For Ticehurst, There Is No Turning Down the Volume

SANTA ANA —  Stand back, Katie Couric.

There’s another Katie with a face the camera loves, a keen wit and a mean slide tackle. And she’s headed your way.

Katie Ticehurst, a senior soccer player at Mater Dei, may not be ready for a nationally televised morning show, but her MDTV morning show--broadcast campus-wide in Santa Ana--is doing quite well.

Ticehurst soon will pack her bags and head to Los Angeles, where she’s sure not only to be a big hit in the USC communications department, but also to make a big hit on the Trojan soccer field.

One of the most feared forwards in the county, Ticehurst is strong and highly skilled. After leading Mater Dei to its third consecutive South Coast League championship last season as a junior, she was selected the league’s most valuable player and was a first-team All-Southern Section Division I pick.

Ticehurst always has drawn careful attention from Mater Dei’s opponents. This season, that attention has reached frenzied levels as Ticehurst’s reputation swells and the Monarchs take aim at another league title.

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Ticehurst’s hand is extended in greeting and a smile lights her face as she walks into the Mater Dei girls’ athletic office.

You do a double-take.

Surely this 5-foot-5 girl is not the same one, who a few weeks ago, wrapped her arms around the leg of an opponent and yanked until the player fell?

This friendly person who answers questions so thoughtfully can’t be the one who, in the same game, scored and then ran toward the opponent’s bench to pose and gloat?

Ticehurst struggles to explain her on-field persona.

“I have no idea,” she says. “I know that when I’m out on the field, I’m a different person.”

After that particularly flagrant foul, which occurred in Mater Dei’s 2-1 league victory over Mission Viejo Jan. 9, Ticehurst was sent to the sideline with a yellow card.

“I told myself, ‘You have to calm down,’ ” she recalls. “ ‘This is not football.’ ”

What set off Ticehurst against Mission Viejo were disparaging comments she says she heard from the Diablo bench.

“When we get in league, they start ragging on me. They get in my head, but not negatively. It’s like a motivation,” she says.

Ticehurst is someone who draws energy from anger. Not that she’s really angry, or even annoyed, at anyone else. It seems more as if she’s scaring the fear out of her body--driving it to a place deep within herself. And when it’s driven down, what bubbles to the surface is courage, like a steely shield that welcomes pain.

“She has got to get hammered before she gets into the game,” says Ticehurst’s father, Jeff.

At the El Modena Vanguard Cup last season, Ticehurst went for the ball in a 50-50 situation and didn’t get up afterward.

“You just heard the collision and she went down,” Mater Dei Coach Austin Sharp says. “[Assistant Coach Trevor Ickes] and I ran out to the field. Obviously, the kid is hurt [because] she never goes down.”

Ticehurst walked off the field, squirted some water in her mouth and spit it on the ground.

“God, I got rocked,” she said amusedly.

Before this season, Sharp and Ickes got the notion to make Ticehurst a team captain.

“She pretty much said to us, ‘I don’t do signs, I don’t do cupcakes. On the field is when I do my thing,’ ” Sharp says.

Ever since Ticehurst was a child, any activity not played in dirt was out of the question.

“The thought of dance lessons made me barf,” she says.

Softball fell by the wayside in about sixth grade so Ticehurst could concentrate on soccer. Her accomplishments in the sport are remarkable: She plays year-round with the prestigious San Juan Capistrano Blues soccer club and she participated in a tournament in November with the Olympic Development Program’s Western Regional team.

Ticehurst has orally committed to play next year for USC, where she will follow in the footsteps of her brother, Brad, a sophomore on the Trojan baseball team. Ticehurst’s physical prowess and no-fear attitude should serve her well in the grueling, NCAA Division I women’s game.

“So many times, I don’t know [why], even though they are so much bigger than me I’ll go [anyway] and they’ll end up hurt and I’ll get up,” she says. “I don’t take size into consideration because if I did I’d probably end up not challenging half the balls.”

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Ticehurst looks out at the camera and her eyes sparkle as she reads the day’s school announcements: There’s a mandatory meeting for track athletes and don’t forget to buy your tickets for the father-daughter dance.

The camera pans to Ticehurst’s MDTV co-anchor, who reads a story about the Monarch soccer team’s 6-1 victory the previous day over Torrance Bishop Montgomery, including Ticehurst’s three-goal performance.

Suddenly shy, Ticehurst ducks behind the desk. When she peeks up, her partner crowns her with a straw hat as a symbol of her “hat trick.”

Katie Couric couldn’t have worn it better.