Ultimate Soccer: All for one

Steve Virgen

Much like the thrills and spontaneity that comes with the Ultimate

Soccer League, Lindsey Grubbs, Taylor Yurada and Cary Morrell have

experienced a variety of emotions while playing in the league this

summer.

Unfortunately for Grubbs, a Corona del Mar High product preparing for

her senior year at the University of Virginia, there have been spills

rather than thrills. She tore her right anterior cruciate ligament, July

7, in a game against the Huntington Beach Riptide.

Grubbs, who was Morrell’s teammate on the Mission Viejo Raspberry

Roxies, said she will redshirt her senior year and is still deciding

whether she will play next year as she plans to earn her degree in

economics in the spring.

“This one hurt,” said Grubbs, who tore her left ACL while at CdM. “I

kind of knew when I went down. I was thinking, ‘oh, great, I’m going to

miss my senior year.’ I had a feeling something was wrong.”

Grubbs’ injury surprised her friends Morrell and Yurada, who both

played at Newport Harbor High and were there to see the injury as Yurada

played for the Rip Tide.

The three friends have been keeping in touch throughout their college

years. Grubbs would e-mail and sometimes call Morrell, who is at

Villlanova and was part of the team that recorded the most wins in school

history, 14, when she was a freshman. Morrell is no stranger to injury.

She suffered a herniated disk during her senior year at Newport Harbor.

She, just as Yurada, has been tending mounds of support for Grubbs.

Yurada has also kept in touch while she played two years at Orange

Coast College, which included breaking the school’s single-season scoring

record with 24 goals as a freshman. She is now training for her junior

year as a transfer at Long Beach State.

When the summer of 2001 came, the trio, knowing they had to play on a

club team during the offseason, decided to compete in the new Ultimate

Soccer League. Morrell’s mother saw the news in the Daily Pilot and the

girls knew they would be home for the summer. So an experiment of sorts

began.

The Ultimate Soccer League is the alternative to the traditional game.

Ultimate Soccer features rules geared to create high scoring. A goal is

worth seven points and there’s even three-point long-distance field

goals. There are no offsides and the game is 8-on-8.

“This was a lot of fun,” Morrell said of her season that ended Friday.

“It was a little hard. We had 18 girls on our team, but only 10 would

sometimes show up. The league was very competitive because of all the

college athletes. Mostly I just had fun. It was a good way to keep in

shape.”

The Ultimate Soccer League has also allowed the three to strengthen

their friendship.

Yurada, who will study child development at Long Beach State, has

built a strong bond with Morrell, yet she also keeps a solid friendship

with Grubbs, though she played at Back Bay rival CdM.

“Lindsey is my rival,” said Yurada, “But, we hit it off when we played

on a club team (during high school).”

Yurada had a rough go toward the end of her Ultimate Soccer season.

She had her wisdom teeth pulled and focused on her training rather than

the actual playing time.

Just another aspect in the unexpectedness of the Ultimate Soccer

League, which is scheduled to come back to Orange County next summer.