FLOYD -- Samantha Morris has been from one end of the soccer pitch to the other in senses both literal and figurative.

Just getting to know her team, first-year Floyd County High School coach Liesl Narrow was moving her girls around early this season, just seeing who could do what where, when she took a look at Morris as a defender on the back line. The audition didn't last long. Morris tried to look like a team player back there but couldn't mask what we could call a vague disinterest in the responsibilities of the position.

Next, Narrow deployed the strongly built senior as a midfielder. Morris looked as though she might have been having more fun, but being a step or so slow in foot speed, the position didn't seem right for her.

Narrow knew Morris was a player because the just-hired coach had made a special trip to Floyd last summer to observe team members in an offseason open field workout. The coach knew Morris had to be on the field.

At length, Morris was assigned a job as a center forward. Everything came together wonderfully from that point.

After 10 games, Morris has netted 13 goals, two more since landing last week at the No. 5 spot among Timesland's scoring leaders, first unofficially among girls in the New River Valley. Booting five assists into the mix, she has 31 points, a major factor in the Buffaloes' 6-3-1 start.

Bottom line: Morris has to be on the front line taking aim at the nets to be the player Floyd County needs for her to be.

"Put her in front of the goal, and she's a different player," said Narrow, a former soccer team member at West Virginia Wesleyan who is in her first year at the high school as a physical education teacher.

Morris is only in her fourth year as a soccer player. Her formal introduction to the sport came as the team manager when she was an eighth-grader. The next season, she was in the lineup. Her first couple of years, she was at the defensive end of the field.

"I love defense, but defense isn't something that gets a lot of notice," she said. "I wanted the attention that being a goal scorer brings."

The job of rustling the nets is one Morris has proved she can do quite nicely. Already this year, she has a pair of hat tricks against Patrick County and Christiansburg's junior varsity.

A game with a JV team is on the schedule because the Buffaloes program has been up and running only a few years and the philosophy has been not to schedule too ambitiously until the team better had its feet under it. Morris can't help that.

Narrow says this is the last year of not playing a full varsity schedule. All games in the Three Rivers District are varsity games.

"The thing about Samantha is she has a great shot," Narrow said. "If she has an opening, she's going to put it in. She has great foot skills."

Call it a knack for finding the net.

"I don't think about it," Morris said. "It's instinct by now, I believe."

Said instinct has developed surprisingly swiftly.

"I've come a long way," she said. "I didn't start playing forward until my junior year."

Part of her development can be traced to playing on a travel team with some of her high school teammates. That's when she scored her first goal a couple of years ago.

Speaking of teammates, no scorer can do without them. For Morris, her delivery service has come most often from center midfielder Amanda Schula, a junior. Schula has seven goals and five assists.

"She's the one I connect with best," Morris said. "I love playing with her."

Morris once played volleyball and basketball but has given up both sports to concentrate on soccer.

She traces her infatuation with soccer to summertime visits from her cousin from Louisiana, fellow soccer enthusiast Jimmy Hajek. Those two and other family members whiled away the vacation hours playing backyard soccer.

"I love soccer," Samantha Morris said. "This is a game I want to play for the rest of my life."

For right now, her intent is to go to Virginia Western Community College next year, play for a club team, and see what happens after that.

She'll be happier still if no matter what team she plays for, she'll remain stationed at the offensive end of the field.