Big goals on and off the field
Cauzillo hopes to lead soccer team to Big 12 Tournament victory
Senior Nicole Cauzillo had to overcome injuries and illness to make it to her final season on the Kansas soccer team. She is the leading scorer for the team this season.
By Alison Cumbow (Contact)
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007
After a slew of injuries that took her off the field for most of last year, senior mid-fielder Nicole Cauzillo, from Northville, Mich., has been back in action this season on the Kansas soccer team. This is Cauzillo’s last season as a Jayhawk, and she is looking to go out with a bang, and a Big 12 Tournament victory to remember forever.
Cauzillo’s Michigan twang makes talking to her easy, and her laugh is contagious. Cauzillo has spunk and a friendly personality on and off the soccer field. Although she has been a dominant player this season, Cauzillo claims she has never been able to master the perfect game-face.
Last season, Cauzillo came down with mononucleosis and was given a medical redshirt by the NCAA. After missing most of last year’s playing time, she petitioned to regain her spot on this year’s squad. Cauzillo has since become the leading scorer on the team with five goals and three assists, and has shown her teammates, her coach and her fans exactly why she deserved her starting spot back.
Despite a disappointing team record in the beginning of the season, the Jayhawks bounced back to finish their at 7-9-4 overall, and 5-2-3 in Big 12 play. To help get her team back on the road to success, Cauzillo has had to step up as a forward at times, and pull some of her teammates’ weight on the field. She said she loved playing midfield because she had the opportunity to play offense and defense if needed.
“My focus is to get a point, whether it’s an assist or a goal, for the sake of my team,” she said. And she has. Cauzillo has three three-point contests this season and has recorded a goal and an assist in games against Texas Tech, Oklahoma State and Nebraska this year.
This season Cauzillo has also recorded the most shot attempts at 13, and she has a 76.9 percent shots on goal mark. In her career at Kansas, she has scored a total of nine goals, taken 87 shot attempts — 45 of those on goal — and had three game-winning goals.
Path to Kansas
Cauzillo began playing with a soccer ball when she was three years old. Always having looked up to her older sister, who also played soccer, Cauzillo began playing competitively at age eight. She stayed on the same club team, The MIchigan Hawks, for eight years. After the team won a national championship, it was time for Cauzillo to take the next step and left to play at West Virginia University. She said the school’s record drew her to it initially.
During her freshman year, she started all 23 matches with the Mountaineers, and recorded three goals and two assists on the season. Unhappy with the dynamic of the team, Cauzillo began to look at her options for transferring.
Her desire to regain the same sense of unity she’d had playing on her club team led her to the University of Kansas for her sophomore year.
“I had heard good things about Coach Francis,” she said. “I really liked the team and the campus. I think the KU campus is one of the most beautiful there is.”
During her sophomore year, Cauzillo was named Big 12 Newcomer of the Week, started 18 games and came in third on the team with 14 points for the season. Her junior year, she served as a co-captain for the Jayhawks. In the fall, she suffered a concussion after an Oklahoma State player butted heads with her in a chase for the ball. NCAA mandates that a player suffering from a concussion must sit out from games for three weeks after the injury — a large part of the season. During the spring, Cauzillo, excited to get back on the field, discovered she had mono and was given a medical red shirt for the remainder of the season.
Now Cauzillo is back on the field and racking up points. She said it felt really good to be doing so well this season.
“It was hard to get back into the speed of play,” she said, “I missed soccer a lot.”
She is especially happy to be sans injuries. Well, except for one. During the summer before her senior year, Cauzillo played on a semi-professional team, and in an attempt to score, she headed the ball into the net, but landed awkwardly on her hand. The goal was scored, but she ended up with more than a sense of accomplishment — she had torn the muscle from the bone in her thumb. The injury still requires that she wear a brace, although it doesn’t have much of an effect on Cauzillo’s game.
Ecstatic to be back on the field for her final season, one of Cauzillo’s personal goals is to make it through smoothly.
“I think my injuries have taught me a lot,” Cauzillo said. “They’ve been stuff I can recover from. But I want to finish this season injury-free.”
Supporters
Cauzillo has a huge support group to get her through this season. Her mother, Linda Cauzillo, tries to make it to every home game and travels to Kansas from Michigan to also hang out with her daughter on the weekends.
Her boyfriend of two years, senior Aurom Mahobian, travels on the road with her as much as he can. He also wears Cauzillo’s jersey when he watches her games and his pride in his girlfriend is obvious.
“She makes really good passes, and she has really good touches. She just plays really smart and makes her teammates better,” Mahobian said. “When she plays the whole 90 minutes, she can really control the pace of the game. She has so much energy, and she is always running. She’s overcome a lot.”
In additino to her mom and boyfriend, her biggest fans just might be her younger cousins, who come from Overland Park to cheer her on. Sometimes they come with big signs, and other times they can be heard yelling words of encouragement so loudly that it’s hard not to join in. Her youngest cousin, seven-year-old Jack Krebs, said he liked watching Cauzillo and especially liked to see her score goals.
It seems as though everyone, including her coach is proud of Cauzillo, considering the odds she’s had to overcome and how well she has performed this season.
“I think it’s good that she stuck it out. She’s had a couple of rough seasons. She’s taken advantage of the opportunity knowing that there was a possibility she wouldn’t have been playing,” coach Mark Francis said. “She’s very persistent. I’m happy for her.”
Cauzillo has also earned honors this year, by receiving nods from organizations outside of the University. She was selected in her junior year and this year for the Academic All-District 7 Second Team by ESPN The Magazine in late October. Cauzillo is also a two-time Academic All-Big 12 First Team selection, and is eligible to be named to the team again this year.
The future
As a senior, Cauzillo won’t be able to play games with the team for the spring season. However, she said coach Francis would be allowing her to practice with the team, because she plans to go on a mission trip to Ethiopia with a semi-professional soccer team in the summer.
With her last game of the regular season behind her and the Big 12 Soccer Championships rapidly approaching, the question of what she will do next isn’t far off. Cauzillo will graduate in May with a degree in English and has high hopes for what she’ll do after her summer is over.
“I’m applying for Teach for America. I would love to be in Denver, and that’s where I put as my most preferred spot. I would like to coach a younger team as well,” she said.
Soccer-wise, Cauzillo hopes to see her team make it far in the Big 12 championship and the NCAA tournament this season. Cauzillo’s dedication to the sport she loves, determination to make her last season the best and her overall ambition for success just might get herself and her teammates there.
— Edited by Elizabeth Cattell
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