During last year’s spring season, Idaho women’s soccer coach Derek Pittman knew that he had some recruiting to do.
Sophomore goalkeeper Amanda Poertner wasn’t recovering well from a surgery in December. Pittman would need an extra goalkeeper to fill the gap.
Meanwhile at the University of Southern California, senior goalkeeper Faith Sugerman was preparing to graduate in May with a B.S. in Environmental Science. After taking a redshirt season in 2013, Sugerman had one year left of eligibility and was looking to start her master’s degree and play her last year of collegiate soccer.
After asking around for any players interested in a transfer, Southern California coach Keidane McAlpine told Pittman about Sugerman.
“I felt like it was worth the risk,” he said. “Once I saw video of her and with her training at USC we decided to go ahead and bring her on campus and give her a chance to be a part of our program.”
The Mendham, New Jersey native started playing soccer in grade school and still remembers the day she found her niche, goalkeeping.
“I had a horrible asthma attack,” she said. “I have exercise-induced asthma. My coach was like, ‘fine just go and goal we’ll see how it goes.’”
From then on out, Sugerman was a goalie.
She competed with local club teams and throughout high school. In addition, Sugerman also swam on her school’s swim team.
When Sugerman started looking for a collegiate soccer program, she narrowed her list down to Southern California and Bowdoin. Bowdoin is a Division 3 private liberal arts college in Maine.
The vast differences between the schools made her choice difficult.
“Ultimately I chose USC because of the balance between academics and athletics and the social life,” she said. “Even without soccer I could definitely picture myself there.”
At Idaho, Sugerman is working on her master’s in environmental science.
“Hopefully, I want to go into the private sector, more on environmental consulting” she said. “Looking to work with projects and get things done with regulation on the smaller scale. Sometimes with the governmental organizations it takes a really long time to get things done and there are a lot of loopholes and everyone’s trying to push their own agenda. I want to make sure what I’m doing is going to make a difference.”
Pittman said Sugerman has been a great fit for the team.
“She’s definitely a big time competitor,” he said. “Her and Torell (Stewart) battle day in and day out. They continue to push each other. No matter who I choose they’d go in and get the job done for us.”
Even though the two goalkeepers compete for playing time, Sugerman said Stewart has been a great resource during her adjustment.
Stewart likes having Sugerman around too.
“It’s cool having someone my age who’s been through three (or) four years of college soccer,” Stewart said. “Hearing her perspective from USC has been really awesome. We push each other a lot.”
Off the field, Sugerman uses bike rides to de-stress from practice, along with Netflix, a good meal and the outdoors.
“It’s not a convertible,” she said. “It’s still really nice. Those two separate bike rides really make me calm down.”
Tess Fox can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @tesstakesphotos