WATERVILLE — When Waterville girls soccer coach Ian Wilson talks about senior Lydia Roy, the phrase “work rate” invariably keeps popping up.
Roy plays a position where, if your coach is talking about your work rate, it better be in the positive sense. As a center midfielder, Roy might prevent an attack by the opposing team and at the same time, do the work that sets up a Waterville goal 20 seconds later.
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“Her range on the field is what makes her so valuable,” Wilson said. “She can join the attack offensively and create a ‘numbers up’ opportunity for us there. But she also has the work rate to recover and help us defensively. There’s just not a lot of kids with that kind of fitness level and that kind of work rate, that you can have them do those kinds of things.”
Roy scored Waterville’s only goal in last year’s Class B state championship game against Cape Elizabeth, and she’ll again be a factor when the Purple Panthers face Cape in the rematch at 12:30 p.m., Saturday at Deering High School.
Although Roy has scored in the neighborhood of 15 goals this season, she downplays her offensive contributions, saying her goals mainly come by beating defenders to free balls. Her defense is impressive, as she helped Waterville control the action enough to outscore its opponents 91-2 heading into Saturday’s game.
“You know if they don’t score, that’s partly you — you do that,” Roy said. “Maybe other people don’t recognize it, but our teammates recognize it, and we really put a lot of pride into our defenders and the girls that step up and do that for us.”
While Roy covers a lot of ground on the field, she’s also manned a lot of positions over the years. Wilson says Roy played forward as a freshman and sophomore before moving to midfield, but that might be an oversimplification.
“Before high school, I was always a defender,” Roy said. “Then when I got into high school, Coach Wilson switched me to outside mid, and center mid, and then forward, and now I’m defensive. I’ve been all over the place, so transitioning is pretty easy for me.”
But it’s clear that center midfielder was Roy’s ultimate destination. It’s a position that combines skill, athleticism, smarts, and quick thinking, and Roy hits every check mark on that list.
“We ask her to do a lot of things that require intelligence on the field,” Wilson said. “She’s got a huge role to play on Saturday, and her role is dynamic. She has to read what the play is looking like, and make a response based on what she’s seeing going on, on the field. It’s not an automatic, ‘If this, do that’ game for her. It requires a lot of intelligence. She’s in AP classes in school. She’s a very, very bright student. In my experience, those are the kinds of dynamic things you can do with kids who are really intelligent kids and intelligent soccer players.”
Roy, who made first-team all-KVAC Class B this season, was always quick (both in the mental and physical sense) and hard-working, and recently she’s become the complete package for the Panthers.
“Her skill has improved every year,” Wilson said. “She was always a super-high work rate kid, and as her skill has improved, her ability to read the game and anticipate play has also improved. Those two areas, she’s grown tremendously in her four years with us.”
Wilson likes to say that Roy does the dirty work that a lot of people don’t notice, and much of that work has been done at Waterville’s Webber Field, where the Panthers play their home games. Roy played her final game there last Friday, in a semifinal victory over Camden Hills.
“I hadn’t really thought about it until we drove past Webber yesterday,” Roy said. “I was like, ‘Wow. I’ll never play there again.’ It was kind of bittersweet, because ending the season with a win would just be phenomenal.”
It’s only natural that the Panthers are pumped up to play the team that beat them on penalty kicks in last year’s state final. Now they’ll look at striking the balance between revenge and playing the way they did to get to this point.
“I think we’ve just got to work on how we play our passes, and kind of forget that it is Cape during the game,” Roy said. “So it’s just like any other game.”
Roy has already begun the process of sorting out where she wants to go to college. She’d like to play soccer at the Division III level.
“That’s a good fit,” Wilson said. “She’s a real serious student, so Division III is a very good fit because she can concentrate on academics, and also enjoy an athletic experience if she chooses to.”
Much like her role on the field, that process has taken Roy all over the place.
“Oh, lots of places,” Roy said with a big laugh when asked where she was looking. “It’s a stressful process. I’d like to stay close to home, so that’s probably the main factor.”
Matt DiFilippo — 861-9243
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