|
|||||||||||||
Printer-Friendly
Email this Story
Post a Comment (0)
Setting the soccer scene
Stephanie Hylton has spent most of her soccer career worrying about her teammates' success, whether that pass she sent hit the back of the goal. But this fall, Hylton, a Lake Braddock graduate, must worry more about righting things on her own end first.After missing the past two seasons because of right knee injuries, Hylton is finally healthy enough to play and plans to prove as much this fall at Virginia Tech.
“Just a few tweaks here and there, but I'm working through it,” Hylton said. “It's 100-percent sturdy and I'll go 100 percent into a tackle.”
Though there are many compelling storylines for this upcoming collegiate soccer season – Woodson's Claire Zimmeck's sustained dominance at William & Mary, Centreville's Cate Tisinger's encore to a dynamic freshman season at James Madison and the emergence of Langley's Meghan Lenczyk at Virginia chief among them – perhaps Hylton's situation has become the most intriguing, albeit for its uncertainty.
A center midfielder for coach Liz Pike at Lake Braddock, Hylton won a Virginia AAA state title during her junior year while also earning MVP honors in a 3-0 win over Frank W. Cox. But after tearing her anterior cruciate ligament, lateral meniscus and medial meniscus, Hylton missed her senior season and the chance to defend that state title.
“She was at every practice, every game,” said Pike, who had a talk with Hylton to emphasize how much the team still needed her.
“It was really hard to do, especially because it was my senior year,” Hylton said. “I didn't want to sit around and be selfish.”
With Hylton roaming the sidelines, the Bruins successfully defended their state title and the one-time star headed for Blacksburg later that summer. However, Hylton again tore one of two menisci, missed another year, delaying her return until this current season as a redshirt freshman.
With scores of local players taking their skills to the collegiate level, Northern Virginia – and more specifically the Northern Region – has established itself as a mecca for soccer talent. After all, Hylton might not even be the top Northern Region player on her own team.
Hayfield's Marika Gray, who led the Hokies with 22 points and eight goals last season, has established herself as one of the top offensive threats in the Atlantic Coast Conference, in which Virginia Tech finished 3-5-2 last season.
“I think it's a really good [area] in terms of the amount of kids playing. We've found that we've been able to recruit good kids from great families as well,” Hokies coach Kelly Cagle said. “With Stephanie and Marika, our past couple classes have been inundated with Virginia kids.”
With Zimmeck, Tisinger and others, the Colonial Athletic Association has become another stable of Fairfax County's best. Zimmeck, who was the third player to win back-to-back such awards, totaled a conference-best 16 goals during the regular season for William & Mary (15-5-2, 9-1-1 CAA).
Tisinger became the third James Madison Duke – the first since 2002 – to win the CAA Rookie of the Year award after a freshman campaign in which she finished third in the conference with 26 regular-season points (8 goals).
On the opposite end of the career arc, Robinson's Katherine Yount, who ended her high school career with a 2-1 win over Battlefield in this past season's state title game, headlines a younger class of local players looking to succeed at the Division I-A level as she's battling for minutes at William & Mary.
“Coming down here I knew I was going to have to work hard because these girls are from all over the place ... they don't care about a freshman who was All-Met,” Yount said. “I'll just have to fight for a position, which I'm ready to do.”
In all, the soccer season's month of August offers a whole lot of sweat and work. It's very light on results. Renewed optimism is pervasive throughout many camps. For a healthy Hylton, it's simply a chance to get back on the field.
“I want to make the players around me show the best they can because I'm a distributor,” Hylton said. “I want to concentrate on making them look good. Hopefully I can get some assists this year.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.