Diego Garcia '21 Recruiting Profile

Playing varsity soccer as a freshman was a very developmental year for me.  It gave me an introduction into what it was like being the "little guy" since I was the only freshman on the team.  I didn't get a lot of minutes at first, so it was very frustrating for me because I was used to playing the whole game on all my other teams.  Eventually, little by little I started to get more playing time and capitalizing on the chances my coach would give me.  I would fill in at many different positions, taking advantage of the fact that I could figure out how to play each one at an adequate level fairly quickly.  By the end of the season, I was basically the player that went in whenever any of the starters were tired or were not playing well.  In the CIF section final game I ended up playing left-back, center back, and center defensive midfielder all in the same game.  Although we didn't win that final game of the season, I came home after it satisfied because I had put in all I had. That season was something that I had never really experienced in school because I am a straight-A student, and although it takes effort to keep my grades up I have never experienced a challenge as difficult as this one.

Sophomore year I maintained a starting position as a left-back/wing on the varsity team, winning our conference, and unfortunately suffering the same heartbreaking loss in section finals like the year before.  The summer after, I had a really nasty knee injury and ended up missing my entire fall travel season and my junior year of high school soccer.  Once again I had an immense challenge ahead of me, but I managed to fight through it with patience and recovered just after the high school season ended.  Having gone through tough experiences like my knee injury and my freshman year taught me how to work hard, although in different ways, and learned that challenges like these make you stronger.  

My goals are to get an engineering degree from a top-ranked program and get to new heights in my soccer abilities.  I understand that this will be a challenge for me, but given the challenges that I have surpassed already and the hunger that I have to improve, I am confident in my ability to thrive both on and off the field.