By BAKER ELLIS / Sports Editor 

NORTH SHELBY – The entire back line for the defending 7A boys’ soccer state champion Oak Mountain Eagles is back again for the 2016 season, and on Thursday three of the four defenders finalized their desire to continue to play together for the next four years. Chandler Thomason and Christian Thomason, identical twin brothers who make up the center of Oak Mountain’s defense, while Brandon Kelly is one of the wing backs. All three signed scholarship offers to play at Auburn University at Montgomery. Nealy Martin was the lone girl to sign on the day, and she will play her college soccer at the University of Alabama.

The Thomason twins and Kelly have been playing together since the fifth grade. AUM saw the three defenders playing in a state cup game, and invited them down for a tryout.

“We went to visit their campus and all actually liked it,” Christian Thomason said. “We decided we wanted to go to college together and spend the next four years together.”

Martin, who plays center back for Oak Mountain and has helped the Lady Eagles to become the pinnacle program for girls’ soccer in the state over the last few seasons, was invited to come on an official to Alabama after the Crimson Tide saw her perform at a one-day ID camp in January of 2015. Martin went on her visit soon after, and then verbally committed to Alabama last February.

Alabama recently hired Wes Hart as their new women’s soccer head coach, and Martin for one is excited about the direction the program is headed.

“He’s trying to build the program,” Martin said. “I think he’s going to make it a very good program,”

Martin will headline an Oak Mountain defense that not only won the 7A state title last season, but gave up just six goals all year along the way to that title.