LEAD OPTION: Evergreen's Levan Zhividze, the all-region boys soccer player of the year, is pictured at The Columbian on Friday, June 1, 2018. (Alisha Jucevic/The Columbian)
Levan Zhividze didn’t need to do anything to prove himself a leader to his teammates at Evergreen.
As a four-year varsity starter, and last of a long line of standout brothers in Evergreen’s program, all he had to do was show up.
For a soft-spoken guy, that suited him well.
“Just right off the bat they knew I was the go-to guy,” Zhividze said.
It also allowed him to lead by example. Zhividze had 26 goals — second-most in a single season in program history — and 13 assists amid the Plainsmen’s run to the 3A state quarterfinals, their best season in his four years as an Evergreen student.
Zhividze, The Columbian’s All-Region Boys Soccer Player of the Year, was involved with the program long before he got to high school.
He first met Plainsmen coach Keenan Burris when he was in elementary school, and later played for his club team in fifth and sixth grade, Zhividze said.
Zhividze recalls walking down to the McKenzie Stadium field from Cascade Middle School — which is located next to Evergreen — after class got out to watch his older brothers practice.
As he got older, he began participating in practices with the team.
That made joining the program as a freshman a breeze.
“A lot of people are scared or nervous to be around the coach, but I just knew him and we were already cool,” Zhividze said. “It helped a lot.
“Just right off the bat they knew I was the go-to guy.”
He’s the youngest of six brothers: Timur, Iliya, Nodari, George and Zurab, along with two sisters, Nana and Maya. They moved to the United States from Russia when Zhividze was seven years old. He didn’t know English (he learned quickly through a program at school), but grew up speaking the language of soccer.
In a family of soccer players, Levan always had a ball at his feet. Even when he was too young to participate with his older brothers, he was as de-facto ball boy.
That familiarity with the sport is apparent watching him play at Evergreen.
He started immediately as a freshman and scored many goals throughout his four years in the program. He recalls fondly a game against Bay during his junior season where Evergreen was down 2-0 with 15 minutes left. Within a six-minute span, he logged a hat trick and his team won 4-2.
But after awhile, he says, the feeling of scoring a goal became his duty.
“Once you take that role as a goal-scorer you can’t get happy after every goal,” Zhividze said.
He takes pride in doling out goal scoring opportunities as he does putting them away himself. One of his favorite moments of the season was serving the ball to teammate Marcos Martinez for his first career goal — a header — during league play.
But he admits that he was going for the program record for goals during a season — 35 — which was set by Septi Danciu in 2010.
Making a deep run at state was perhaps more important for Zhividze. The Plainsmen won the 3A Greater St. Helens League and made it to the state quarterfinals before losing 4-1 to Lakeside.
It was the longest run of Zhividze’s four years.
“You always want to go farther,” he said. “It’s still not a good feeling after you lose. There were ways we could have done better. It’s disappointing but it’s a good milestone for us to get there.”
Record or not, Zhividze, who now hopes to play at Corban University, like his brothers, left his own mark on the program that he grew up a part of, and marked the end of a long line of Zhividzes making a difference wearing Plainsmen green.
How ever will the program go on?
“They’ll be fine,” Zhividze quipped, “but we’ve got some nephews coming up, so who knows.”
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