Sarah Bridges

Sarah is from Jesuit and will join the Pilot women in 2010.

Last year as a sophomore she ran track in spring and had times among the top 10 or so in the state in the 800, 1500, and 3000 meters. She got 2nd at the state meet in the 3000. This year I have not seen her name listed in any event for any meet. Is she injured? Has she given up running to concentrate on soccer? With former multi-sport jocks like Hailee and Halley on the team, I can't imagine that UP would try to limit her participation in other sports.

Anybody have any information related to Sarah?

Thanks.

It is a pretty daunting thing to remain fit for soccer and at the same time maintain the fitness and regimen to be competitive at a D-1 level in T&F... I don't think the school would stop her, but due to the risk of injury and whatnot from over training it would be surprising if she stuck with both...

I wouldn't be surprised if she gave it up to pursue soccer full time, which is a HUGE time commitment when you get to college, plus the girl needs time to study and actually enjoy being a college student...

The training for sprinting is different for a soccer player. Although its always nice to have a fast soccer player they are trained for a lot of cardio that does not transfer well to the sprinting block where they train at about ninety percent of the target speed. Anything less then is slows them down a couple of tenths over the 200.

Sprinting and soccer are not good cross training sports. Watch a track meet where you are completely at rest for long intervals between races where maximum speed is required and a soccer game where there is constant bursts of speed followed by jogging or walking over a 90 minute span. Its a horse of a whole different color.

Well,

Her best distances might actually be OK cross training. I don't know about nowdays, but when I ran, 3000 meters wasn't a sprint. 400 meters (440 yds, actually ) was just starting to be thought of as a sprint.

Yeah, I agree with PGeezer...I don't see the problem with cross-training for those two sports either. I did both soccer and track at the high school level (and the 800 was my main track event), but, college is completely different as sports become more year-round endeavors. I don't think that the cross-training would be a big issue since all of the events listed are distance events, and soccer involves a lot of pacing when it's played technically. But, I think that DaTruRochin brings up a better point about overtraining. Still, if she's that talented, I say let her go for it...at least as long as grades don't suffer. IMO student athletes are always students first...

In all honestly I would think she would stick to the soccer training, if that translates into track speed too she might be able to run a few of the lower level meets unattached or whatever in the spring. But the chances on staying HIGHLY competitive at the D-1 or BCS level or whatever you call it in both track and soccer are extremely low.

At the end of the day she is gonna be at UP for soccer, so that always comes first (athletically that is obviously). As long as injuries and whatnot aren't an issue and it doesn't interfere with the classroom, I see no problem with it. But again, I'd say the academics and actually experiencing college would take precedence over trying to compete in 2 sports.

Several of the current soccer girls had high school track times that would have made them competitive at the college level but Garrett does not allow them to do both soccer and track.

Both Jesuit and St. Mary's (Elinor Priest) are very demanding in terms of homework. For a student playing a sport, the daily routine is get up, go to school, go to practice, go home and eat dinner, do homework, and go to bed. That really is it. Add club soccer to that and it can get to be quite a grind. Priest did not run track for St. Mary's this year (her senior year) and I suspect Bridges and Priest just found it to be too much.

I popped over to Jesuit HS yesterday evening to watch 2010 recruit Sarah Bridges as she & her Jesuit teammates opened the 2009 high school soccer season.

Last year Jesuit allowed only one goal the entire season. They were ousted in the state tourney by the eventual champion Lincoln HS led by current frosh Kendall Johnson. Per the mother of another player on the team, Jesuit is ranked 3rd nationally to start this season.

They played West Salem. I don’t know how good West Salem is or will be, but Jesuit looked pretty damned good for a season-opener. Sarah did well and is a leader and vital cog on the team as a midfielder. She and her teammates had a lot of 1- and 2-touch passes and impressive headers for high school. Looks like there will be another good local player joining the Pilots next year.

I played soccer and did track in high school. I was very busy during the spring. I don't think she would "quit" track because of the different styles of training, but more for the time. I played soccer and did track in high school and got very busy sometimes going to practices for both. So I would think it would just be more of a time issue to focus on soccer.

UPWSR: Thanks for the update on Bridges and Jesuit. It's fun to hear about the local high school players who will wear purple and white (or even other colors) in college. I always have good intentions to check out some of the local H.S. games but find the afternoon games hard to fit into my schedule. But now that my daughter is into her first season of HS soccer, I'll surely see more games and report what I can.

Jesuit vs Westview in girls' HS soccer

Jesuit HS, ranked #1 in the nation after Westview beat the former #1 team last weekend, hosted Westview this evening. Jesuit outplayed Westview and generally controlled the game. But Westview scored on 2 successive headers off corner kicks and won the match 2-0. Jesuit had several good shots on goal but couldn't convert.

Presumably Westview with improve on its #42 national ranking with the win and move atop the Oregon polls.

The 2 schools play again, at Westview, on October 15.

Apparently Jesuit stomped Westview in the second game of league, beating them 5-1. Jesuit is now ranked #5 in the nation. I checked out one of their games; solid team. Sarah holds the midline with authority.

Here's a Rise Mag article on Sara.

http://sports.espn.go.com/highschool/rise/soccer/news/story?id=4617561

Enjoy.

Thanks for the link, Geez. It sounds like Sara is a workaholic when it comes to soccer. I especially like this quote:

"Of course, Bridges already has plenty of goals set for her future -- earning playing time at Portland as a freshman and getting invited to a Youth National Team training camp chief among them. And Bridges knows as well as anyone what it's going to take to achieve those goals: sacrifice."

One of her big goals is to simply earn some playing time as a freshman at UP. She knows what a difficult proposition that can be.