SAGE HILL FEMALE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR:Percival not a pitcher, but an athlete

Whether Kara Percival was running cross country or playing soccer or tennis for Sage Hill School, she was making an impact.

The Lightning graduate, who was named the school’s 2007 Female Athlete of the Year, seemed to have that presence about her.

Her skills were probably most obviously realized in soccer, where the talented midfielder earned first-team All-Academy League honors this past winter. Her love for the game carries on. She is hoping to play in college.

Percival is training to try out for the women’s soccer team at Haverford College in Philadelphia, where she will attend this fall. It’s an NCAA Division III program. Soccer is her first love, but she just enjoys to compete.

“If I don’t make the soccer team, I’ll go out for the cross country team,” said Percival, who plans to study biology and chemistry at Haverford.

What ever team she makes, she’ll most likely get the usual question: Are you related to Troy Percival?

“I get that question all the time,” Percival said of the Major League Baseball pitcher.

The answer is, no. This Percival doesn’t crave to be the pitcher, only to be on the pitch.

She averaged a point a game in league, scoring five goals and dishing out five assists, and she also had the game-winning goal on a direct free kick against JSerra on March 2.

She also scored on a penalty kick against JSerra, which is a CIF Southern Section Division I school.

Percival helped the Lightning to a 12-9-1 record this year, and second place in the Academy League with an 8-2 mark.

The two-time Daily Pilot Athlete of the Week, also a Daily Pilot Dream Team selection as a senior, helped the Lightning to a 20-4-1 mark and the CIF Southern Section Division VI quarterfinals as a junior in 2006. She scored four goals and tallied three assists her junior year.

Sage Hill girls’ soccer coach Amy Ray has said that Percival has impressed with her work ethic.

“She’s a great leader and she’s extremely passionate about the sport,” Ray said in a Daily Pilot article from February 2006. “She takes practice very seriously. On and off the field, she’s a great asset for the team. She’s positive and works hard to improve.”

The same was true in cross country, where Percival was a dependable senior and helped make Coach Nate Miller’s sixth season a special one last fall.

Percival ran cross country her freshman year, but played tennis during the fall of her sophomore and junior seasons. For her senior year, she was back running as the No. 4 runner.

“We had three strong underclassmen, but having her as a senior leader was a big benefit,” Miller said. “We definitely wouldn’t have scored as well at CIF and at state without her as a scoring runner.”

Percival, who couldn’t run at CIF division finals due to heat exhaustion, bounced back to run a time of 21 minutes, 22 seconds at the CIF Division V State Finals, which was 60th individually. The time also helped the Lightning girls finish seventh as a team in Division V.

Miller said he wasn’t sure she could just come back to the sport after two years off, but Percival surprised him.

“She ran with us quite a bit last summer, then she jumped in right away and continued improving,” he said. “That was definitely a pleasant surprise.”

Steve Virgen contributed to this story

MATT SZABO may be reached at (714) 966-4614 or at matthew.szabo@latimes.com.