The Wheatley School’s younger soccer players used to think Pedro Lamarre was always the best player on the team, Lamarre said.
But the 18-year-old senior didn’t make the varsity team when he tried out as a freshman, he said, and he spent most of his sophomore year on the bench.
Before his junior year, he told himself he wanted to be named an all-county and all-state player.
“My whole summer was just playing soccer,” he said.
The work paid off — the Nassau County Soccer Coaches’ Association named him to New York’s all-state roster for the second year in a row earlier this month.
“In anything you do, you have to start from the bottom to get to the top,” Lamarre said.
Lamarre first started playing soccer as a boy in Haiti, learning the game with his father. They later moved to Florida together, and he kept playing off and on.
He committed to the game at age 12, after his father’s death, he said.
His father never got to see him play soccer competitively, and it became a way to keep his memory alive.
In eighth grade, Lamarre would write “Rest In Peace Dad” on his cleats and celebrate goals in his father’s honor.
“Every game was for him,” he said.
His father’s “never give up” attitude pushed Lamarre to put in the hard work necessary to achieve his athletic goals, he said, and it made him the leader of Wheatley’s team.
Lamarre’s leadership and athletic prowess, combined with his upbeat personality, make him an outstanding all-state player, said Steve Cadet, Wheatley’s varsity soccer coach.
He said Lamarre is always the one to “pump up” the team before games and help his teammates pick themselves up if they’re down at halftime.
“He’s a gentleman on the field,” Cadet said. “He’s physical, he’s aggressive, but never one to play dirty, never one to get a yellow card, never one to talk back to a ref….. Win lose or draw, he’s shaking the other team’s hand, the coach’s hand.”
Lamarre carried the Wildcats to the county championship game again this year after they took the title last year, despite being benched during the playoffs with a back injury.
He wanted his first all-state honor badly, and he thought sitting out those final games would disqualify him.
His performance that year was enough to get him the recognition, but he said cheering his team from the bench taught him it doesn’t all come down to individual achievements.
“Sometimes somebody else (has) got to be the hero, and I think that was the best lesson I ever learned, getting hurt,” Lamarre said.
Lamarre said he plans to play soccer in college and is currently looking at Farmingdale State College, Queens College and Southern Connecticut State University.
He’s interested in studying business because of the team-building and leadership skills he’s developed through soccer, he said.
No matter where he goes or what he does, Lamarre knows his father will be there.
“He’s not really gone. He’s always with me,” he said. “Through soccer and through life, he’s always with me.”
