The way Simon Fraser University soccer star Emma Pringle sees it, she’s just doing her job.
Everyone on the pitch has a job to do, and her job as central striker just happens to be scoring goals. And she does her job well. Very well, in fact.
In her first ever game with the Clan, an exhibition match at the start of her freshman season last fall, Pringle scored two goals. SFU won 2-0.
“What can you say after a performance like that?” SFU head coach Annie Hamel said after the game. “She was incredible, driving play all over the field. When you have a freshman who can come in and give a performance like that, especially in her debut, you get excited. She has a very bright future.”
How bright? Pringle proceeded to light the league on fire last year, earning the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year award after scoring nine goals in 16 conference games, placing her second in the league and giving her more than twice as many goals as the next highest scorer on her team.
So has there been any sophomore slump? Nope. Pringle has 11 goals in 11 games this season, more than half the team’s total. In one three-game stretch last month Pringle scored seven goals, including her first hat trick for SFU in a 4-2 win over Central Washington.
“When you have a player that determined to win the ball, it’s very difficult for opponents to mark her,” Hamel said after Pringle scored two more goals in a 3-0 win over Northwest Nazarene. “It doesn’t matter how hard they try – at some point, she’ll break free.”
Pringle was sidelined for the team’s latest game – a 3-0 loss to powerhouse Western Washington Thursday night – but she still leads the league in goals. She is, as she says, just doing her job.
“Honestly I think it’s my teammates,” Pringle told the North Shore News earlier this week. “It’s a team effort. If you have a good team, you’re going to score lots of goals. My teammates set me up in the best position to score goals, it’s not just me.”
There is, no doubt, a little bit more to the story than that. Pringle said she started playing for the Strikers on the North Shore at age five, following her soccer-mad father into the sport. She soon joined the North Shore Girls Soccer Club where she started to gain attention for her goal-scoring prowess. By her early teens Pringle was a fixture in the provincial team while playing locally for Mountain United in the B.C. Soccer Premier League and spending some time in the Whitecaps prospects program.
At Windsor Secondary she played almost everything - basketball, field hockey, cross-country running, track and field, volleyball – but it was on the soccer pitch where she made her biggest mark, earning the attention of several university programs. She chose SFU because she liked the vibe she was getting from coach Hamel.
“She said that the team was like a family, and I think I needed that,” said Pringle. “It’s a welcoming team.”
SFU also allowed her to stay at striker, her favoured position. While playing for the provincial team Pringle had been used as a fullback.
“I liked the defending part, and the organization of defending, but I realized once I came to SFU that I was born to be a striker,” said Pringle. “I was excited.”
Before her first game with SFU, however, Pringle had no idea she was about to become a goal-scoring sensation. She certainly didn’t think she was starting a campaign that would end with her being named Freshman of the Year.
“I was really nervous,” she said. “I didn’t know what to expect. I guess that’s a good thing going into games. … It was a fast-paced game. It was really fun to play in.”
Going into her second season this year, Pringle was expecting to get extra attention from her opponents.
“I thought other teams would know me better and they would mark me harder,” she said. “I was just excited to play my second year. My goal was to get into double digits for scoring. I just wanted to reach my goal and help my team get into the tournament.”
Getting into the playoffs is now the task at hand, and with a 3-5 record, SFU is on the outside looking in. They’ll have a chance to make up some ground, however, with home games at Terry Fox Field Oct. 14 against Central Washington, Oct. 21 against Oregon’s Concordia University, and Oct. 26 against Saint Martin’s University. They may need to win them all to break into the top four in the league, but Pringle hasn’t given up hope.
“I have faith in my team,” she said.
Looking further down the road, Pringle, who is studying kinesiology, will be gunning to help take the Clan as far as they can go over the next two years. She also has her sights set on earning the attention of the national team program with the hopes of one day representing Team Canada.
“It’s been my dream ever since I was a little kid,” she said. “I just have to keep on getting lots of goals and see where it takes me.”
Cracking the national team is no doubt a tall order, but the way Pringle has gone about her business the past two years, she’s showing that she may just be the right woman for the job.
