One of Lexington’s top girls’ soccer players taking a break from high school play

Brooke Dawahare, a Lafayette junior who has become one of Lexington’s most heralded girls’ soccer players ever, has decided to forego this high school season to rest and recover from a busy club schedule and focus on her college recruitment.

“Many things went into not playing high school soccer,” Dawahare said in a phone interview with the Herald-Leader recently. “The main thing was that I just didn’t want to be unfair to the team. I finished (USL) W League not very long ago, and Lafayette has already had tryouts, they’ve already had many open fields, they’ve already had preseason training sessions, everything like that, and I would have missed every single one of those.”

Dawahare, a 16-year-old three-star midfielder according to TopDrawerSoccer.com, was named Lexington girls’ soccer player of the year and co-11th Region player of the year by local coaches as a sophomore last season.

“Brooke is absolutely a very unique player and we 100% support her decision to do what’s best for her,” Lafayette Coach Taylor Roden said. “She’s very, very focused on reaching her goal of playing Division I college and then, ultimately, playing professionally. So, whatever she needs to do in order to achieve that we support that.”

The decision wasn’t easy.

“I love the girls. I respect Coach Taylor and (assistant) coach Jared (Roden) so much,” Dawahare said. “I just think that with what I had scheduled and everything, I just don’t think that it would have worked out. But it is sad to know that I’m not playing this year because it was so much fun last year. And you’re seeing all the fun things that they’re doing, so it’s definitely hard but I think it was the best decision.”

Roden said there’s been no hard feelings from her, her staff or the girls on the team

“Everybody is just rooting for her to be successful,” Roden said. “Obviously, if she kind of gets things settled out, maybe if she commits somewhere and decides to come back her senior year, we’ll always welcome her at Lafayette with warm arms. She knows that.”

Opportunities fill schedule

In May, Dawahare was selected to participate in an Elite Clubs National League all-star event in New Jersey. She had already been selected to be a part of Racing Louisville’s entry into the new USL W League that started play this year.

Racing Louisville is more widely known as the professional team that is part of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). Dawahare plays for its youth academy. The USL W league was formed as a “pre-professional” opportunity for its outstanding youth academy members as well as current and former college players.

On it, Dawahare and her academy teammates trained alongside members of Florida State’s 2021 NCAA championship team and a number of players rostered at the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky.

“It was so much fun. All the college girls that were playing with us, they were so nice,” Dawahare said, although she admitted being a little awestruck by the Seminoles’ Clara Robbins and Emily Madril. Madril is on the current U.S. Women’s National Team U-23 roster. “Just seeing different playing styles — just everything, it was really cool to see that and having the opportunity to train with them and get better every day was awesome.”

Her USL W team played a 12-game schedule in a “Great Lakes” division that included teams from Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Mich., and more. Its final game was played July 9 in Flint Mich., only six days from high school tryouts. Dawahare started and had an assist in the 3-0 win.

Stepping away from the high school game has become more common in recent years for some of the highest level youth players, especially in boys’ soccer where there are more opportunities to play club soccer year-round.

Two of Dawahare’s USL W Racing teammates have also opted out of their high school careers this year — South Oldham junior Audrey King, part of last year’s state runner-up, and Ballard senior Ella Sanchez, the 2021 Kentucky Gatorade Player of the Year.

College recruitment craziness

Dawahare’s college recruitment got real this summer — maybe too real. Having reached the age when schools can contact her, the floodgates opened June 15, the first day of the recruiting calendar.

“The simplest way I could put it is, ‘It’s been crazy,’” Dawahare said. “It’s been stressful … I didn’t think too much about it (at first), but the amount of text messages and phone calls and everything like that is very overwhelming.”

Dawahare estimates she received calls, texts and emails from 20 Division I programs on day one. It’s grown even more since her appearances at a couple of showcases and camps over the summer.

“Off the top of my head, I could not count. And I don’t want to sound cocky or anything but I haven’t really thought about that,” Dawahare said.

One of the difficulties Dawahare acknowledges having with her recruitment is both the enormity of making a decision about where she will go to school and the secrecy around recruiting in women’s soccer.

Football and basketball players talk, tweet and post about their college offers all the time and really don’t seem to have to make a decision until signing day. That’s because high-level Division I football teams have 85 full scholarships, enough for an entire roster.

In women’s college soccer, however, Division I teams have only 14 scholarships, less than half a roster. Many of those scholarships might be split among several players. And college soccer has long had an open transfer portal, so a bad fit for a player can mean shopping for another scholarship or partial scholarship at another school within a season or two.

That makes for a highly competitive and super secretive market.

“You don’t really talk at all like that in soccer. So, it’s definitely weird,” Dawahare said.

Dawahare said none of her club teammates ever really talked about visits or offers until their decision was made and already out on social media.

Receiving an official college offer also sets a clock ticking, Dawahare said. Teams that hand them out often want a commitment within two weeks. “It’s so early,” she said.

Instead, Dawahare is trying to hold off formal offers and take her time with the decision. She wants to visit the schools at the top of her list, really get to know the programs and consider what’s right for her.

“I’m only 16, and I still don’t know exactly what I’m looking for in a college,” she said. “It’s hard to process everything all at once and kind of create a list and also have pros and cons and then make a decision without even going to the school. It’s crazy. But hopefully it gets a little easier — which it probably won’t — but I’m still hoping it will.”

In the meantime, she’ll continue train on her own, further her education as a pre-engineering student at Lafayette High School and root for the Generals.

“I’m excited to see what the girls do this year,” she said. “I think it will be really exciting.”