By Chris Agnone ’18

THE ROUNDUP

Many of the soccer team’s seniors committed to universities after very competitive and successful careers playing high school and club soccer.

The soccer team has had a very successful season thus far with a record of 17-0-2, mostly attributed to the many seniors that are committed to a university after graduation this year.

Connor McCabe ’18, Tobin Shanks ’18, Sam Fletcher ’18 and Carter Clemmensen ’18 have all been playing soccer for most of their lives and aspired to play in college.

After a “strange recruiting process” for McCabe, he finally received an offer and committed to Northwestern University.

He had an interesting recruiting experience because he was originally looking seriously at Stanford. When Stanford did not pick him up this fall, he was left with no offers going into this season.

“I turned down all other schools offers because I thought that I was going to go to Stanford,” McCabe said. “When they did not offer me I was left with no college offers and was not even talking to the Northwestern soccer program.”

McCabe is very grateful for how efficient and easy going the staff was.

“I started talking to them [Northwestern University] and within a month I was committed,” McCabe said. “It has been a rollercoaster process, but I am very happy with how it turned out.”

Clemmensen and Fletcher had a different experience, having both committed early to the University of California, Santa Barbara during their junior year.

“I played a lot of sports growing up, but I fully dedicated my time to soccer in my freshman year,” Clemmensen said. “I am a competitive person so if I put a lot of time into something I want to be the best at it.”

Fletcher said he just could not see himself playing any other sport.

“I just always loved this sport and the tempo of it,” Fletcher said. “Other sports that I played such as baseball or basketball just weren’t as satisfying.”

Fletcher’s motivation came from his coach, Pete Leebrook, who coached him from 6th grade to freshman year.

Shanks committed to Southern Methodist University in December of 2017.

“I have been playing since I was 5 years old and have always been motivated by my parents to play as long as I can,” Shanks said.

Shanks says that they all have great chemistry together because they have been playing together for so long.

“We have all been playing together for so long that we are very familiar with the way we all play together,” Shanks said. “I feel as if the chemistry that we have on the field is huge part of our success that we have had this year.”