Heading West: Lawrence Academy’s Marley Chappel to play for University of Arizona Women’s Soccer.

Photo: Paul Rutherford/Lawrence Academy Head Coach Tony Amato and the University of Arizona Wildcats Women’s Soccer program picked up a blue chip signing this week when Massachusetts Lawrence Academy Senior Marley Chappel announced she’s committing to the program.

Chappel, who’s from Santa Barbra, California originally; has had quite an upbringing in sports throughout her life. Chappel, when she was young, moved to Vail, Colorado; there she got into skiing but was also introduced at a high level to the game of soccer through the Colorado Rush program. Rush is one of the biggest and most influential academy brands in the United States. To put it into context, Colorado Rush is the program that churned out former U.S. Women’s National team players Nikki Krzysik, Danielle Foxhoven and Jordan Angeli along with current players such as Jordan DiBiasi, Danica Evans and World Cup Champion Lindsey Horan.

In coming to Massachusetts for her junior year at Lawrence Academy, she also was able to join FC Stars in the famed ECNL, which removed her from the now defunct US Soccer Development Academy programming allowing her to join the Lawrence Academy team and play high school soccer which is something she felt was missing from the locked structure of the DA.

In talking about her commitment to Arizona, she mentions about how growing up on the West Coast, the PAC-12 is huge and growing up in girls soccer when players think about going to college and playing Division 1 they think about playing in the PAC-12 Conference, which includes legendary teams like current National Champions Stanford along with UCLA, California and Washington. Chappel says she thinks the PAC-12 is the conference with some of the best players in the country and hopes that her time under Coach Amato will bring her into being a better soccer player as well as having top level competition.

Chappel, remarked in her interview to SFBNRI, that she is thrilled with the amazing job the USWNT players have done to set a great example for younger players in the country and the world, but hopes to see a better view and better respect given to that from people across the country so that it will help US Soccer to see the opportunity available to bring the game to more young girls and grow the strength of the game still in the next decades to come.

You can hear more from Marley Chappel about her career and her commitment to Arizona on Season 1 Episode 6 of the SFBNRI Podcast show “And That’s The Game!” hosted by Matt Jolles.

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