In a quiet town about 45 minutes west of Chicago lies a soccer mecca. The town is St. Charles, Ill., and from this town arrived a prophet to the Iowa State soccer team last year named Lynley Hilligoss.

A soft-spoken woman, she exhudes a calm confidence in her ability as an athlete and as a goalkeeper. And rightfully so. During her senior year at St. Charles High, she led her team to a National Championship, allowing only four goals during the course of the season. Interestingly enough, she didn’t begin playing keeper until her freshman year.

“It was one of those situations where we didn’t have a goalkeeper,” Hilligoss said, “so they all looked at me and said, ‘You can do it’.”

From that day on, her high school team began to tear up the competition. Her freshman year they finished third in the state. Her sophomore and junior year, they won the State Championship.

And we all know about her senior year.

Now young Hilligoss is grabbing the helm of another program — the ISU soccer team. And her run at greatness has taken no time off. In her first season at ISU, she recorded four shutouts and was named ISU defensive game MVP a team-high six times.

And just last week she was named the Big 12 Conference Player of the Week after holding the potent offense of Baylor to only one goal in regulation time and turning back 18 attempts by Texas Tech to seal her fifth career shutout.

“Hard work and the people who have worked with me to make me who I am today” are what Hilligoss credits her success to.

She fondly refers to Dave and Jenna, her parents, when talking about how she came so far through the trials and tribulations of her short career.

Part of those trials and tribulations came from being plagued by injuries in her first three seasons at St. Charles.

She also speaks at lengths about a mentor, Stan Anderson, who is a coach from the University of Wisconsin whom she met at a soccer camp in St. Charles during the summer of ’95.

“He spent a lot of time with me developing my game,” she said. She also spoke of how they still talk and of the advise he continues to give about soccer, school and life.

Hilligoss has another story: that of a black athlete trying to promote the sport of soccer. “There’s really not that many of us [black female athletes] at all,” she said. “Briana Scurry has definitely had an influence on me.”

Briana Scurry was the goalkeeper that helped the US Women’s soccer team win gold in the World Cup this past summer.

Scurry and Hilligoss share the mission of preaching the game of soccer to the ears of all young women looking for a role model. In fact, Hilligoss and Scurry have actually met.

“[The US Women’s soccer team] played an exhibition game at my high school,” Hilligoss remembers. “We got a chance to interact with the players and I got to talk with Briana. She’s been a great role model for black women, especially in soccer. She’s just awesome. I love watching and studying her.”

The likenesses play out on the field too. Hilligoss often gets razzed by her teammates with quotes like, “What’s up Scurry!”

She says it gets her pumped up for the games when they do. “It’s all cool,” she said.

Since her arrival at ISU, Hilligoss has accomplished: 2.11 goals against average (1998), a current goals against average of 0.87, five career shutouts, named 1998’s co-Newcomer of the Year by ISU coaches, named ISU defensive game MVP six times during the 1998 campaign, named Big 12 Conference Player of the Week last week, and, or course, she got the first assist of her goalkeeping career against Texas Tech last Sunday?

“Sometimes she amazes us,” goalkeeper coach Scott Reynolds said. “She gives our team confidence, stability and presence. She has the ability to cover any mental breakdown that our team might have. We build off of what she provides us. Lynley is the best I’ve ever worked with.”

So where will Hilligoss’s chapter end here at ISU? “I definitely plan on taking it [soccer] past Iowa State. My main goal is to play for the national team,” she proclaimed. “Right now though, I’m really excited about our team. I was really impressed with us this weekend. We’re really going places.”

ISU has a special woman in young Lynley Hilligoss.

Let’s just hope this quietly confident woman can help take ISU to that place she went her senior year at that quietly confident soccer town.