Since the 2014 to 2015 school year, the girls’ soccer team has had seven of their athletes commit to play in college, with only three of them going to play at the Division I level, the highest level of college athletics. After the end of this season, senior Abbie Miller will become the eighth athlete to take the field in college and fourth to play at the Division I level. Miller has verbally committed to Saint Louis University since her sophomore year and signed a letter of intent on Feb. 2 of this year. She feels this has helped her grow as a soccer player.

“I think committing helped me [improve],” Miller said. “I wanted to be more prepared for it, so I worked harder. I think I got better as an overall player and it just made me excited that I was going to play for four more years, so I had to keep pushing myself to get better.”

Along with Miller, the team has two other players who have already verbally committed to playing soccer at the Division I level when they finish high school. Those players are junior wingback Lauren Shah, who committed to Arkansas State prior to the start of the school year and sophomore Julia Kristensen, who also committed to SLU this past winter. For Shah, who has been playing soccer since she was three years old, going away for college will give her an opportunity to branch out. While looking into Arkansas State, she knew it was the right place for her.

“I knew when making my decision to go to Arkansas State that it was the right decision,” Shah said. “When I went to visit the school and the soccer program it had all the items on my checklist that I wanted from a school and soccer program. I am going to focus on training and working hard my freshman year of college with the hopes of having the opportunity to come in as a freshman and have the ability to play. [Being given] that opportunity I feel very blessed.”

The three will all be playing together at the varsity level for the second time this season. Miller hopes that the three of them can work together and can also push the rest of the team to work just as hard both now and in the future.

“I think it will make [the three of] us better in general, because we will want to work harder,” Miller said. “As they grow, I think they will also grow as leaders and push our other teammates to work hard.”