My interest in soccer started when I was young where I played center fullback or sweeper with modest talent and great enthusiasm. My interest in women’s soccer started in the late 1990s watching Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Mia Hamm, and Briana Scurry. Their pioneering play and well-earned success captured my attention and support.
When I arrived back at West Point in 2001, I discovered that West Point had an officer representative program where staff and faculty were embedded with each of the sports teams and handled the administrative components associated with an NCAA team. It was voluntary and one of the officer representatives would travel with the team for away games. Officer representatives did not coach at all but assisted the coach and players with anything they needed help with. It is a great model and one I wish other universities had adopted.
Embedding faculty in college sports teams unites college education and athletics around student success inside and outside the classroom.
Head Officer Representative for Women’s Soccer
I volunteered and served as the head officer representative on the women’s soccer team from 2001-2008 and the color commentator for the web broadcast of women’s soccer games when I returned from Afghanistan and Iraq until my retirement. Everyday at 4 PM I would head to the soccer field to assist with the practices, talk with the players and help them with any issues they were having at West Point. I assigned officer representatives to home and away games and would travel with the team to 2-3 away games each season. On away trips, we would administer exams that the cadets missed while traveling and ensure the exam got back to the right faculty member. We would enforce study halls as well as order and handle all of the meals and hotel issues.
On most trips, I would find soccer players at 2 AM in the hotel lobby studying quietly. West Point is really hard if you are a cadet. If you are a cadet athlete as well, hard does not describe the very difficult and disciplined balancing act required.
Because I came to every practice and game and you could definitely hear me at the games, coaches and the ladies on the team came to trust me. Pretty much everyday a young lady pulled me aside to discuss official and personal topics where they needed advice, counsel, or mentorship. It ranged from academic help to honor cases to sponsor me to become a Catholic because my future husband is Catholic. Practice ran past normal dinner and Army mermites of food would be delivered to the practice field. We would all sit in the grass, everyone pretty sweaty and in need of a shower, talk like you do when you break bread with teammates and eat dinner together. This occurred pretty often.
Eileen and I sponsored a number of women soccer players and the entire team was welcome at the house to study, relax, or sleep. On Graduation day, I officiated the Oath of Office ceremony (see Sponsorship for more details) for the team if they decided to do it as a group.
During my very first soccer game with the team, we had an away game and two of the ladies got milk poisoning at the pre-game meal. I spent the game trying to console them as they vomited everything up on me and then went into dry heaves for 90 minutes. It was in the rain so the vomit was washed away pretty quickly although the two ladies would attempt to apologize in-between the dry heaves. We lose to a team we should have beaten. I persisted and every game after that was much better.
Home Games
Women’s soccer was very popular with the West Point cadets and they enjoyed a strong following with several hundred cadet supporters attending every home game and half the student body attending big games. The cadets were knowledgeable about soccer, mostly respectful, but willing to make some noise to support their team. In one notable instance, the left defender for the opposing team, #14, had a long last name on her jersey. The last name could be pronounced many different ways with most of them horrible distortions of pronunciation. A cadet in the crowd shouted out, “Hey [her last name], #14, will you marry me?” in which he terribly mispronounced her last name. She ignored him. He then did it again with a new and equally horrible pronunciation of her last name. This went on for ten minutes. She got distracted. The line judge got distracted. We scored a goal because they were both distracted by this clever cadet.
You don’t understand. I looked you up on Facebook. You are my soulmate. But out of respect for you, we should have a hyphenated last name in marriage. My last name is….
Cadet taunting an opposing defender at a women’s soccer game.
After the goal, the cadet continued, “You don’t understand. I looked you up on Facebook. You are my soulmate. But out of respect for you, we should have a hyphenated last name in marriage. My last name is….” His last name was an amalgamation of syllables truly abhorrent to the ear. It was an auditory offense of the highest order and your mind would revolt at the combination of letters. He then went on, for ten more minutes, with every possible pronunciation of her last name and his hideous last name combined. The entire crowd groaned and cheered and wished the new couple a happy wedding on each combination of names. #14 was very confused and distracted now and the line judge was openly laughing at the ongoing comedy skit. We scored another goal. Her coach wisely moved her to the other side of the field so she could not hear the cadet. We won the game 2-0.
As an officer representative, I never received a yellow or red card from the sidelines but suspect I came close a couple of times. I was loud in my support of the team. I knew when to talk with the head coach and when to stay away. I could maintain the peace on a bus. Well, most of the time.
Busses, Bus Drivers, and Cinnamon
A lot of things can happen on a bus when you have four guys and 18-24 young ladies on a long trip. Busses break down. Busses get stuck in traffic and you are very close to missing your game. Bus drivers get lost in traffic. Bus drivers take the very long way home because they are being paid by the hour. All of these things occurred.
One of the more humorous events occurred when our goalie decided that she and her best friend should do the cinnamon challenge on the bus at 60 miles an hour as we were driving back from rural upstate New York. They were sitting next to each other with the best friend closest to the window. I turned around to see them both putting a spoonful of cinnamon in their mouths. In the case of the best friend, she immediately knew she had made the worst mistake of her life. She is attempting to climb over the instigator and former best friend to get any form of liquid in her mouth and the cinnamon out. In the case of the goalie, she is blocking her best friend and trying to will her body to swallow the cinnamon. Her face gets redder and redder. Eventually, she concedes she cannot will her body to do this and both ladies attempt to get to a trash bag on a moving bus and expel the cinnamon. They bump heads doing so and spend the next hour drinking all the water on the bus. Of course someone filmed it.
Keeping Score in Italy
In 2006, we received enough funding for the team to travel to Italy to play an exhibition game in Rome and Pisa. Coach, I and one of the cadet equipment handlers accompanied 18 ladies on the trip. A couple of vignettes from this memorable trip:
- Almost as soon as we arrived in Rome, we had an incident. Perhaps the smallest member of our team with a beautiful symmetric face and doe like eyes went out looking for souvenirs. Several Italian guys walked up and asked her what she was doing. She responded looking for souvenirs at which one of the guys picked her up and said she would be his American souvenir laughing to his friends. A word of caution: the smallest member of a women’s soccer team is often the smartest and dirtiest player on the team. This is especially true if she is attending a military academy. She promptly elbowed him in the throat and as he collapsed, kick the dickens out of him. She is a colligate soccer player – she can kick. His friends roared in laughter and did not come to his defense. Women’s soccer team 1, Italian boys 0.
- Later that night, we touted Rome and walked as a team from the Italian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to the Coliseum. We stopped at a gelateria to get some Italian ice cream. One of the ladies, quite tall and slender, tried to order the gelato in Italian. The Italian boy clerk, lean over the counter and kissed her on the lips stating, “Your Italian very bad. That will make it better.” He got away with it maybe because she got two scoops of ice cream. Women’s soccer team 1, Italian boys 1.
- The following day we visited the Vatican with all the players in nice dresses and shoes to be respectful. As we were going through security, the guards were making comments, in Italian, about the ladies. Coach and I informed them we spoke Italian and to stop it. They responded what do you expect, we are Italian and appreciate things of beauty. They did stop so that makes it women’s soccer team 2, Italian boys 1.
- After a day of touring, we played in Rome. Within 25 minutes, we were ahead 3-0 and coach indicated to the team to stop scoring and just control the ball and the game. Kick the ball in a square. The Italian team was quite good but not physical at all. It was easy to disrupt their flow with limited physicality that is common in the United States and less so in women’s soccer in Italy at that time. We won the game 4-0 so women’s soccer team 3, Italian boys/girls 1.
- We drove to Pisa and played the next day. As we approached the stadium, we saw some ladies in their late 20s and 30s in soccer attire and one of our team wondered if that was a parent or friend of a player. It was not. We were playing a professional women’s team. They were good. We played in the evening mist as the sun set and it was a hard fought match but the Italian ladies won 2-1. Women’s soccer team 3, Italian boys/girls/ladies 2.
- At this point, the Italians cheated to even the score. They took us to a wonderful trattoria, a small village of friendly Italians showed up to have dinner with us family style, and they evened the score with charm, kindness, pizza, and Aranciata. Women’s soccer team 3, Italian boys/girls/ladies/village 3.
- Some smaller stories about the trip. One document had Sarah Goss’ name as Sarah Gross. I teased her the whole trip about being a spy. She joyfully engaged in the repartee. Cocco Miller had her purse stole. After calming her down, I lent her some money that she quickly paid back.
Postcards from Navy
The Patriot League championships and playing Navy were always the highlights of the soccer season. The Navy coach was very good and she always had the team ready for the Army-Navy Women’s soccer game. Two memorable stories playing Navy at Navy:
- Imagine receiving a postcard from the game. It is drenched in rain from the thunderstorm we played in. You can barely read the writing. The players are soaked to the bone. The soccer field is a lake and is draining streams of water into the nearby Chesapeake Bay. Soccer balls and soccer players either skip, slide or sink in the standing pools of water. Army scores an early goal from near midfield on a ball that skipped instead of sank. It never should have scored. For the rest of the game, every time Army wins the ball they kick it directly into the Chesapeake Bay. Ten balls go into the bay and likely more. Navy scrambles to find more balls. Time runs out. Army wins weary, cold, and wishing for two things: (1) dry clothes and (2) a picture of all the balls in the Chesapeake Bay.
- Imagine a second postcard. Whoever wins the game is going to the NCAAs. Its double overtime. It’s sudden death. It’s 0-0. Navy has the league goalie of the year. She’s really good. Pia White has passed the ball all season rather than shoot. The goalie knows this and moves to block the other attacker. Pia didn’t pass. She shoots. She scores. Mayhem breaks out in the stands as Army wins. Barbara Goss races to the field to hug her exhausted mid-fielder daughter Sarah as the rest of the team piled on Pia in front of a dejected Navy goalie.
How Much Color in Color Commentating
When I returned from Afghanistan, Iraq and my time as an ACE Fellow, the women’s soccer team had a new head officer representative. I became the color commentator for the radio and web broadcast of the home games. This was a good volunteer assignment for me as I knew all of the players really well and who would be watching or listening to the soccer games online. It would be family and friends of Army Women’s Soccer.
So about ten minutes into the first game, on air, the line commentator noted that “You had a lot of color in your commentary”. Without missing a bit, I respond, “I do! It is black, gray, and gold.”
By the second game, all the parents and family friends moved close to the broadcast booth to listen to the commentary and occasionally laugh. I knew their daughters and their stories and wove it into the broadcast. I was close enough to the field to influence the line judges and occasionally the field judge. They laughed at the commentary too occasionally. It was a good last gift to woman’s soccer in my last year at West Point.
Retirement
The soccer team gifted me a team jersey at my retirement ceremony and I still have soccer NCAA ring from 2006.
