The LSU soccer team consists of 32 players: 25 are American, two are Canadian, and four are English.
Those four English players are freshmen Shannon Cooke, and sophomores Chiara Ritchie-Williams, Lucy Parker and Tinaya Alexander.
How they got here starts with Parker’s sister, Hollie.
Hollie is a middle distance runner on the LSU track team, and two years ago, she stopped by coach Brian Lee’s office to tell him about her sister.
“Hollie stopped by and said ‘I have a sister named Lucy Parker,’ and I said I know who Lucy Parker is, and so that started it,” Lee said.
Even though Lee had already known of Lucy, the fact that her sister was here at LSU certainly helped his recruitment.
Parker played for the Arsenal Ladies youth team from U-10 to U-20, and a few of her teammates, Alexander and Ritchie-Williams, saw that she was interested in playing at LSU, they also became curious.
“Once Lucy decided to come, that created interest for Tinaya, when Tinaya decided to come, that created interest for Chiara, and Chiara then created interest for Shannon,” Lee said.
This domino effect led to the LSU soccer team landing four English players, and all of whom have already made contributions on the pitch.
Parker, Ritchie-Williams and Alexander started all 18 games for the Tigers during their freshman seasons.
Parker played mainly as a defender and defensive midfielder during her freshman year, racking up three goals and four assists, along with contributing to seven clean sheets. This season, she’s already scored one goal, contributed to six clean sheets, and won SEC Defensive Player of the Week. Parker has started every game so far this season.
Ritchie-Williams contributed one assist in her freshman season, mainly playing center-back. Ritchie-Williams played very well as a freshman, earning Second-Team All-SEC honors and landed a spot on the Louisiana Sports Writers Association First-Team All-Louisiana.
Alexander scored three goals and added a team-high seven assists as a freshman, giving her the second-most points on the team behind senior Alex Thomas. Alexander also received an honorable mention selection for the All-Louisiana Soccer Team from the LSWA. Alexander has two assists so far this season.
Cooke has already started five games in her first season as a Tiger, and has played in seven, mostly along the back-line.
The differences in culture that they have experienced, both on and the off the pitch, have been tough in different ways for each player, some just as simple as getting into the car on the wrong side.
“It’s simple things you don’t think about, like getting into the car on the wrong side, I make that mistake all the time,” Ritchie-Williams said. “The biggest thing, is the food… it’s hard to eat the right stuff for training and post-training, because there’s so much unhealthy food here.”
As for the soccer side of the equation, without hesitation, each player noted that the style of play in collegiate soccer is so much different from English soccer.
“I would say back home we’re a lot more technical, but here, everyone is so much bigger and faster, and the style of play is a lot less technical because they rely more on their speed,” Cooke said.
But they all agree that while the game is so much different, it has given them an advantage of having learned the game differently from American players.
“I think that we learned a more technical style of play, and it has helped us over here because once we adapt to the style of play here, we have another dimension to our game that maybe not a majority of American players have,” Alexander said.
All four players noted how how nice it is to be able to play soccer and get an education at the same time.
“Back home, if you wanted to go to university, you stopped playing soccer. If you wanted to play soccer, you wouldn’t go to University. So the option to come to the states, play soccer at the collegiate level, and also get a degree was too much to pass up,” Parker said.
Hollie Parker opened doors for them to pursue both routes.