Project 1,000 :: Payton Agnew
8/16/2013 12:00:00 AM | Soccer
Aug 16, 2013
The San Diego Surf Soccer Club has a mission statement that reads like something that might be embossed on the wall of a Fortune 500 conference room: "Build competitive soccer players with superior soccer skills, teamwork and sportsmanship to compete at the highest levels of the sport."
It's no wonder Montana soccer coach Mark Plakorus refers to Surf as the New York Yankees of Southern California club soccer. They both have financial strength and a history of success that allows them to attract the best players, win with regularity and lord it over their wannabe rivals. Evil empires, both.
Payton Agnew, who grew up in Clairmont, an area of San Diego located a few miles inland from the Pacific and situated just south of the Golden Triangle (a three-sided piece of real estate squeezed between the 5, the 805 and the 52), always had the same impression of her hometown's top club.
"It's just different than every other club in San Diego, and when you're not playing for Surf, it's like, Eew, it's Surf," she says, using the same tone she would use to describe a case of trench foot.
"Surf is very big, very powerful, very well-known. They have hundreds of girls, with three teams per age (group). None of the other clubs in San Diego are like that, so everyone who is not on Surf is like, `Why would you go to Surf? It's Surf.' "
Three things to know about Agnew:
1) When she graces the homepage of GoGriz.com, she cuts such an athletic figure that if it wasn't for the uniform, a person would be hard-pressed to know what sport she was at Montana to compete in. Basketball, track, volleyball, golf, tennis? Yes to all.
2) She likes San Diego, but, really, it can wear on a girl. "I really like it, but it's very rushed. You don't really relax when you're living there, because everyone is always in a hurry to go, go, go. There is a lot of traffic all the time, and people don't have a lot of patience."
Now she is part of the freshman bike brigade that makes the stress-free mile commute from the dorms to South Campus Stadium multiple times every day. "You don't really bike in San Diego if you want to go from place to place. It's more relaxed here. You can bike everywhere."
3) And you knew this was coming: Agnew wouldn't be in Missoula this month in her first days as a freshman defender on the Griz soccer team if she hadn't joined the Surf.
Something else to know about Agnew: She started dreaming about becoming a college soccer player when she was nine. "I remember seeing North Carolina play and thinking, Those players are so cool. I want to be like them."
But it wasn't just all soccer all the time, though that would have been fine with her. Agnew's dad, who played baseball at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, signed his daughter up for volleyball in seventh grade, against her will, she adds.
"I was like, Why would you do that to me? I don't want to play this stupid sport!"
She tried out with a broken arm and a cast, but she still made the team and ended up playing all four years of high school. "I loved it. It's very different than soccer. It's faster-paced, and you get more touches because there are fewer people."
And she joined the University City High track and field team as a sophomore as a way to get out of PE class. "I thought PE was the biggest waste of time, so I joined track to avoid being put in PE. I was pretty good at it, so the coach asked me to come back." She competed in the jumps the next three years.
Agnew was a member of the Del Mar Sharks as a freshman but left that team because of her dream.
"I knew if I wanted to go to the next level I was going to have to leave that club," she says. "I had a lot of friends on the team, so it was hard. They all got mad at me for leaving, but I did it because I needed to. It was better for me."
The next step: Notts Forest Football Club. As a sophomore she played two years up, a U16 playing on a U18 team. The next year she played one year up and was showing enough promise that offers started coming in.
"They were all Division III or II, but that wasn't really what I wanted," she says. "My coach at Notts told me, If you want to go to college, go to Surf.
"The team we had at Notts was better than my Surf team by far, but because Surf is so big and well-known and grabs so much attention from college coaches, I had more doors open. I learned a lot in those two years with Notts and it built my confidence, but Surf was what got me to college."
And so her dad, Rob, a product availability supervisor for Pepsi, and her mom, Barbara, a graphic designer for R2P Pet, sent her packing last month. She is now one of 10 defenders on a team that last season gave up just 18 goals in 21 matches while winning a Big Sky Conference championship.
"The intensity and speed of play here is a lot higher than what I ever experienced at Surf," Agnew says. "The first day was so nerve-racking and intimidating. It's so fast and quick and almost overwhelming. You're like, What am I supposed to do?
"But the older players are very good about helping and supporting you. They try to pull you along and make you as good as they are so you can train as hard and as fast as they do.
"It's been good for me. I can tell I'm getting better already, and it's only been a week."
