Despite missing a whole season, Clarksville Academy's Bradley Burger near 100 career goals

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story had the Clarksville Academy boys coach's name incorrect. It is Rylan Kean.

A metal plate and five screws have kept the outside part of Bradley Burger's lower right leg together for the past two years.

During that time, the senior has been a scoring machine for Clarksville Academy's boys soccer team with more than 50 goals, and he has the Cougars on the cusp of accomplishing a program first this season.

With three games left in the regular season, Clarksville Academy will be one of the favorites in the Division II-A Middle Region District 2 tournament. And one win in region means the program's first state tournament berth.

"Bradley has been every bit as good as his statistics show," Academy coach Rylan Kean said. "He and our team have been playing well but part of that is understanding that we never look beyond today's practice and tomorrow's game. It's a cliché, but that's how we do things here."

And what Clarksville Academy has done is turn a team that was a combined 7-14-4 the previous two years into a team that is 7-0-1 this season and 3-0 in district play after knocking off Nashville Christian on Thursday.

And not many players in Montgomery County have been playing better soccer than Burger, who came into Thursday's game with 31 goals and notched four more in the Cougars' 7-0 win.

"It's been a lot of fun this year," Burger said. "We've worked really hard to get to this point but we've had fun doing it. I mean our offense has just been great all year but to put up four or five goals a game is incredible."

Burger may have short-changed his team. The Cougars are actually scoring six goals a game and had a four-game stretch of scoring seven or more.

Burger routinely has been scoring multiple goals a game.

"I've put in a lot of work with my conditioning this season so that my play doesn't fall off near the end of the season," he said. "But I've also put in a lot of work with my club team during the offseason and that's carried over as well."

It was only a matter of days after Burger broke his leg in the first preseason game of his sophomore year that Bull realized his rising star would be OK.

"He showed up to our next preseason game and was mentally into the game," Kean recalled. "I knew right then he wasn't going to have any issues."

Burger missed his entire sophomore season with that broken leg. He's at 89 career goals, and if the Cougars make a deep run in the postseason, 100 may not be out of the question.

"That's always sort of been the number I've looked at," Burger said. "If it happens, that would be great but I'm more interested in us continuing to win. That would be better."

Reach Prep writer George Robinson at georgerobinson@theleafchronicle.com or (931) 245-0747 and on Twitter @Cville_Sports.