Second Time Around Was Perfectly Wright
Senior soccer player goes from unknown to captain in one year
Mike Brohard
As a coach building a program, he had to ask the follow-up question.
“What if that doesn’t happen?” Bill Hempen posed to Addie Wright.
Not that he wasn’t darn impressed by her response to his first question, but in the process of building a winning culture, he needed assurances. He owed it to himself, as well as his Colorado State women’s soccer team.
Most of the time, when a transfer joins a program, the backstory is known. Many times, the coach has at least heard of the player, even if they didn’t actively recruit them. Wright, however, was a complete mystery.
At first, there were just rumors of a talent on campus. Maddie Lesjak, who started with the club team on campus, had talked about a pretty good player. So did one of the club athletic trainers. Curious enough, assistant coach Tori Ball took a few walks by the practice field and took a peek now and again.
“It’s not like we pursued Addie, because obviously there was a reason why she left Wake, and we didn’t know that answer,” Ball said. “She would have to approach us, because it would be her doing, in a sense.
“(Former assistant coach) Seb Furness and I would walk by, put our hoods up and just watch. We’d be leaving work and walk by, and put up our hoods very secretive. You can tell a soccer player by the way they move, the way they cover space, the way they pass the ball, no matter who they’re playing with.”
It was a glimpse, but not really enough to establish a firm scouting report. Then one day, Wright strolled into her office.
The reason nobody really knew about Wright is easy enough. She played as a prep in Richmond, Va., signing with Wake Forest. She was there a year, but left the program. She wasn’t playing, and she admits she’d lost the desire to do the little things away from practice – extra work, diet, all of it – which make Division I athletes successful.
Really, a classic case of a flameout.
“I think it was just 12 years of playing soccer non-stop, and I thought the right thing to do was continue that train and keep chugging into it,” Wright said. “I think I definitely needed a break. I was still excited about it and thinking it was the thing I wanted to do, and it was. It was an awesome experience, and I loved the people I met and there are still some really great friends that came out of it, but at the end of that fall season, I was burned out to the max.
“The way I described it to my parents was, I felt like I was just somebody going through the motions every day. I loved practice, but I never really had the desire to do anything outside of that. I felt I was being really controlled by the whole sport. ”
She knew she needed to get away from Virginia, and one of her best friends from home was attending the University of Denver. A visit led to a trip to Boulder and Fort Collins, the latter felt like a place she could thrive.
Without soccer. Actually, she was looking even further west – California – but her parents felt that was too far. Colorado was the perfect peg in the middle. Soccer was not part of the equation.
At all.
She took one semester off from school, enrolling at Colorado State in January of 2018. She didn’t play soccer for a year, but started to feel the draw once again, signing up with the club team that spring. She was still good, and those competitive juices and emotions came rushing back, match by match. Eventually, she felt club wasn’t enough.
What she had come to dread at Wake Forest, she missed at Colorado State.
She also heard the rumors about her, and after some deep thought and with a little trepidation, she approached Ball. They gave her a couple of days to think about it, but after doing a pro-con list with a friend back home, Wright texted back the next day and said she was ready to go.
That led to a meeting with Hempen, and he needed to know her intentions, which were to become a starter.
“I told Bill that’s what I wanted,” she said. “He kind of framed it and said, if that doesn’t happen, how are you going to respond and how are you going to react? I was honest and was like, it’s going to happen. And if it doesn’t happen, I’m going to make it happen.”
Bold statement, especially coming from a young lady who had walked away from the sport not long ago. If things didn’t go well with the Rams, if she didn’t start, would she walk away again? And if she did, what would that do to team chemistry?
“I mean, we were in the middle of trying to build a culture that look, not everybody plays; you’ve got to earn it,” Hempen said. “You’ve been out of it for a while now, is there anything in the tank? There’s a reason you left. Do you have the fire back, and she said she did, but, where are you going to be if it doesn’t fall in your direction?”
Hempen won’t even call it a tryout. He’s not sure how it all really came about, where all the sudden Wright was taking part in the end-of-spring drills. It felt awkward to her, so she figured it was for the team. By the time she arrived, the Rams had already finished playing spring games. Her first day, they played dodge ball. The second day, they ran the “beep” test, a grueling physical test they held her out of, figuring she wasn’t in good enough shape yet to perform.
A great path to feeling like a real outcast.
“Then I’m the girl who’s not running the “beep” test, and everybody is running it, looking at me again like, ‘who is this girl, why is she here and why is she not running?” Wright said. “It was immediately like I was thrown into the pit. But I think once we started playing soccer it was easy, because that’s where I’m most comfortable and where I best connect with people. As soon as that happened, it was natural, really.”
She was there sporadically in the summer, with planned internships limiting her somewhat. It really wasn’t until fall camp started Wright became a permanent fixture.
Even still, the players had a notion.
“She just peppered in every so often, so I was like, who is this girl who shows up every so often? When preseason started and she was there all the time, that was when I would say she fit right in there,” midfielder Samantha Studt said. “You can just tell by the way a person plays when the start playing. She said she was nervous, but it didn’t show. You could tell she was very composed on the ball when she started playing with us in the spring. I think that’s impressive, because I was a hot mess.
“This isn’t her first rodeo, clearly. She’s like 54 already.”
“I’m 23,” Wright says. “Don’t push it.”
As fall work progressed, Hempen had already figured out Wright hadn’t sold him a bill of goods. The players assessed the rumors hadn’t told the full story, either.
In fact, Studt is a bit stunned about it all. As days passed, questions were answered. Yep, she had signed at Wake Forest. Yes, she had left and taken a year off. Hell yes, she could still play.
They also figured out she was 22-years old, as a junior.
When it comes to age, they link her with Hempen – who was coaching at Duke nine years before Wright’s birth. They make fun of how much time she spends in the cold tubs after games and practices. They did some research, hoping to find out she was the oldest person competing in all of college athletics, only to find the person was at CSU – football player Joshua Griffin – and were highly disappointed.
“I think that is the sole reason why I’m friends with her, just so I can constantly make jokes about how old she is,” Studt said. “She’s ancient. My mom always did say I was very good with old people. My God, maybe that’s why we get along so well.”
When you come off the bus, I want everybody to say that must be their center back without even knowing. They just carry themselves that way, and that’s what she does. That’s what she did. She was, yeah, I can do this.Bill Hempen, Women's Soccer Coach
One of the biggest weekends of the season for Wright came on the first road trip for the team. On the first day of a two-game swing through Washington, she scored an own-goal which led to a 2-1 loss to Gonzaga. She felt horrible.
That same weekend, for reasons still unknown to her and Studt, they became fast friends. Loud friends. Inseparable. Hempen said if you see one, you see the other. He laughs as Wright plays the straight man, Studt delivering the punch lines in the comedic routine. Studt, while agreeing that is mostly true, added in her defense there are loud aspects of Wright he doesn’t always see.
Both developments were important. An own-goal in just your third start as the new kid isn’t exactly the desired introduction. Her manner of handling the situation – and how the team supported her – spoke volumes in how the team was going to move forward.
She’d also developed a really close relationship with a teammate, which helped make all the previous awkwardness disappear.
“We just, I don’t know … We were friendly and friends, and maybe that first travel trip that just does it, but we just unlocked this very strange part of our friendship that never ended,” Wright said. “I think every single member of our team gets sick of us every single day. We’re just all over the place. We’re loud and kind of obnoxious and like to mess around and be, some people call it psycho, but it’s fun. They’re just jealous that they’re missing out.
“She was definitely a big part of it, and once I kind of got in with her, it was like, OK. Everybody was like, ‘she’s fine, we can let her in.’”
What happened after the trip was a breakout for the program. The Rams went on to post a 12-5-3 mark, going 7-3-1 in the Mountain West, qualifying for the conference tournament. It was the most successful season in program history, and Wright played a big role.
She started all 20 games, was third on the team in minutes played and earned second-team All-Mountain West honors. Her arrival was a mystery, but Studt said it was also a gift, the missing piece to what they needed.
For Hempen, she was exactly what he wants in a center defender.
“The position she plays requires and incredible amount of calm, because where she’s stationed is where the most hectic part of the game is played,” he said. “For her, she’s everything that has ever been part of the recipe that makes up the best central defenders I’ve ever had. It’s that composure, it’s the ability to play under pressure and not panic under pressure, making a simple pass as opposed to whacking it down the field that’s connected and is the right pass – it doesn’t put her teammate under stress.
“She’s not perfect, and she’ll be the first one to tell you that. I can’t vote for (CSU players on) all-conference, it’s the other coaches who notice. Her accolades and her rise, that’s the part. No one is pushing you, but somebody recognizes you. That’s the cool part to me.”
Well, one cool part. There have been multiple, the latest another stunner to them all.
After being with the program for less than 12 months, it was time for the team to vote for captains for the 2020 season. Studt is one. So are Bailyn Furrow and Emma Shinsky.
And Wright.
“That’s scary. Bill was saying that’s pretty awesome that someone can just walk on this team and play a huge role and be such a great role model for the team,” said Studt, who agrees. “I’m just so thoroughly impressed she was able to make that transition. That is so impressive, that you can go from stop playing soccer and then, ‘oh, I’ll play on the club team.’ That can be a little competitive, but then go, ‘I need a little more.’ The drive or the love for the game – I don’t know what it is – because the physical level you have to compete at … Like I said, she’s old, that’s so impressive she not only kept her skills somehow, because this quarantine got me. She took a whole year off. That’s crazy.”
When she looks back, Wright says she should have known.
In her mind, she should have taken a year away from the game right out of high school, a gap year. She wasn’t ready for college, she believes, nor the highly competitive world of collegiate soccer in the ACC, a league littered with nationally ranked teams.
She should have seen the signs.
It’s easy to look back and make those decisions for herself now. It’s just as weird to look back and see how it all played out at Colorado State. None of what happened in the past year was in her initial plans. What’s really cool is, step by step, she regained her love for the sport, and the desire to push herself to her competitive limits.
She sits in the cold tubs to rejuvenate, so fine if her teammates tease her she’s old. It helps her do all those extra things, the little details which allow her to be at her best, for her team. At Colorado State, she’s found the balance she sought with her sport and her life.
“That’s exactly how I feel and I think that’s what I wanted the experience to be now,” she said. “I was afraid I’d fall into that zombie going through the motions again. I feel like this program and the coaching staff has given me the space and freedom to still be who I am outside of what I’m doing on the field, which has been amazing.”
Finally, the time was right for her. That much she recognized in herself. And she left every card on the table with Hempen. This season, she’s even more excited to lay everything on the line for her team.
True to herself. True to her word.
Hempen loved the answer to his first question when he asked what her goals were for coming out. She was confident, and he could see it, but he still needed reassurances.
Just to be sure. Already, he kind of was.
“Yeah, a kid comes into your office who played obviously at a high level and kinda walked away, so you’re concerned about that,” he said. “But then you have a kid like that who walks in and says, I’m going to start, sometimes you hear it and you go, yeah, yeah, yeah. But she kind of had that, man – how do I describe it? When you come off the bus, I want everybody to say that must be their center back without even knowing. They just carry themselves that way, and that’s what she does. That’s what she did. She was, yeah, I can do this.
“Some kids giggle and they’re nervous, but it was just matter of fact. There was no fluff. It was a straight on, I’m your center back. And she was.”