Wolverine Athlete Spotlight: Anna Soccorsi
10/23/2014 12:00:00 AM | Women's Soccer
• Preview: Wolverines Prep for Road Matches at Northwestern, Illinois
Sophomore Anna Soccorsi discusses the chemistry of U-M's young back line, comments on how she utilizes her speed to her advantage, and talks about her first career assist against Ohio State.
On the key to U-M's young back line having success so quickly ... "This year since we're such a young group and we haven't really been playing together that much, one of our goals was to increase our team chemistry. By doing drills in practice with Dino (Dean Duerst) and Greg (Ryan), and constantly looking at film each game, we've been able to keep the back line organized, be vocal and keep the other teams to minimal opportunities."
On learning her new role as a center back while helping lead the back line ... "Working closely with the coaches and with the players around me has been really important. Each game, we take what's going on and learn from it. Every situation that we're not sure what to do, the next day we're looking at it and seeing what we can do to improve it."
On the advantage her speed brings to her game ... "I think having that speed is great -- it helps recovery runs -- if a forward gets in behind, having the speed to get back is great. But you don't want to rely too much on that speed, you want to develop other areas of your game so that's been a focus of mine. It's a great addition to have and allows me to get up and make runs as well, but it's also great to improve other aspects of your game along with it."
On working on her speed and agility ... "Over the summer is when I try to work on my speed the most by doing short sprints, changing direction -- that lateral movement is super important as a defender to be able to move side-to-side with the forwards that are coming at you. Taking the extra time to do sprints and change-of-direction drills has really helped me."
On her first career assist against Ohio State and being able to push up in the attack ... "The important thing is to know when it's on, and if I'm given the opportunity, to just go for it. In the game, I saw there was a minute left and I had space in front of me, so I just took it and it opened up really well. When I'm given opportunities like that I love to take the ball up."
On the team's approach with three road matches left in the regular season ... "I think it's a natural tendency to want to look ahead and look to Illinois and Purdue, which are coming up after Northwestern. But, our goal is to just focus on Northwestern and look at them as a team and focus on playing our best during that game. That's been our philosophy all season and it's worked really well so we're going to try and stick with it."
On the team's expectations increasing as the season progresses ... "Throughout the course of the season we've gained more confidence. I think we were kind of underdogs coming into the season, losing so many great seniors last year and not having the experience that we were hoping to have. As the season has gone on and we've gained more confidence, we definitely expect more of ourselves and we go into each game looking to work our hardest and get the result we want."
On her academic experience so far at U-M ... "For the first year and a half, I've been taking a bunch of different classes to see where my interests are. I think I might be going into biopsychology, cognition, and neuroscience. I'm taking two psych classes this semester and it's really sparked my interest so far so I hope to continue that for my major. Jen (Pace), Missy (Kreutz) and Lindy (Porritt) are also in that major, and Chloe (Sosenko) is also a psych major. Being able to ask what their experience has been like and what classes they like the most and where they're looking to go in the future as far as careers is definitely really helpful."
• Previous Spotlight: Christina Ordonez
Contact: Whitney Dixon
