Bishop dominates in goal for Lakeside
It takes a special athlete to take the abuse demanded of a goalkeeper, and Lakeside’s Lady Rams had a star in goal this season in Jessica Bishop.
Training for the role from a young age, Bishop came into her own her senior season, keeping the Lady Rams in many of their games while standing tall as the final line of defense for her team.
Tallying 151 saves this season in
16 games for an average of 9.4 saves per game with an 80 percent save rating, Bishop is The Sentinel-Record’s 2018 Girls Soccer Player of the Year.
The senior keeper gravitated toward the role from a young age, finding her spot in the goal from around the age of 5 and keeping it.
“Ever since I was like 2 years old, my parents put me on the local soccer team, and I always gravitated toward the back,” the senior keeper said. “I would pick flowers; I never wanted to go up and score the goals. I just wanted to be there to defend the goal. I feel like, since I’ve been doing it for so long, it’s just part of who I am. It’s the only position I enjoy playing the way I do.”
Bishop came a long way from picking flowers on the back side of the pitch to dominating in the goal for the Lady Rams this season, a fact that head coach Karrie Irwin attributes to the senior’s hard work and determination.
“Jessica worked hard all the time,” she said. “I think we were a little thin on our defense; we didn’t have a real strong line. We lost several players, and it hurt us. We had to get our speed up. There’s a lot of stuff we wanted to work at, and that was one of them. She got us going. She would make a save and stop a breakaway, and it really kept us pumped up and kept us from getting down. Basically, she kept the flow of the game going a lot of times.”
Early in the season, Bishop was sidelined due to a surgery, causing some stress for Irwin when she was finally cleared to play again.
“I got a little nervous the beginning of the year when she was out with her surgery, but she came back from that surgery without missing a beat,” she said. “I was a little scared that she’d be favoring it and afraid to dive, but it was like it never happened. She just kept on attacking, kept on going out there and working hard.”
On the pitch, Bishop was a dominating force, allowing just 45 goals this year. She admits she can be a bit clumsy.
“She could trip on a dot on the field and there be nothing there, just be the color of the field, and she jokes about that,” Irwin said. “But as soon as she steps in that box, and it’s game-on, all the time. I love that about her. She steps in there, and that’s her place; that’s her spot. She does what she needs to do, and I never feel like I have to pump her up, never have to build her up. I never have to tell her how great she’ll do and don’t worry about it or shake it off. She gets in there and does her job, and she loves it.”
Even when she was sidelined, Bishop was helping out by coaching her teammates from the sidelines and working with the other keeper during practices.
“She’s always working,” Irwin said. “She’s always wanting to help, too. When somebody else was playing goal, she was out there coaching them. She’s talking to her team; she’s talking to them all the time, which I think is great, too.”
Finding her voice from the back was a bit of a struggle, Bishop admits, but she knew that was something that she needed to do to be successful at the next level.
“I’m going to college next year, so I had to learn how to speak up and be that leader in the back,” she said. “That definitely played a big part in it. Getting to know the girls a lot more than I did because the year before that was my first year, so I was just getting to know everyone. This year, I just feel like we all clicked more as a family, so I felt like I had more say in what we did.”
Irwin noticed as the season progressed that Bishop needed to be more vocal with her teammates, and she tried to help encourage that.
“I didn’t realize how much I needed to help find her voice until I started helping some of the defenders, the fullbacks, do that,” Irwin admitted. “She’s that player that I don’t have to worry about. She’s that player that gets out there and just does her job and practices that as well. She’s out there working, and (assistant coach Lewis) Jolly worked with her so that I could work on the defense or on the forwards or something else. She took all that stress away from me, so it was one of those things I didn’t even think about.
“She’s that player that you just can’t wait to get because she knows what she wants to do; she knows what she needs to do, and she works on the things she wants to improve on. She does her job. It makes it easy to coach, so she takes away the pressure from me.”
One of the moments Bishop will treasure will be the Lady Rams’ final game against De Queen.
“The final De Queen game was definitely the most fun I’ve had this year playing soccer and just the will to win,” she said. “Even though we didn’t (win), we gave it our all.”
Bishop plans to play on the collegiate level at Coffeyville Community College in Coffeyville, Kansas, which has one of the top soccer programs among junior colleges.
“I am going to a two-year school in Kansas for two years,” she said. “Then, I’m going to hopefully go DI after that. I had DI offers this year, but I didn’t feel like it was right for me at the time. I feel like two years to work on my game more will definitely be better for me.”