Girls soccer: Mead’s Adler repeats as Times-Call player of the year

With every passing year, Mead junior Katy Adler seems to gain strength on the soccer pitch. Her coach believes her innate ability to play nearly any position — save for keeper — makes her invaluable to the Mavericks and a nightmare for her opponents.

“She might be able to do that, but I don’t think she would,” Mead head coach Shane Adler joked of the prospects of playing keeper. “Katy’s very good at always adding new things to her bag, new moves, and she’s good at getting reps in at different shots, different angles. … I love that when we get into a tight game, if we’re up 1-0 and we kind of just need to preserve the lead, Katy is more than willing to just to drop and help us lock down a one-goal lead.”

Her growth on the field can be tracked by the X’s and O’s on a whiteboard.

As a freshman with the Mavericks, Katy played defense, then shifted more into a scoring position during her sophomore season to net 16 goals and hand out six assists. This year, she led Mead once again with 20 scores, all while aiding eight more.

For the second year in a row, she was named the Times-Call player of the year. She led her team not only by example, but through a positive worldview that was nothing short of infectious. She and the rest of the Mavericks made it to the second round of the Class 4A state playoffs and collected a 13-2-1 record.

“The first game of playoffs might have been one of my best games, I think,” Katy said. “We just worked together as a team. We scored our first goal, and it brought a lot of momentum up for our team and it paid off towards the end. We just started to settle down and calm down and play our game, and that helped us out a lot.”

She explained that with every passing goal she scored, she built up more and more confidence to go out and sink a couple more. In that postseason contest against Cañon City, she scored two with her own cleats and helped out with one more before the Mavericks put the Tigers away with a 5-1 final.

“I think last year was a really good run for us, and we had a pretty solid team,” Katy said. “I also think we worked hard together, every practice and every game, so I think that helped us a lot last year. This year, we had a very similar team, and we also still pushed each other every practice, helped each other to be the best that we could be, and it paid off.”

Shane is looking forward to seeing what she can do in her final year wearing the burnt orange of MHS. She’s already more than proven herself a worthy leader, teammate and opponent.

“Her freshman year, she played defense for us, and so she didn’t have all those stats that people could see on paper, and they could only see how good of a player she was if they showed up to the games,” Shane said. “I think that helped her as a leader, knowing like, ‘Hey, my play can lead, and I can score, and I can do all these amazing things. But at the end of the day, I’m a team player, I’m willing to go out there. I’m willing to play defense. I’m willing to play wing.’”