtles lost a game in pool play, but they later beat that same team to capture the title.

“We had six (players) that were willing to go,” Pulliam said. “The parents set it up. I didn’t have anything to do with it. I didn’t have practices, didn’t go with them. I just handed them the jerseys, and wished them luck. One of the parents coached it, and they won the championship in the last minute.”

Considering it was the first competitive situation for the players in more than three months, Pulliam was proud of how they handled everything.

“Nobody has played since the middle of March,” Pulliam said. “To come straight out of that, I was super-proud of them knowing this is the situation, this is what we need to do and figuring it out, and getting it done.”

Pulliam is hopeful that the Sea Turtles will be able to compete in a tournament late in July.

Pulliam got his high-school players together for the first time this summer on Thursday, and he’ll see if any of them are interesting in competing.

“If we could put 10 players into that, that would be awesome to kind of wrap up the summer,” Pulliam said. “I’m hoping we can get two teams to go. That’s really the only thing left for us to do.”