What are your plans for after graduation?

Ashley Coztanzo: “The plan is I’ll student-teach in the fall and then stay around the Ames area and do substitute teaching for a while and see where it goes from there. Hopefully I’ll either get a job around Iowa, or Nate [McCoy] is my boyfriend, so we’ll get married and probably move out to North Carolina so somewhere I’ll be having a full-time teaching job, P.E. teacher, health teacher and a coach somewhere.”

Jordan Bishop: “The plan as of right now is I’m going to try to keep playing, so if that’s doing something here or maybe something overseas. Soccer is the most important thing in my life with academics too, so I’m going to try to keep playing, and then if not, I’m looking to coach and probably get my master’s in higher level education so I can coach collegiately like [coach] Wendy [Dillinger].”

When will you be graduating?

AC: “I’ll be graduating in December of next semester so I’ll have finished my coursework this spring, student-teach in the fall, and I’ll graduate after the fall semester next year.”

JB: “Credits wise, I could potentially graduate at the end of this summer because I have to have an internship, or probably after first semester next year so I’ll have an extra spring unless I maybe try coaching here or something.”

What is your favorite Cyclone soccer moment?

AC: “I think just the last game honestly. Biggest spread in Big 12 Iowa State history and just tackling Jordan and then getting tackled at the end of the game was probably the highlight I think.”

JB: “Making the [Big 12] Tournament my freshman year, definitely.”

What is the funniest Cyclone soccer moment?

AC: “We had an Ames Best Dance Crew and we did it by class, so freshmen was a team, sophomores was a team, and then juniors and seniors was a team; and it was last year and you had to choreograph your own dance, and the freshmen and the sophomores made fun of the juniors/seniors and we actually had a dance that we did; but it was hilarious so that was super funny.”

JB: “Maybe it wasn’t necessarily funny at the time, but we went to Oklahoma [my sophomore year]. We drove on a bus to Oklahoma, so eight hours, and on the way back the bus broke down probably four or five times. So we had to switch buses three times within our time coming back up, so we didn’t get home until really late, but it was basically a 14-hour bus trip. It was just comical afterward.”

What is the best part about playing soccer for Iowa State?

AC: “Definitely the team. Just being around 24 girls all the time, it’s just fun to have friends that you know are always going to be there. You sweat together, you study together, you work out together [and] it just builds kind of a friendship that you can’t really foster in any other kind of environment with the intensity that a Division I athletics team provides. Definitely the team and just fun bus rides and fun team stuff; soccer’s great, but I think my favorite part was definitely just interacting with all the girls on the team.”

JB: “The people I’ve played with. Getting to know them as individuals, but becoming really close and being a family with them; just meeting the people on the team and bonding. Even our equipment people who wash our dirty clothes and our academic advisers and all those people.”

What was the best road trip?

AC: “Best road trip was probably Las Vegas my freshman year. It was super fun and I’ve never been there before, and it was fun to see all the night lights and it was fun to play in Las Vegas.”

JB: “We went to Las Vegas my freshman year, so that was really fun. We stayed in a hotel that reminded me of an old person’s retirement home. It had like floral and pastel colors everywhere, so it was just exciting just to be there.”

How did you progress as a player over your four years here?

AC: “I’ve definitely got a lot more confidence through the four years and I’ve learned a lot of leadership techniques, ones that work well and ones that don’t work well; and definitely overall maturity I think as a person and as a player from freshman year until now. I just think being able to have experience and help freshmen with time management shills, class work, where to go on campus, maturity wise what’s OK [and] what’s not OK, what are the attitudes that you need to have on the bus versus in the weight room and just experience and maturity over the four years.”

JB: “Just maturing as a player. Knowing not only my role but other people’s roles and knowing that in different games different things are needed of you, which is kind of hard especially in your freshman year; you think you’re playing one position [and] you think you know what to do in that one position every single game, but every single game it switches, which I’ve never done before. Especially this year, we’ve played a lot of different formations and I’ve played a lot of different positions based on our competition, so that was a lot of fun and gave me a lot of experience in other areas.”

How exciting was it to go to the Big 12 Tournament as a freshman?

AC: “It was awesome. It was something that I expected all four years and it was a goal all four years, and we fell short these last three years, but it was awesome to at least be able to experience it once. The atmosphere is great, you get to charter down there out of the Ames airport, it’s all week long, and it’s just a great atmosphere and I really hope they go next year because I want everybody in the Iowa State soccer program to experience it at least once because it was awesome.”

JB: “It was amazing. On every team here at Iowa State, every girl put their heart and soul into it, just that year alone the seniors really stepped up and showed the freshmen what it is to be a top Big 12 school. It was a lot of fun; we went into penalty kicks, so we could have won that game, but it was exciting. And I actually started for the first time my freshman year in that game, so that was a lot of fun, too.”

What was the best prank pulled?

AC: “There was a lot of hiding in hotel room closets that was going on at some times that I was never an instigator or a recipient of it, but I heard a lot about different people would hide in closets and I think someone was in the bathroom for two hours waiting for someone to go into the bathroom to scare them, so there was a lot of scaring in hotel rooms going on for sure.”

JB: “There’s a lot, but Casey Bothwell was our prankster queen when she was here and I think MK [Mary Kate McLaughlin] took the rope from her, and I think it was the seniors last year that we pranked the freshman and put food coloring or Kool-Aid coloring in the bottom of their shoes so during a practice after their feet would sweat, all the girls’ bottoms of their feet were different colors so some of them were bright green, some of them were bright blue and red and just little goofy stuff like that made that year fun.”

What is one thing you will miss about playing soccer at Iowa State?

AC: “Just the friends that you make, I’ll miss them a lot and just being around everybody all the time. I think I take it for granted that I’m going to see Megan [Long] every day [and] I’m going to see Jordan [Bishop] every day and I’m going to see the girls every day. I also love working out in general, so just not having it a mandatory thing is going to be odd. It’s a huge time commitment to play a Division I sport and especially senior year with the flood and stuff it was a lot of time, so I think I’m going to actually miss it, just being around all the girls all the time. Just getting to go out there and dive around and be with people at such a high level of competition, I’m never going to experience it again. I can play soccer all I want when I grow up, but it’s never going to be with people that are as good as who I played with this year.”

JB: “Just not having that schedule of going to practice and games and being able to play with people you see all the time, I think that’s going to be my most missed part of playing is just not being able to see these people and play with them. It’s going to be different.”

What is one thing you would tell the freshmen as you leave and they still have three years left?

AC: “I’d just say in everything, work hard. Jordan Bishop is the greatest example I can think of as someone that worked hard every day no matter what. A lot of times during the spring season, it gets really hard. You have a lot of time you have to put in, it’s cold outside, [and] you don’t want to do it, so I just say even when you don’t want to do it, you need to work hard. By hard work on the field and in the classroom and just in your life in general, you will show the freshmen by your actions what it means to be a Division I athlete. You can talk all you want and you can say, ‘We need to work hard,’ and, ‘We need to get this done and this done,’ and that’s great, but really hard work on and off the field is what people see and they see the intensity you bring everyday at practice. If you bring the hard work every day and you’re consistently showing them what it’s like to work hard, I think that speaks more than anything you can say.”

JB: “They’ve accomplished so much already and they’ve already played a lot, so the experience is there, but just not going backward. Not being content where they are now that they ended on such a great high note; not transcending back to playing to other people’s level. Step the bar up higher for themselves and just keep the program on the right track.”