St. Lawrence United Soccer Player Receives All-America Award

Jessica Beattie has come a long way since her first season of soccer in the Maitland Community Soccer Program, 15 yrs ago.  When she started there, at age 4, the ball was above her knees and she spent more time falling over it, than controlling it.  But this was the spring board for her soccer career.

Her career spans three countries and two continents.  She lived in Adelaide, Australia for four years where she played for her school team. It was here that she scored her first competitive goal off a penalty kick at age 8.

After living in Australia, Jessica and her family landed back in her home town of Brockville, where she played for several local clubs.  These clubs include: the Brockville Generals, St. Lawrence United Soccer Club (SLU is the competitive soccer club located in Brockville), the FC Freeze (out of St. Lawrence University in Canton) and most recently with the Prescott Lady Gunners (who won their Ottawa Carleton Soccer League Division Championship last summer).

Jessica, along with her older brother Mitchell, attends Houghton College in New York State near Rochester.  They both play for the university’s Women’s and Men’s Varsity teams, respectively.  

This is currently Jessica’s sophomore year (2nd) at the university and her second year playing for the Houghton Highlanders Women’s Team.  And what a year it was.  Their team struggled through the first part of the year, in their highly competitive Empire 8 NCAA division. However, they had an outstanding second half to their season, ending up losing in their Empire 8 NCAA Conference Final to a strong team from New York City.

Her team competes in the NCAA, and in another National Soccer Association, the NCCAA.  Jessica’s team qualified to play in the National NCCAA Division 1 Soccer Tournament in Orlando, Florida, along with seven other university teams from across America.  This tournament took place this past December and Jessica’s team was ranked #2 coming into the tournament.

They ended up winning the tournament, upsetting the #1 Ranked team, the Choctaws of Mississippi College, in penalty kicks, after a last second equalizing goal and two over-time periods.  

Jessica was honoured with several awards during this exciting season.  She received “1st Team NCAA Empire 8 All-Conference Forward”, “1st Team Mid-West NCCAA Conference Forward” and most recently, received an “NSCAA All-America Award” in Baltimore last weekend.  This has been quite a year for Jessica and her team-mates from Houghton.

Jessica has had some fantastic coaches throughout her career and her entire family would say that the majority of her abilities and growth as a soccer player has come as a direct result of her time spent with SLU Soccer in Brockville.  The dedicated coaches taught her what she needed to play at such a high level and her family is so thankful for the amount of time and effort each of her coaches invested in her.  Here are the names of a few of those influential SLU Coaches: Martin Noe, Bill Ault, Jeremy O’Connor, Mark Stratton, Dave Beattie and Andrew Everett.  

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