MIDDLETOWN — Louise Owens, coach of the Middletown High School girls” soccer team for which Hannah Diaz plays, will be the first to say that she doesn”t look very imposing.
“You look at her and you would think she”s a twig,” Owens said.
But look again when Diaz, an attacking middle forward who has been named the most valuable player in the North Central League I three years running, is in action on a soccer pitch. Problem is, after looking at Hannah you might not be able to take your eyes off her. Her performances are that compelling.
“She is deceivingly strong, she is fast and she has dynamic footwork,” Owens apprises. “You watch her dribble through players and your eyes can barely keep up with her feet.
“She”s a phenomenal athlete, a phenomenal player and a phenomenal person. On the playing field she stands out from anyone. Very explosive, very well-trained and skilled,” Owens added.
Diaz”s 40 goals led the Lady Mustangs to a 21-0-1 season complete with NCL I and North Coast Section Division III championships in 2012.
Match this up with the fact that last season Diaz was only a junior. The possibilities of what she is capable of doing in her senior year are mind-blowing.
When Owens and Diaz”s teammates marvel over Diaz”s evasive machinations on a soccer pitch they tend to sound like they”re talking about hockey”s Wayne Gretzky on the ice.
“She”s a very good friend of mine, so I tend to know a lot about her,” said Ashley Hart, a Diaz teammate for the past four years. “She”s unbelievable. My parents come to watch her play sometimes more than me.”
Asked to describe Diaz”s attributes, Owens responds, “Where do you stop?”
Diaz”s most outstanding play? “Every time she touches the ball,” said Owens. “It”s fun to watch her work her way through an entire team.”
Diaz is a born soccer player. She was playing in a league on a team coached by her mother when she was 3 years old. By the time she was 7 she was playing on a divisional team, and not long after she joined a Division I team in an indoor soccer league in Santa Rosa. She captained her team and led it in scoring for the last four years.
Her “hat trick” (three-or-more-goal) games have come to be a standard occurrence. Last year she scored seven goals in a league win over Lower Lake.
Owens has just returned to the head coaching post at Middletown after a two-year maternity leave, so she didn”t coach Diaz in her sophomore and junior years. She did, however, coach Hannah”s older sister, Natalie, a junior and starter in her third year on the Barry University women”s team in Miami Shores, Florida.
Comparisons be-tween the two sisters are impossible because the positions they play are fully disparate. Hannah”s specialty is to score goals. As a defender, Natalie”s job is to stop them from being scored.
“We”re two different players,” said Hannah.
“It”s hard to compare them because they never got to play with each other, side by side,” said Owens, an Australian who came to the U.S. on a gymnastic scholarship at Boise State. She arrived in Middletown in 1997.
Injuries that idled her for much of her junior and senior years at Middletown prevented Natalie from reaching her full high school potential.
Hannah”s domination in soccer has been honed through arduous training and conditioning.
“You muscles have to be strong. You have to be a long-distance runner on the field,” she said. Her regimen includes running 50 miles every weekend and eight miles a day on weekdays.
Owens is reluctant to project how good her Diaz-led team will be this season, which opens on Tuesday against El Molino.
“I wouldn”t know,” she said. “I know that they”re the best team I”ve ever had in eight years of coaching soccer. Our biggest concern is trying to replace five seniors who were great players. Those posts are going to be hard to fill. If we”re able fill them it could be a pretty dang good team.”
But then again, with Hannah Diaz the Lady Mustangs are already that.
