Jessie Chatfield is proving you can go home again. Then again, she never really left.
Four years after graduating from west Eugene’s Churchill High School, Chatfield is turning the numerous accolades she earned during her injury-shortened career with the Oregon women’s soccer team into a job as Churchill’s women’s soccer head coach at age 22. And it might not even be the biggest event of her summer.
In fact, she’ll be heading back to high school before she finishes college. Chatfield, a mathematics major and Spanish minor, will finish her degree next winter before pursuing her master’s degree in high school education, and like the other dozens of Oregon athletes graduating either next week or next winter, she will no longer find her day job on a field somewhere near the University campus.
It’s a future she’s planned for quite a while, and one she wasn’t afraid to begin earlier than she could have.
“I walk away with nothing but good feelings and memories and I just think it was a really great chapter in my life,” Chatfield said.
While her dreams of being a high school teacher – something she’s planned “for as long as I can remember” – and coach – something she began to consider late in high school – continue to stay on track, her playing career in a Duck uniform ended a year earlier than expected.
During a Eugene city league game July 2, Chatfield tore her anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee, and had season-ending surgery a month later. But as a starter in goal since she was a true freshman, she had a redshirt season available that would have allowed her to play in 2010.
Instead, the school record-holder in wins, shutouts and minutes turned it down.
“As an incoming senior you go through your seasons with the mentality it’s the last time you do it so by the time I actually tore my ACL in July, I had gone through almost a whole year of mentally preparing myself for my last year of winter and spring of college soccer,” Chatfield said.
The initial reaction to her injury was “devastating,” she said. Chatfield had wanted desperately to make her goal of an NCAA Tournament appearance in her senior season after Oregon’s 2006 team that finished second in the Pac-10 was not accepted to the tournament. Meanwhile USC and Cal, teams that finished behind Oregon, were selected.
But rather than take the year off from soccer in full, she came to practices and games, mentoring the goalkeepers.
Oregon head coach Tara Erickson said despite knowing of Chatfield’s intention to coach in the future, her commitment to the team was refreshing even as she was confined to the sideline.
“She even traveled on her own to away matches, which I thought was completely above and beyond,” Erickson said.
Chatfield had the unique position of having her teammates’ ears as a teammate who they had played with before, coupled with her new perspective from the sideline.
“I still really felt like a player but I didn’t fully feel like I crossed over into a coach with my perspective and observation,” she said. “I was able to take a step back and not participate in practice and actually realize how they were run.”
One of the players who benefited most from her advice was eventual freshman starter Cody Miles.
“It was tough because I know Jessie accomplished a lot and set a lot of records,” Miles said, “but our goalkeeper coach said, ‘You’re not Jessie; you’re going to make your own path.’”
Chatfield will have to do the same at a program known for its consistency.
Playing in Class 5A, the second-biggest division of schools in Oregon, the Lancers have made the state playoffs every year since Chatfield’s freshman year at CHS in 2002, losing in the quarterfinals in the 2008 playoffs. Even with her young age, her ties to her old high school made her one of the school’s top choices for the job from the beginning. She said Churchill athletic director Tim Carmichael contacted her and high school and college teammate Allison Newton about the possibility of the pair as co-coaches. After Newton withdrew because of a chance to study abroad in the fall, Chatfield thought about the opening and decided she could try it by herself, although her old coach Edwin Jaffarian will be her assistant.
Carmichael said her Division I background and goal of being a teacher made her selection easy.
“For us that means a little bit of longevity if we can put together a teacher position,” said Carmichael, who hopes to keep Chatfield for the future. “Somebody’s going to get a good teacher and a good coach and I hope it’s us.
“We know who she is and what kind of a person she is,” he said.
She says the first team meeting with parents will be her first wake-up call to the job’s unseen responsibilities of organization. As a goaltender, Chatfield could watch the game unfold in front of her in a large-scale sense. Teammates say her communication with the defense in front of her was one of her best skills on the field. She’s learning that her new job, however, is all about the details – something where good communication should come in quite useful.
“As a goalie I have a great perspective for the regular game,” she said. “The things that will take me the slowest to really notice and gain skill is the really minor details for the field players.”
One more thing: Chatfield will get married Aug. 1. She returns from her honeymoon on Aug. 14, three days before practices begin, and with it, her newest job that could lead to her next career.
“It’ll be sort of a whirlwind of events,” she said. “I can’t complain to have too much on my plate when everything is really great. Everything I have going on right now is very fantastic.”
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A dream fulfilled
Daily Emerald
June 1, 2009
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