By Steph Lally, Women's Soccer Class of 2010
Among students today, convenience is one of the top determining factors in college choice. Be it financial convenience, locale convenience, or even convenience in a degree program, when given a choice between similar universities, most students will choose the more convenient option. However, the road that brought me to Crown was anything but convenient. The obstacles I faced, internally and externally, all worked together to pave my way here. In the following minutes, I will strive to comprehensively explain how God changed my perception, and brought me here.
From a soccer scholarship perspective, your junior year in high school is a crucial one. My club team, part of the Mid-Atlantic Premiere league (NJ), started attending a series of showcases. We traveled all over the east coast playing in these tournaments. Some of the larger ones were held in D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Florida, and North Carolina. In my experience, college showcases are essentially set up like meat markets. There are about eight games going on at all times with coaches, decked out in their school’s respective gear, swarming all over the place, scribbling on clipboards. Coaches would rarely watch a game for more than 15 minutes, so the play was intense, and the competition was fierce. At some tournaments, there were as many as 200 college coaches listed in attendance. Throughout my junior year, I received letters of recruitment from more than 30 Division I, II, and III schools.
When I started to make my criteria for what I wanted in a college, there were a few qualities that were non-negotiable. The school had to have more than 5,000 students enrolled, be in a city and offer political science as a major. My parents’ only requirement was that the school be within a 300 mile radius from our home in Princeton, NJ. I never considered attending a Christian college. As a Christian in a public school atmosphere, I didn’t sweat at the thought of attending a secular college. It was what I wanted. With my criteria in hand, I started evaluating and eliminating schools and I eventually narrowed it down to a slim list of seven or eight schools. Ironically enough, that summer I also went on vacation for two weeks in New Hampshire with my friend, Jack. My friend wanted to check out the local Christian university and I scoffed at the idea. I was under the impression that students who went to Christian schools were ignorant, homegrown kids, itching for romance. Now that I’m at Crown, Jack teases me whenever we talk.
I thought I was on the right track with college when I was thrown a curve ball. The second day of preseason my senior year of high school, I cracked my right ankle and tore two ligaments. In two weeks I was able to walk, but it was the doctor’s recommendation I sit out because he said one swift kick in the right spot would shatter my ankle to pieces. As the captain of my team and a senior trying to get final college looks, it was an exasperating situation to be in. Most of my teammates that play for D-1 schools now, signed their letters of intent during that fall. I was on the sidelines cheering them on, but frustrated nonetheless. I felt like everything I’d been working for was slipping away. When I was finally allowed to come back in December of 2005, my club team had one college showcase left. Since most of my teammates knew where they were going already, this last tournament was really a courtesy to me. All the schools that had been pursuing me over the previous year were going to be there to get final looks and if I played well, to presumably put letters of intent on the table.
Things were finally falling back into place. Though I’d been out for almost five months, the tournament went well, and in the following months, I went on several official visits to get more familiar with each program. On one occasion, the girl responsible for me was a lesbian. Though we got along pretty well, it was uncomfortable sleeping next to her giant poster of two topless girls making out in their underwear. On another occasion, the girls had a relay race set-up, starting at their dorm and making a mile-long loop around campus. Each participant had to take five shots before starting and then do a handstand, complete a short sprint, climb a fence etc. After each mini-event, the girl had to take a shot and whichever girl was in the rear had to lose an item of clothing. Needless to say, they attracted quite a crowd, and it was pretty entertaining, until it became an embarrassment to be associated with them. Despite all this, I ended up giving my word to one of these large, D-1 schools.
Around February, I started having a lot of serious doubts. I doubted if I had made the right decision and even, if I wanted to play soccer anymore. There are only two stress relievers that I know of; one is soccer and the other is stream of conscious writing. I was so overcome with frustration, I wrote a letter to God giving the situation completely over to Him. I wrote about my feelings the past few weeks and all of the insecurities I had surrounding my college choice. I ended the letter telling God that if He showed me the way, that’s where I would go. The next night, I received a phone call from Tim Prusha, a soccer coach from Crown College. The crazy thing is, he was calling on a whim. After filling out that application two years ago in Arizona, my name was put on a list of prospective players, and not knowing a single thing about me beyond my name, he called that night, of all nights. We talked for a while, as he told me about Crown, the soccer team and I shared a little bit about where I was at.
Crown was a tiny, Christian school in St. Bonifacius, Minnesota, 1200 miles from home, yet I was so intrigued by the timing, that I truly felt that it was God giving me an answer to the letter. Later on that same night, my only Christian friend called because she said she felt compelled to share a verse from the Bible with me. I hadn’t told her anything about my situation; last she’d heard I was settled on a school. The verse she read was Isaiah 30:21. “And whenever you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: ‘This is the way, walk in it.’” I saw it as another sign from God and looking back, that verse has come to epitomize my journey here.
Coach Prusha encouraged me to come out to visit and after sharing the experience with my parents, they reluctantly agreed. Though it felt as though God was strongly calling me to Crown, I hadn’t completely let go of my other prospects, so the week before I visited Crown, I had another college visit that outdid all the others. The women’s soccer team prided themselves on their nickname around campus, “The Brothel.” 15 minutes after I arrived (at 10 a.m.), a junior player came back to the room, clearly after a rough night, and announced to all of us “good news guys, I’m not gonna be a mom.” Then she introduced herself and passed out until that night when we all went party hopping so they could introduce me to their favorite frats. hough I had strong moral convictions against the extra-curricular activities of my would-be teammates, I was able to justify it because I never expected that they would share those convictions.
The next weekend I flew out to Minnesota with no expectations. I had strong mixed emotions on that plane ride; half of excitement and half of anxiety. The first night, we went to an indoor field where the men’s soccer team was playing with a local youth team. Coach Prusha introduced me to another coach there and we got to talking. He asked where I was from and when I told him New Jersey, he said “wow, you must be desperate.” My first internal reaction was “dude, you have NO idea what you’re talking about.” Later, I was thinking about that situation, and I realized that I was desperate, just not in the way he meant. I was desperate to find God’s call in my life, desperate to find a place where I could find meaning. In the next few days, the coaches sat me down and laid out where they saw the soccer program going over the next few years. We talked about the Crown soccer mission statement, their vision for the program and the steps it would require to reach those goals. I’d never sat down with college coaches before and had them share their long-term goals before, instead of just feeding me lines to get me to come. I was so impressed with the thoroughness and detail of their presentation; it was an expression of their passion for the program. Looking back, I think that passion and enthusiasm I saw in the Crown coaches was their biggest asset in convincing me to come. For the first time on an official college visit, I found myself having pizza at the Athletic Director’s house instead of at a party with a bunch of drunken girls. On every level, Crown stood out to me.
The next few months were rough. Everyone was pushing me for a decision that I wasn’t ready to make. Not only that, but everyone had an opinion. When I told my best friend that I was considering going to school in Minnesota, her immediate response was “Steph, you’re going to come back with an ugly hick boyfriend and an accent. Don’t do it.” At that time, I was also interning at a law firm in Princeton. My mentor, a senior partner with the firm, saw herself doing me a favor by evaluating all of my options and choosing the most prestigious Ivy I had on the list. No matter which school I chose, I felt like I would be compromising an aspect of myself. I was feeling pressure from all sides and it made me feel like I was imploding. I avoided conversations about college at all costs, averting certain friends and family. My parents said they would support my decision regardless of where I chose, but they still wanted an answer. May 1 is generally the universal college deadline requirement, so my parents told me I had two weeks, until Thursday, April 21 to stew it over. Even though I strongly felt that God was calling me to Crown, I was still reluctant to make the decision. Everyone around instilled the belief in me that if I chose Crown, I would be surrendering a promising, successful future. Eventually, it came down to choosing what I already knew to be right. I still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of attending Crown, but I knew I couldn’t be comfortable with any other decision.
I think that when it came down to choosing Crown, one of the largest influences was my immediate family. My family is composed of the most resilient people I have ever met. From an early age, my brother and I were taught that anything worth having is worth working for. For this reason, we were never allowed to take the easy way out. This philosophy has taught me that the best things in life come from sacrifice and submission. It was this way with Crown. In every respect, Crown was the least convenient choice for me. A lot of my friends and family still don’t understand what I’m doing here. Sometimes I have moments where I feel like that too, yet at the end of everyday, I know that this where God wants me and I’m living in His will. Arguably, I took the scenic route, and I don’t regret it.
In hindsight, it is crazy how God brought me here. I think about all of the pain and frustration I experienced sitting out my senior year, but now I see that had God had His hand in all of it. Had I been healthy my senior year, I probably would have signed much earlier and never found out about Crown. Had I received my wish and not gone on that trip to Arizona, Crown would’ve never had my name on file. Had I not had such a bad experience on other official visits, Crown wouldn’t have appeared as attractive. Had I not felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to submit to God in a letter, then I would’ve hung up the phone when Tim Prusha called the next day. The possibilities are endless and yet, through all of the adversity, I can see God working in everything to bring me here, saying “this is the way, walk in it.”
My advice to high school students I meet now, is to plan a future out but be sure to stay open to all the possibilities. If someone asked me a year ago if I’d be attending a tiny Christian school in Minnesota now, I would’ve replied with an adamant “NO!” Crown is the antithesis to what I thought I wanted, yet I can’t imagine being as happy anywhere else. God has pushed, taught, and stretched me in so many new directions the brief time I’ve been here, it makes me excited to see how this all fits into the big picture of my life.
