Ben Brophy is the 5Star Preps 2025 Boys Soccer Player of the Year, presented by Knoxville Orthopaedic Clinic.
BY DAVE LINK
Hardin Valley Academy graduate Ben Brophy is getting ready to start the next stage of his soccer career as a freshman at Maryville College.
Brophy will have a hard time matching his HVA career, which culminated May 23 with the Hawks winning the Class AAA state championship in Murfreesboro.
In his final high school game, HVA’s senior forward scored the winning goal in the 77th minute of a 4-3 victory against Bartlett of Shelby County in the championship match.
It was the 80th goal of Brophy’s career and broke the program record of 79 set in 2015 by Cameron Schneider.
“It was the perfect ending, basically,” recalled Brophy, the 5Star Preps Player of the Year. “It was amazing.”
That could describe the state championship run by the Hawks (19-3-3), who posted the second state soccer title in HVA program history. The first came in 2011.
HVA coach Ray Dover took over as the Hawks coach for the 2024 season, so he didn’t coach Brophy his freshman and sophomore seasons.
But Dover was aware of Brophy’s athletic talents – he also was a standout basketball player at HVA – and the intangibles he brought to the teams.
“Great teammate, great attitude, deals with adversity,” Dover said. “He’s one of those guys that if something happened to usand we needed something big to happen, he could step in and make it happen, and the whole team was like that.
“He was one of the guys that helped lead the way with that type of thing, and he’s just a fantastic teammate. He’s part of that great culture of guys that just didn’t want to quit playing with each other.”
Brophy, who had 31 goals and six assists in the spring, postedgame-winning goals in all three of the Hawks’ state championship games.
HVA finished with a six-match winning streak, turning its season around after a 5-1 loss to rival Bearden in the District 4-AAA tournament championship. The Hawks also lost to 2024 state champion Bearden 2-1 during the regular season.
“Really, we couldn’t just move on from that and act like it never happened,” Brophy said of the 5-1 loss to Bearden “We had to use that to fuel us throughout the rest of the season. We were going to make sure that Bearden would never beat us again that season. After that (loss), it would have been easy to put our heads down and almost give up, but we were able to keep going, keep pushing through it, and that’s what we did.
“We thought for the rest of the season that Bearden is our opponent every single game, because whenever we play Bearden want to play the best that we can and the hardest that we can, and we had to win”
The Hawks beat Bearden twice during their title run, posting a 2-1 victory in the Region 2-AAA final and a 3-2 win in the Class AAA state quarterfinals.
HVA rallied from a 2-0 deficit against Bearden in the last 23 minutes of the state quarterfinal. Brophy scored the winning goals in both victories over the Bulldogs in the spring.
“He’s got an art form for those guys who play that center-striker position,” Dover said, “like you can be a great player and just not have that top-of-the-line center-striker type of ability, and he does. He can find ways, does the little things. He does the two–and three–yards worth of work to make it look easy.
“That’s what people don’t see, is the movement that he’s making prior to when the ball gets there, is the separation with him. Like he reads it right. He knows how to read the game and position himself where he needs to be, and he makes the two- and three-yards worth of work and then can finish it off.”
Brophy played soccer and basketball most of his life and didn’t decide to focus on soccer until his junior year (2023-24) at Hardin Valley Academy.
Before that, Brophy was leaning toward playing basketball in college.
“And then, during club season my junior year,” he said, “and my junior year of soccer (at HVA) was the most fun I’ve had playing soccer in many, many years, and I was like, ‘This is what I want to do.’ I’m glad I hadn’t really chosen basketball yet, so I switched to soccer and decided to focus on it.
“I still wanted to finish out all my four years of playing basketball for Hardin Valley, getting 1,000 points, I still wanted to achieve all that stuff because I’d been playing basketball my whole life as well, so I wanted to finish it out too.”
And he did, playing hoops for the Hawks until early May.
Brophy didn’t sign with Maryville College until late in his senior soccer season, and he couldn’t be more pleased with his college choice.
Maryville College coach Pepe Fernandez likes his players to play competitive soccer during summer months, and Brophy is playing for Two Knox Soccer during weekend games while practicing with the One Knox Soccer professional team.
“It’s pretty exciting being able to practice with the pro team all summer while I’m still playing games with my Two Knoxteam,” Brophy said.
While he is no longer Brophy’s coach, Dover is one of his biggest fans at soccer games after helping him make the decision to stick with the sport.
“We felt like his ceiling is higher in soccer, and I still feel that way,” Dover said. “I can’t wait to see what happens when he dedicates himself to soccer 100 percent of the time.”