“And that’s another Howell North…”

“BIG SAVE!”

For the past four years in every boys soccer game that senior Corey Valleroy played in, the spectators in the stands could expect to hear the phrase being shouted by both the fans and players whenever a save was made. Valleroy has been a goalie for FHN for the soccer team. During his time on the team, Valleroy has acquired the nickname ‘Big Save’ from both his teammates and friends, a nickname that he is now known by across the school.

“The story of how Big Save came to be was that there used to be an announcer, who after every time the varsity goalie made a save, they would yell ‘Big Save,’” Valleroy said. “That was when I was on the freshman team, so we never had an announcer. So my teammates started yelling ‘Big Save’ everytime I would make a save like the announcer would. And it just kind of stuck and they started calling me that off the field and I was just addressed as Big Save instead of it being only after saves.”

Prior to his freshman year, Valleroy had only played goalie for one year after he broke his ankle back in third grade. In fact, Valleroy originally didn’t plan on playing soccer at the high school level, but rather run cross country in the fall. But during the summer before his freshman year, Valleroy realized that he missed the sport, and joined the team as a goalie to ensure his role on the team. But as Valleroy became a more prominent name on the soccer team, the more people started to recognize the man named Big Save.

“People I had never known before started addressing me in the hall as Big Save and I had to do a double take like ‘Wait, who was that,’” Valleroy said. “It just kind of surprised me when it happened and it just kept happening, more people started calling me it and I started to realize it was going around.”

While his days of making big saves are over, Valleroy hopes that people at the school can continue to appreciate the goalies at FHN. With an upbringing of freshman goalies like Hockey’s Max Ising and Girls Soccer’s Jessica Gillen, he hopes that people are able to support future goalies the way people supported him during his high school soccer career.

“I just want the support of all goalies in the future because goalie can be a tough position,” Valleroy said. “It can be a lot giving up a goal and it feels like you let your team down, so having people support anyone in tough situations like that is very nice.”