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ALUMNI
WATCH
North Carolina (ACC)
Five All-Americans
-- Lindsay Tarpley, Lori Chalupny, Kendall Fletcher,
Kacey White and Aly Winget
-- are gone from last year's team whose shootout loss to Florida
State cost it a shot at an 18th NCAA title. So why is UNC
still ranked No. 4? Phenom
midfielder Yael Averbuch returns while juggling National team
duty. Heather O'Reilly
is easily the best striker in the college game - when she
isn't away with the USA. Jessica Maxwell
returns after red-shirting in 2005. U-20s Casey
Nogueira and Tobin Heath
head the best freshman class in the country.
Virginia (ACC)
Steve Swanson's
Cavaliers took quite a hit when Sarah Huffman
and Noelle Keselica graduated, leaving
Shannon Foley to run the show in
midfield. Foley and defender Becky Sauerbrunn
will lead Virginia until 2005 ACC Freshman of the Year Jess
Rostedt and Nikki Kryzsik
return from international duty with the U.S. U-20s. With Huffman
and Kelesica gone, Swanson brought in three highly rated midfielders:
Megan Ashforth, Kristin Bowers and
Caitlin Miskel.
Penn State (Big Ten)
The Nittany Lions' only blemishes
in 2005 were shootout losses to Michigan in the Big Ten Tournament
and to Portland in the NCAA Tournament that are recorded as
ties. MAC Hermann Trophy runner-up Tiffany Weimer
graduated, along with All-American goalie Erin
McLeod and defenders Lindsay Bach
and Natalie Jacobs. Back, though,
is All-American Ali Krieger, who
anchors the Penn State midfield that also includes current
U.S. U-20 Allie Long and
former U-20 Sheree Gray.
MORE
NEWS...
- The U.S. women's
under-20 national team departed for Russia on Saturday
for the Under-20 Women's Championship, beginning Aug. 17.
The U.S. team consists of college underclassmen, who will
miss the first two weekends of the college season,which
opens Friday, Aug. 25. The U-20 tournament runs through
Sept. 4.
The following
are the U.S. players and their '06 college affiliation:
DEFENDERS:
Carrie Dew (Notre Dame), Erin Hardy
(UCLA), Nikki Kryzsik (Virginia),
Stephanie Logterman (Texas), Stephanie
Lopez (Portland), Sara Wagenfuhr
(Florida State).
- HOMETOWN HEREOS,
201 Magazine August 2006
HANDS-OFF ADVICE
Like father, like son. Alecko
Eskandarian was taught more that soccer by
his father, Andranik, who played alongside Pele on the New
York Cosmos in the late 1970s. He was offered lessons in life.
"He'd hammer it in my
head, constantly," says Eskandarian. 'Before you become
a good soccer player, become a good person.' Or, 'Regardless
of what you achieve in soccer, you don't achieve anything
if you're not a good person.' And 'Good things happen to good
people.'"
Good things have happened
to Eskandarian since his days at Bergen Catholic, where he
scored a Bergen County record of 66 goals in 1999, and was
the National Player of the Year. In three years as a forward
at the University of Virginia, he scored 50 goals and became
the No. 1 overall pick in the 2003 Major League Soccer (MLS)
draft.
There's more. He scored two
goals when D.C. United won an unprecedented fourth MLS Cup
in 2004, beating Kansas City, 3-2, in the championship game.
Through it all, Eskandarian never forgot what he learned from
his father, who used to watch his son's games from a car so
that his youth league coaches in Montvale
and the other parents weren't distracted by his presence.
Eskandarian's second goal
in the MLS Cup was an apparent handball that went unnoticed
by the referee. "I didn't even know where the ball hit
me, " Eskandarian said after the game. "It
was just what you learn in youth soccer: You keep going until
you hear a whistle."
Lesson learned.
-J.R.
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