Jaime Pisa '18 Recruiting Profile

I started playing soccer when I was 5. Over the years I played for different travel teams at the highest level. I played against many of the best clubs of the district (Madrid, Spain) such us Real Madrid, Atletico de Madrid, Rayo Vallecano or Getafe. Although I never played for any of the top teams in Madrid, I did play for smaller clubs which were in the same league (División de Honor.) This experience made me learn a lot about discipline and hard-work since the smaller clubs always have less resources and need to make a greater effort to stay in the league and not get relegated. 

After many years playing at the highest level in Madrid, I moved to Virginia where I played for my high school team (JV as a freshmen and sophomore) and some house teams. My aspiration is to keep playing soccer as a college student and play at a high level again because it's the one thing that I miss the most about Spain.

One of the things that makes different from other recruits is that I have already been under a lot of pressure before games and have the ability to overcome that. Another thing is that I have been injured a couple times and therefore know how to rehabilitate from injuries. I also know how to handle fatigue since I played a couple international tournaments (Paris, Valencia, Oviedo) where I had to play many games in one weekend. The last thing that makes me different form other recruits is that since I used to play at a very high level, other players from other teams were one or two years older than me, which made it difficult and scary. What I learned from that experience is that I can never be scared of any player and that size can be overcome by ability, I learned how to play against players much bigger than me.