Girls’ Soccer Player of the Year: Woodside’s Elise Evans

For two years, it was a serious blow, as Evans was one of the highest ranked college recruits in the nation.

“I knew (there was this elite player on campus),” Woodside head coach Jose Navarrete said. “But I didn’t make any effort to recruit her. We play with [who] shows up (for tryouts).”

Evans herself was disappointed as well. She was friends with many players on the team, so she tried to support them in whatever way she could.

“I’ve grown up around Woodside, so I would go and train on the Woodside field and I’ve always been good friends (with players on the team), so I would go out to the games,” Evans said. “For me, when I first came into high school, I was told I wouldn’t have the opportunity to play high school soccer. That was super disappointing for me.”

But then COVID hit and shut the world down. It also shut down the academy system that was in place. A step above even club soccer, playing for a developmental academy meant a year-round commitment. But in the spring of 2020, the academy system was scrapped. Additionally, the Central Coast Section decided to play a spring season in 2021. Those two developments enabled Evans to finally get on the field for the Wildcats.

And what a magnificent development because the rest of the Peninsula soccer world got to see what the No. 1 college recruit in the country looked like on the field. And Evans definitely lived up to the hype. She had a strong junior season and followed it up with a sublime senior campaign that led Evans to be named Daily Journal Girls’ Soccer Player of the Year.

“I was very thankful to have the opportunity to play (for Woodside) these last two seasons,” said Evans, who verbally committed to Stanford as a high school freshman and made it official with her National Letter of Intent signed last fall.

“With the new rule change (surrounding the academy team) and COVID, I was super excited (to get the chance to play for Woodside) and I jumped right in,” Evans said.

Evans has played all over the soccer field — from striker, midfielder and defender — but has settled into a role of defender for her club, college and national team age group team.

But there is something about defenders becoming dominating strikers and Evans is just the latest to seamlessly make the transition. While she missed the non-league portion of the Woodside schedule because of club commitments, when she did join the team for the start of Peninsula Athletic League play, she certainly made it worth the wait, as she scored 17 goals and added two assists in 10 league games, leading the Wildcats to an 8-1-1 record in league play to win the PAL Bay Division title. Woodside finished the season 15-2-1 overall.

“That’s a lot of scoring. … If she scored once, she was capable of scoring two, three times,” Navarrete said. Evans scored multiple goals in five games, including four in a 6-3 win over Sequoia.

“You can tell she hasn’t played a lot of forward and is raw, but wow, what a talent to have available to you. If she’s given a chance to play forward, I think she could really blossom.”

Navarrete was willing to try her out at a forward, almost on a lark, last season. When the 2021 spring season originally started, the games were meant to get kids back on the field. As everyone said at the time, the games were not supposed to count.

Because of that, Navarrete decided to move Evans from defense to striker.

“When she first came in, we started her in the back. Nothing was supposed to count, so we said, ‘Get up front.’ We said we needed someone up there to score goals,” Navarrete said. “We saw in practice she was just a cut above everyone else, in terms of how to shield the ball, how to strike the ball, the speed, the technical ability.”

Evans wasn’t completely foreign to the role of goal scorer. She started her soccer career as a striker, moving into the midfield and eventually settling in at defender.

But she maintained the mental mindset of a finisher as she developed into an elite defender.

“I wouldn’t say I scored a ton of goals when I was younger,” Evans said. “I’m an attacker in a defender’s body. I have an attacking mindset when I’m back there.”

Ultimately, Evans played a little bit of everything. Her knowledge of the game enables her to read the situation and adjust accordingly. The Wildcats need a goal? Evans had a foot in it. Need more pressure or build out in the midfielder? Evans became the team’s best distributor. Need to defend a 1-0 lead? Evans was in the middle of the defense shutting down the opposing offense.

“I just wanted to be on the field,” Evans said. “I talked with coach. ‘Wherever you want me to play, I’m happy to do it.’ This season … with injuries, there was a lot of rotating around.”

But it was her all-around game that Navarrete believes made Evans dangerous and according to the longtime Woodside coach, just the mere presence of Evans got into the opponent’s head as the Wildcats got off the bus.

“A lot of people knew who she was and they were terrified to play against her. A lot of games, we won during warm-ups,” Navarrete said. “Up front, she is just really impossible to handle. Physically, people were not going to match up with her.”

While Evans may have finished up her high school career, she still has a lot of opportunities in front of her. She was part of a Stanford recruiting class that was among the best in the nation and the Cardinal are a national power. Evans is also in the national team pool and has even started limited training with the OL Reign, the Seattle-based professional team in the National Women’s Soccer League.

But Evans is more than a soccer player. A class president her freshman, sophomore and junior years, she became Woodside’s student-body president her senior year. She is also a player ambassador to the commissioner of the academy for which she plays. Evans has a lot of irons in the fire and could easily move into a leadership role as she gets older.

But first she hopes for a long career on the pitch.

“To play in the World Cup and the Olympics, it’s definitely something I want to do. I’m trying to put myself in the correct environments to get there,” Evans said. “I hope to play soccer and be involved with the sport as long as possible.”