DALTON, Ga. -- Tuesday evening, while the Dalton boys' soccer team was dispatching Greenbrier to advance to the Georgia Class AAAAA state championship match, about 25-30 boys and girls were in a separate field, engaged in a number of mini-matches themselves. There was no score being kept -- just kids competing against each other.
A packed-out student section cheered the team on. One kid held up a sign that read, "If you're playing us, it's too late."
After the nation's top-ranked Catamounts were done defeating the Wolfpack 6-0, senior midfielder Kobe Perez was walking toward the locker room. He was stopped by a number of children, asking for autographs.
He smiled and graciously signed every one.
"Not really," he said when asked if he thought he'd ever be approached for autographs in high school, "but there's kids that look up to us, because when I was his age, I looked up to the high school kids. I remember sitting in the same stadium, watching Dalton play on the same field, so I understand how it feels."
The Catamounts (20-0) capped their third consecutive undefeated season and third state championship Friday evening, netting two goals in the first 20 minutes and going on to a 4-0 victory over Allatoona at Five Star Stadium in Macon, Ga.
Calhoun played for the Georgia Class AAA state championship Saturday, falling 3-1 to West Hall.
Friday's win was the Catamounts' 65th straight game without a loss, with a 64-0-1 record in that span. Their only blemish? A 2-2 tie against Dobyns-Bennett in the Cleveland tournament in March of 2014. During the streak, they've outscored their opponents 367-31 with 41 shutouts.
The foundation for this Dalton run started with Perez, Kiko Rodriguez and Eder Mora, three of the six Catamounts seniors who didn't lose a match in their final three seasons. Growing up, they were, for the most part, unbeatable in club play.
Mora won the boys' soccer top award at the Times Free Press Best of Preps banquet last year but has missed this entire season with a fractured foot. As a result, he's been a spectator during this season's run, which has helped the Catamounts show their considerable depth.
"Our depth has been the biggest part to us winning," Mora said. "Our coaches say that our junior varsity team is probably the No. 2 team in the nation. Every day in practice we compete against each other, and the backups are wanting to be better than the starters. That's how we get better as a team, and the results show."
At least four of the six seniors will be playing in college. Kiko and Javier Rodriguez are staying in town and playing for Dalton State next season. Perez is being courted by a number of schools, including Mercer, whose head coach and assistant coach cornered the standout after he scored two goals in the Allatoona match Friday.
Mora has starred in both soccer and football at Dalton. He's signed a soccer scholarship with Alabama-Birmingham but was also a top-20 rated linebacker in the state of Georgia and had more than 500 tackles in his career -- a Dalton High School record.
"It's a little different in the sense that when I play football, something comes out of me and I just want to kill somebody," Mora said with a laugh. "Soccer is different: The atmosphere is still great, but you want to stay within the game and focus on the team. I just enjoy playing for Dalton; I'm sure the environment anywhere else is not the same ... because it's not as good."
The culture shift around Dalton changed in the late 1990s, according to coach Matt Cheaves. The demographics started to change, which caused a push in soccer in the community. That led to on-field results, as the 2003 Dalton team tied for the state championship.
Since then, not only Dalton but also Northwest Whitfield and Southeast Whitfield have made state playoff pushes, with Southeast advancing to the Class AAAA state semifinals in 2011 and the title match in 2013, where they lost to Dalton. That same season, it was Northwest that the Raiders had to defeat to advance to the championship match against the Catamounts.
"We all grew up playing with each other," Perez said. "Playing with them helps us train better, because we like to compete hard. When we're not playing against each other, we're rooting for them like they are for us."
Watching the Dalton-Southeast rivalry was one of Perez's fondest childhood memories.
"There was a huge crowd on both sides, and I knew I wanted to be in that situation," he said. "You don't expect to see that much support in a small town, but without the crowds we wouldn't be as intense as we are. There's a huge adrenaline rush from them cheering us on; it's unbelievable they come out."
Excitement for the sport has spread around the Dalton community, as well as the campus. New Dalton State coach Kerem Daser runs free clinics on Mondays that "are packed," according to Cheaves. So is Saturday soccer around Dalton, full of leagues that start playing at 8 a.m. at the park behind Taco Bell and normally not ending until late in the evening.
"The games are great, and the intensity level is great also," Mora said of Saturday soccer. "People come out, and it's cool because now my white friends have made a team with us, which I haven't seen before. It's great to see them enjoying everything with us and enjoying soccer more than ever."
Home soccer matches for the Catamounts, played at Harmon Field, normally have sizable attendance, a good number of the fans being Dalton students of all ethnicities.
"It gives me goosebumps," Mora said of the crowd atmosphere. "We not only do it for them, but for ourselves because every day is a grind. The practices, the games, it's all a grind, but it pays off. Growing up with these guys, we knew we'd do big things, but what I mostly enjoy is seeing my friends -- not just my Hispanic friends, but my white friends -- getting into soccer. The more we win, the more people we bring in and they start enjoying soccer.
"I've enjoyed watching Dalton soccer grow."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.