Emily George- TA Player of the Year By Jamie Biggam, The 2013 Times Argus Girls Soccer Player of the Year basked in her share of glory but never shied away from grunt work. No player carried a team on her shoulders over the past four years quite like midfielder Emily George, who propelled U-32 to new heights with 56 goals career goals and 34 assists. She led the team in scoring every season, spearheading a 12-4-1 campaign this year and a run to the Division I semifinals. “Emily has been a three-year captain, and she’s there for a reason,” U-32 coach Steve Towne said. “She’s a solid student, she’s a solid leader and she’s been the backbone of this team. If you look at the program, I don’t think anyone has come through at Emily’s level. And this was the best record we’ve had in 19 years for the girls side.” For someone possessing such a stacked resume, George shared the spotlight as much as possible and never resembled a ball-hog. She could have easily padded her goal totals by playing as a striker, but a roaming midfielder was her main role as she took on a lion’s share of the defensive responsibilities through some thin years. “Emily has had to play the entire 80 minutes and the entire 100, 110 yards of the field,” Towne said. “She’s our central defender when it comes to corner kicks, she takes goal kicks often and she plays basically every dead ball. She’s pretty much everywhere.” George and the Raiders pieced together a 5-8-3 record her freshman year before compiling a 5-8-2 mark the following year. George’s 12 goals and eight assists accounted for all of U-32’s offense that sophomore season, and her corner-kick assist to Jazz Lockyer-Wills helped snap the program’s 10-year winless streak against Montpelier. The prospect of George still being a secret weapon by her junior year was laughable. She was double- and triple-teamed repeatedly as opponents adjusted their entire formations around her, often in futility. “Some of the teams that knew her better, they ran five or six middies and there were two or three players just standing around her,” Towne said. “Strategy-wise, if you could do that and afford to use that many players centrally to plug that up, in some cases it was effective. But she’s the type of player that, if you didn’t mark her tight and gave her any space at all, often times you’d be punished. And with girls that were really on her hard, she was still able to maintain her composure and keep her head up and play. She’s never suffered against tight marks. For whatever reason, that hasn’t fazed her.” George registered 22 goals and 16 assists last year for the 9-3-3 Raiders. A shot at the program’s first championship appeared within reach with eight returning seniors this year, but two weeks after the schedule was completed the Raiders were informed that school population figures had bumped them up from Division II to Division I. Elite Metro Division competition made the impact of the jump massive, and some Chittenden Country powers might have scoffed at the idea of U-32 earning a semifinal berth. But somehow the Raiders got there, pulling out six one-goal victories and earning the No. 4 seed in D-I. After opening the season with wins over Rice and Mount Abraham, U-32 backed up the hype by taking down heavy-hitters like Spaulding, Stowe and Harwood. “If I look at conditioning, Emily is as strong of an athlete that I’ve ever had on the field,” Towne said. “I never had to worry about subbing her out, even playing central midfield. And there were times when, if we were up at all, I’d drop her back. We actually got up a goal on Harwood and she swept the last 17 minutes of the game. She’s willing to play wherever, and that’s what makes her a special kid.” George finished her senior year with 18 goals and six assists after leading U-32 past Burr and Burton in the quarterfinals. One change this season was that the majority of both George’s and the Raiders’ goals were scored during the run of play, resulting from creative build-up and distribution as opposed to penalties or free kicks. According to Towne, a lot of that stemmed from George evolving into a complete, selfless player. “This year I was impressed by her willingness to distribute early,” he said. “We still had a lot of young players around her, but she got better at distributing and moving off the ball. Before we were so reliant on her that she’d hold it and have to beat three or four players and run the offense and make the move. This year we were able to get her going forward without the ball. And moving into the collegiate level, you have to do that. You have to pass the ball and make runs.” U-32 has produced plenty of soccer sensations, beginning with the early days when Katie Robb, Denise Hudson and Julie Leclerc led the Raiders to back-to-back title clashes with Milton. But George’s contributions have truly been one-of-a-kind, and she departs with the program on a very solid footing. “As a coach, what’s nice is that you have players come up who adapt to what they see from Emily,” Towne said. “To see that high work rate, to see the habits, it just carries over. And the junior class has been with Emily for three years, so there’s players that will want to step up and take those leadership roles on. She’s left her mark on the program, but at the same point she’s helped to foster that winning attitude with the younger players.”
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 16:32:49 +0000
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