No Smiles For Stiles Mead Graduate Survives Tough Loss, Vows To Learn From The Experience

Kim Stiles is her own harshest critic.

Her freshman soccer season at the University of Portland came to a sudden, stunning end Sunday afternoon in Chapel Hill, N.C. The Pilots lost to Notre Dame 1-0 in the NCAA soccer championship game, the first overtime in a women’s final.

As Stiles walked off the field, after 126 minutes of tense, non-stop action, sweat and tears ran together on her cheeks.

Back at school on Monday, the usually exuberant Stiles was trying to get over the Pilots’ first loss of the season and be upbeat about the experience.

“We’re trying to,” the freshman from Mead High School said. “It’s OK. We’re glad we got that far, but we wished we would have won.”

As always, in a game that went through two 45-minute halves and two 15-minute overtimes before ending in the third, sudden-death OT, the “what ifs” are maddening.

“In a game like that, you always want to say you did your best,” Stiles said. “I don’t think that I played the best that I could. That’s probably what is the hardest (to accept). I should have won a lot more balls, and all around I should have worked harder. I don’t think I put in 110 percent like I should have. I should have jumped on the opportunity to play in a championship game.”

The real story, though, was Stiles playing the whole game. During basketball season of her junior year at Mead, she had surgery to repair the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee. She didn’t get back on the field until halfway through her senior soccer season.

Once at Portland, which made the semifinals last year, Stiles was a reserve.

“At the beginning of the season, I played more of a defensive role,” she said. “That was new to me. It was fun, a new experience. I didn’t get to start until (the playoffs). I usually came in in the second half. It felt good to know working hard paid off.”

Her knee never bothered her and she was ready when her start came. Stiles did a good job, primarily as a defensive midfielder, and she stayed in that role until Irish midfielder Cindy Dawes shocked the Pilots with a perfect free kick past keeper Erin Fahey with 9-1/2 minutes left before a potential shootout.

“I was playing center mid,” Stiles said. “It was pretty much my responsibility to win every ball I could and to make any offensive runs that I could, kind of spark things up. I didn’t quite do that in the final game.”

The shot, over the Portland wall that included Stiles, came before Fahey was ready and rocketed just inside the right post and revived some memories for Stiles.

“It was a brilliant shot, actually,” she said. “It reminded me of when Jeannie Rein did that in our state tournament.”

Mead won Spokane’s only state soccer title in 1993 when Stiles was a junior and Rein was a senior.

“Well, we won state, so it was a little different,” Stiles said. “The state championship is still the best feeling because we won. The national championship is an all-around different feeling. It’s a better quality of soccer. That was probably the most exciting game I’ve ever played in. It was fun, a good experience to learn from.”

Ironically, the Pilots bounced the University of Washington, where Rein walked on and became a starting sweeper, in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Kim continued a remarkable run by the Stiles family.

Older brother Chris played soccer for Santa Clara. In 1989, before shootouts, the Broncos were co-champions after tying Virginia in the final game. Two years later they lost a shootout to the Cavaliers. He also married a player from the Santa Clara women’s team who made the Final Four in three of her four seasons.

Kim could have more chances to match her brother’s championship ring.

Fahey and All-American forward Shannon McMillan are the only two seniors the Pilots lose. After final exams next week, Stiles, a political science major, is on her own - and expected to workout - until after Christmas, when spring practice begins. Other dreams will have to wait.

“Right now I’m just working on my college goals, then we’ll see,” she said. “We’ve got to win a national championship first.”

It would be hard to find any fault with that.

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