Clark College signee left mark in high school

Argentina striker Lionel Messi is one of the best soccer players in the world, because of his ability to create offense, dribble the ball and make his teammates around him better. 

If you went to a Toledo-Winlock United soccer game this season, you had the opportunity to see the high school version of Messi: striker Adair Garibay, according to United coach Horst Malunat. And he’s about to take that talent to Clark College with him next season.

“Messi is my favorite player of all time. It’s a really good comparison, I guess,” Garibay admitted. “It feels pretty good to be compared like that. The intelligence he has on the field, the passes he makes and how he makes them, when to make them, just to look for something else.”

Garibay recently wrapped up his senior season for United, winning the 2016 1A Trico League co-MVP award and finishing his storied prep career with a whopping — and program record — 99 goals, and securing a spot on Clark College’s squad to continue his career.

Garibay is playing next season at Clark College, and is hoping to transfer to a Division I program after his time at Clark.

The goal the recent Winlock High School graduate remembers most will always be his first.

“My first high school goal, I got the ball, I took two players on, I shot the ball from a little outside the 18, went into the upper corner,” Garibay said. “It felt good. It was my first varsity goal and it was a nice goal freshman year.”

Averaged out, Garibay scored just shy of 25 goals a year, which works out to more than a goal a game.

“Some of the most memorable ones were when he did it at the critical times. He scored this year against White Salmon,” Malunat said. “It’s one thing to get a hat trick against Castle Rock, but in a really crucial game, there’s so many that he scored.”

And with 99 goals, he really pushed to get to the century mark.

“After every game I didn’t score after 99, it was like, ‘You’ve got to score,’” Garibay said. “The next three games, I’m not sure how many more it was, I would have liked it, but 99 is still a lot, too.”

Not only did he score goals, but he helped set up his teammates to the tune of 41 assists over his career.

“He’s athletic enough where he can adapt to anything,” Malunat said. “He is creative in that regard. If I didn’t play him this year at a higher position — if I played him in the midfield — he probably would have had more assists.”

And on top of the goals and the assists, Garibay was great by making the other players around him better.

“He demanded not only out of himself, but his teammates,” Malunat said. “He’s good, but he never let that affect him as far as his work ethic, because I’ve coached players that are good and they would just dog it during drills or running.

“He never did that. So when another teammate looks over and goes, ‘Oh, Adair is working hard, I better work hard too,’ so it’s not that verbal motivation but just the actions speak louder than words.”

Garibay felt his game developed as he got older and matured.

“I think I became more of a team player,” Garibay said. “Playing with my team a little more, I became more of a playmaker.”

Garibay helped United meet several of its team goals this season, including a 1A Trico League championship, a District 4 championship, and a berth into the State 1A playoffs.

United faced University Prep in the first round of the state playoffs, losing 4-0 to a team that would eventually finish third in the state. Garibay had to deal with the tough University Prep defense, which was able to keep him in check.

“I tried to play him out wide, tried to play him in the middle, tried to figure things out, (but) we just never quite got things going that way,” Malunat said. “He has a pretty good overall ability to where if you don’t pay attention to him, he’s going to burn you. All the teams in the league, he at least had some guy on him all the time. He kind of got used to that.

“But when a team like University Prep has a few players, with technical ability and speed, it can kind of nullify him. We never saw that in league, we’d seen one or two players that had some ability, but University Prep had a few more, and they contained him pretty well.”

Garibay has gotten used to the other team’s best defenders throughout the years.

“It’s happened with the teams that are pretty organized, most teams are natural and they know who the better player is, and they like to make their defenses plan to do that,” he said.

Even though they came up short of the goal in the state tournament, Garibay still felt his final season was a success.

“It was a very solid season. We had a lot of success with the team and a lot of individuals had a really good season,” Garibay said. “We got pretty far — not as far as everyone hoped, but overall it was a solid season.”

And he enjoyed this season more than any because of the United team he played with.

“The thing about this year that I enjoyed more is the last three years is how much this team connected,” Garibay said. “We joked around together, and when it was time to get serious, we got serious. Something I think was a strength of our team was chemistry, we all had a good time this year.”

“It’s not too far from home, and very good coaches, I know some of the players that are playing there and they are very good players,” Garibay said. “They were regional champions last year. it was a solid step and a good starting place so I will be able to transfer one day.”

And Garibay knows he helped lay the foundation for the United soccer team for years to come with his effort on the field in practice as well as games.

“I feel like I get to help them get more motivated, a lot of them will work harder and want to get better and I feel like the next few years will be successful,” Garibay said.

“That mentality that Adair brings with his seriousness about the sport, it permeates throughout the team,” Malunat said. “His work ethic is always the best, he always finishes running in the top even though he doesn’t have to. He’s not one of those players that says, ‘I’m good, I don’t have to work hard.’ He’s always working as hard as he can, and there’s not a lot of players that I’ve coached that are like him.”