Phillips earns Player of the Year honor

from Ocala.com

Katy Phillips has been setting goals for just as long as she’s been scoring them.

It’s a time period that spans more than half of the 17-year-old Trinity Catholic High School striker’s lifetime.

“As far back as I can remember, soccer has been a huge part of my life,” Phillips said after reflecting for what seemed to be the first time in a long time. That’s probably because she’s spent the majority of her 11-plus years on the field only looking ahead to the future — setting the bar high, then leaping over it.

“I think I set a goal every single time I step onto a field,” Phillips explained. “That’s something my father taught me to do really early. I have game goals, I have seasonal goals, I have life goals. That’s something you have to do.”

It’s been a big year for Phillips’ goals, both the big picture kind and the ones that fly into the net.

As a midfielder for Trinity, she scored 36 of them this season. Her 29 assists helped put four of her Celtic teammates into double digit scoring, including Marion County’s top goal-scorer, Ashley Coley (44).

“Technically and tactically, (Phillips) is a notch above all the others,” Trinity assistant coach Wesley Elias said. “Katy’s best attribute is the fact that she can create for herself, but most importantly, create for others. Her touch on the ball is just so clean.”

Phillips’ locally unrivaled ability to slip through a defense before dishing to that perfectly positioned teammate, or striking it to the net herself, made her a key mechanism in the Trinity (24-4-2) machine. Her diverse talents helped that squad make history as the first local team — boys or girls — to make it as far as the state soccer semifinals.

In the big picture department, Phillips, a junior, recently committed to play soccer for Division I Georgia Southern University after she graduates next year.

“I said that I wanted to be committed by my junior year, and at Trinity we wanted to make it to the final four ever since last season,” Phillips said. “To actually be achieving this stuff just feels really cool.”

Being named the Star-Banner Player of the Year wasn’t on the list, but Phillips called the honor “icing on the cake.”

Any talk of how she earned that title though, only leads Phillips to praising the supporting cast of teammates around her.

Loren Bonenclark, one of those teammates, said that Phillips’ vision on the field is matched only by her outspokenness.

“You don’t expect this little girl to be able to dart around you, or jumping higher than you, but she’s got ups,” Bonenclark said of the 5-foot-1 Phillips. “And this little girl can stand her ground verbally against anyone, too.

“We get very competitive. She’ll be the one to look at me and say ‘Loren, I know you can do better than that.’ But she’s someone that pushes the other players around her and makes them better that way.”

Phillips’ success has been in part due to an intense dedication to playing as much as possible, and against the toughest competition possible. As a member of the First Coast Kyx premier travel team, she travels to Jacksonville for practice one weekend, and can be anywhere in the country for competition on the next.

This year she’s already been to Washington D.C. and Las Vegas. A tournament in Raleigh, N.C. is where she was first contacted by Georgia Southern recruiters.

“She’s the player that steps her level of play up every time she walks onto the pitch,” Kyx coach Mike Walker said. “I think she’ll be a huge asset at Georgia Southern, but I really think she can go as far as she wants in the sport. I can definitely see her continuing her career in the new Women’s professional league.”

The more immediate future holds another season at Trinity Catholic, and yet another set of goals to be conquered.

“Once you do something, its all about focusing for the next thing,” Phillips said. “The goals definitely already set. I want to win state next year.”