Angela Hucles has a penchant for auspicious debuts each time she moves up a level in the soccer world. She made her debut on the high school varsity team as a seventh grader. Six years later, she capped a record-setting collegiate rookie year by earning a spot on the All-ACC First Team. The next step for the Virginia fourth-year forward is to make that kind of immediate impact on the U.S. National Team.
Right now, Hucles and the No. 16 Cavs (12-8-0) have their sights set on James Madison and the NCAA Tournament. Virginia, which received a bye to the second round, will open its run for the national title against the unranked Dukes (14-6-1) Sunday at 2 p.m. at Klöckner Stadium.
But for Hucles and the other Cavalier fourth and fifth years, the end of the orange and blue road is very much in sight. And like all Wahoos facing their impending exit from Charlottesville, Hucles is trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.
It looks like an easy call. Hucles is the most prolific scorer and one of the top overall players in Virginia history. She stands among the best forwards in the country, a perennial national Player of the Year finalist with four All-ACC nods and three All-American nominations under her belt. She has met with great success wherever she's played - the obvious next step is up to the U.S. National Team.
Not so fast. The U.S. team is pretty well stacked with forwards - Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly are the star veterans, and Cindy Parlow and Danielle Fotopoulos lead the next generation. Hucles is too old for the age-defined U.S. junior teams that Cavalier teammates like Lori Lindsey and Ashley Meeker play on, but she can't find room with the big league club.
Hucles did get a tryout with the U.S. team after her stellar first year at Virginia but evidently didn't impress the coaching staff enough on the team's barnstorming tour in Minnesota and New York to earn a callback.
"Giving Brandi Chastain an assist - that was my moment," Hucles joked.
Maybe she's not a solid bet to grab a spot on the U.S. team, but Hucles should have an excellent opportunity to play overseas or in American semi-pro ball if she so chooses. She's also weighing the possibility of entering the coaching ranks or maybe braving the real world in the field of human resources. But even if her soccer career were to end the minute she peels off her Virginia uniform, she always will have her place in the annals of Cavalier history.
Movin' On Up
Hucles paraded into Charlottesville in September 1996 with a good deal of fanfare. After making the varsity team as a 90-pound seventh grader - and narrowly missing out on a starting spot in part because it didn't sit well with the seniors - the Virginia Beach native dominated the high school ranks for the next six years. She scored an astounding 204 goals and chipped in 106 assists for Norfolk Academy, earning her a slot in the Commonwealth's Olympic Development Program and senior-year All-American honors.
Yet maternal intervention almost pushed her in another direction.
"When I was six, my mom signed me up for the neighborhood swim team," Hucles said. "I hated it. I had to get up way too early - and I'm not a morning person. The water was freezing, and you'd have 30 seconds of glory in a huge long meet. So then she signed me up for neighborhood soccer after that. That was a lot better."
Hucles' high school dominance netted her the attention of a plethora of college coaches. Lauren Gregg, the current U.S. team assistant who was then the Cavalier coach, recruited Hucles to come to Charlottesville and then left for the national scene. Hucles and Gregg's successor, current Virginia Coach April Heinrichs, were both Cav newcomers in 1996.
"In Angela's first year, she had two dimensions," said Heinrichs, who was arguably the world's best player in the 1980s. "She had a sweet first touch and a fourth or fifth gear that most of us don't have. Now she's a much more complete player."
The accolades began to pile up almost immediately for Hucles. She scored 17 times in her rookie campaign, establishing a new Cavalier record for goals in one season, and earned the first of four All-ACC First Team selections and an All-American honorable mention.
Hucles upped the ante in her second year, making the All-American Second Team and breaking the Virginia record she set the year before with 18 goals. Last year, her scoring slipped - if 13 goals can be considered slipping - but she dished out eight assists, the best mark of her career.
The numbers aren't jaw-dropping this season for Hucles either. She leads Virginia with 23 points on eight goals and seven assists, but fifth-year Jill Maxwell, Hucles' oft-injured partner in crime up top, has bested her with a career-high 10 goals.
Yet a large part of the decline in Hucles' statistical output can be traced to the emergence of Maxwell and center midfielders Lori Lindsey and Katie Tracy as legitimate scoring threats. The Cavaliers have faith that Hucles will be there when needed in the NCAA Tournament; her three game-winning goals tie her for the team lead.
Nothing But Net
Hucles has improved greatly in laying passes to onrushing teammates and has shown increased aggressiveness in pressuring the ball up top, but she knows what pays the bills.
"If you're labeling me as a scorer, that's an honor," Hucles said. "As a forward, that's been one of my responsibilities whenever I've played because I have been able to score."
Over the course of her career, Hucles has learned how to harness her natural talent, when to spin left or right, when to lay it off or touch it to herself.
"She's really composed when the ball's coming in to her," Heinrichs said. "She's making textbook decisions. She could put on a little highlight tape of how to receive the ball with your back to the goal."
Hucles also has figured out that she doesn't have to pace herself, especially with the quality replacements Virginia can summon off the bench.
"I've realized that you have that reserve tank," she said. "You might not realize it, and at one point you think that you're not going to hit it, and then you get a little burst."
The Cavaliers will need their emotional reserve tanks Sunday against the Dukes, who defeated them, 2-1, in the regular season. And Virginia still is rebounding from its loss to Clemson in the first round of the ACC Tournament last week.
"That was a heartbreaker, obviously," fifth-year defender Carryn Weigand said. "A lot of the youth on this team saw that this really means a lot to everybody. This is what you work your [butt] off for all season."
Whenever the Cavs conclude their season, Hucles will embark on her job quest. She said the U.S. team isn't out of the realm of possibilities, but Heinrichs had a much simpler objective in mind for her star forward.
"One of my goals for every player every year is for them to graduate from this institution playing their best soccer," Heinrichs said. "I think Angela will do that."
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