Sophomore Lucy Schuster has been playing soccer ever since she was 5 years old, with her first introduction to the sport coming when she played on a recreational team her mom coached.
“It was always really fun because I was with all my friends playing,” she said.
After playing on junior varsity her freshman year, Schuster now participates on the varsity girls soccer team. She previously played as an outside defender in a back four, but has recently transitioned to playing higher up in the field, focusing more on attack as a wingback in the team’s new 3-5-2 formation.
An important aspect of high school soccer for her is being able to play with her friends. “I really like all the teammates, and that’s my favorite part,” Schuster said.
As far as individual teammates, Schuster admires the team’s only senior, Brooke Wilkinson, the most.
“I look up to a lot of them, but she’s definitely the one I look up to the most,” Schuster said. “She’s really supportive, she brings a lot of energy to the team, and she’s funny.”
Although the team environment has remained positive, the season has not come without its difficulties, as they only picked up one win in their first seven matches. Schuster attributed some of these issues to the team’s energy, saying, “I think our biggest challenge has been for a couple of the games, we didn’t have as much energy as we should have.”
She explained that the team has been working to overcome this by getting hyped up before games and playing music, such as the song “World Cup” by IShowSpeed.
“That’s our song that gets us hyped before games,” Schuster said. “That’s one of the songs we play every time.”
As an individual player, one of the challenges that Schuster has faced is playing in situations where she faces a lot of pressure. In the future, she aims to have a more positive mentality, emphasizing her confidence as a player.
“I kind of shut down and don’t play my best,” she said. “I think I’m getting better at overcoming that… mistakes happen, so you just have to learn [from them].”
Additionally, Schuster also participates on La Salle’s varsity distance track and field team. She started off sprinting in elementary school, but transitioned to distance in middle school.
“Both of my siblings were distance runners, so it kind of just runs in the family that we’re distance [runners],” Schuster said. This past year, she ran the 1500, 800, 4×400, and 3000 meters.
When it is not the school soccer season, Schuster also plays club soccer year-round for The Eastside Timbers. While this conflicts with the track and field season, Schuster has found a way to balance both, with track most days of the week and soccer only twice.
“I would go to warm-ups for track on the days I had soccer, and I would leave right after,” she said.
Before coming to La Salle, Schuster attended St. Ignatius School from kindergarten through eighth grade. She found the transition from middle school to La Salle not that difficult, saying that her teachers at St. Ignatius “did a pretty good job of preparing me for high school academics.”
However, Schuster found the adjustment from club soccer to high school soccer to be much more difficult, and explained that transitioning from club practice twice a week to high school practice every day came as a shock.
“It was not [a lot], then it was every day and it was a lot, but I like it,” she said.
