Foot pain fails to slow St. Mike’s Schneider
Lady Horsemen to face Sandia Prep in 1A/3A girls soccer playoff semifinals
Fate is calling Tara Schneider. She just refuses to answer. It keeps sending her messages to call it a career on the soccer pitch for the St. Michael’s girls program. Schneider, the senior midfielder, impolitely declines to accept them.
The latest rejection came late in Friday’s Class 1A/3A quarterfinal match against longtime District 2-1A/3A foe Santa Fe Prep, won by the Lady Horsemen by a convincing 6-1 score.
Schneider missed the first 25 minutes of the second half after hobbling/limping/ hopping through most of the first stanza, ignoring the pain in her troublesome right ankle.
Upon taking the field to replace Bella Griego after she received a yellow card, Schneider was not about to leave the field again. When Griego waved to Schneider as her substitute when St. Michael’s earned a throw-in a couple of minutes later, Schneider responded with a wave of her own — of refusal.
So, Payton Ortiz stepped off the field for a team that has just one reserve.
A stress fracture suffered in the third match of the season forced Schneider to miss five weeks. A foot-on-foot collision in a 3-2 win over the Blue Griffins on Oct. 25 reaggravated it.
Or maybe it was because of a similar collision against Santa Fe Indian School on Oct. 17. Who knows? All Schneider knows is she is operating on one-and-ahalf legs.
What Schneider needs is a couple of months to recuperate. But this is her last stand as a competitive soccer player,; she said she might play recreationally when she goes to college. So, Schneider’s going out on her own terms — the
pain be damned.
“I’m in a lot of pain, but just being on the field is just more than I ask for, even if I’m not doing much,” Schneider said. “At least I’m being a supporter of my teammates.”
How invaluable is she to the Lady Horsemen, even if she is not the player she was before the injury?
“[It means] the world,” St. Michael’s head coach Alfonso Camarena said. “It sets an example to everybody else, because there are no give-backs.”
The versatile midfielder who can pass and score was supposed to be the connecting piece between the St. Michael’s defense and talented forwards Jada Lujan and Sophia Miera, but that never had a chance to come to fruition. When Schneider suffered her injury in the first half of a 10-0 rout at the hands of 1A/3A’s top-seeded Albuquerque Sandia Prep, it severed that tie.
When Schneider was healthy enough to walk without a boot, she skipped walking and went straight to running. In hindsight, she returned too soon. But when she saw her team struggling through a 3-5-2 start and a shrinking roster that had as few as nine players, Schneider’s duty to her teammates became her guiding light.
“High school soccer is just so much fun,” Schneider said. “And our team is a family. I want to spend as much time as I can with them.”
Lujan, who has played with Schneider at the club, youth league and high school level since they were little, isn’t about to tell her to hang it up.
“Just to be able finish out our high school career together is just amazing,” Lujan said.
Their careers might come to an end Tuesday when St. Michael’s heads to Albuquerque to take on the top-seeded and two-time defending champion Lady Sundevils in the 1A/3A semifinals. If all things were equal, the storyline would be about the Lady Horsemen trying to exact revenge against the team that has eliminated them in each of the past two state tournaments.
But Sandia Prep is at a decided advantage in talent, health and depth. But Schneider and Lujan, the last links to the spring 2021 state champion, want one more shot against their chief rival, even if the odds are against them and their teammates.
“If we can put everything together, similar to what we did [against Santa Fe Prep], I think it can definitely be a better game,” Lujan said.
A win would be great but standing on the field with her teammates for the final whistle — whenever that moment comes — is what matters to Schneider.
As St. Michael’s added to its lead with a pair of goals in the final 10 minutes Friday, no amount of pain was going to ruin a moment of sunshine for Schneider.
“I couldn’t stop smiling,” Schneider said.
Forget it, fate.
Drop Schneider’s number. She’s never gonna answer.
James Barron writes an opinion column about sports in New Mexico. Contact Barron at 505-6039465 or jbarron@sfnewmexican. com.