Soccer,Track&Field
Favorite athlete: Didier Drogba
Favorite team: Chelsea FC
Favorite memory competing in sports: Either winning regionals and attending nationals with my club team or playing a home district game with my high school team
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: During the 2014 World Cup, I stayed at the same hotel as the Portuguese National Team. While juggling a soccer ball in the area in front of the hotel, my dad bet that I could not juggle a full coconut. To prove him wrong I attempted to do so. In the end, I failed quite embarrassingly and had a sore foot. The next day, my dad informed me that some of the Portuguese players and coaches were watching me from their hotel room balconies. So basically, I completely embarrassed myself by attempting to juggle a coconut in front of a group of professional coaches and players.
Music on iPod: A mix ranging from country to Latin pop. There is no genre in particular that I listen to
Future plans: Attending McGill University in Montreal to major in bioengineering and play soccer
Words to live by: “It's better to fail with your own vision rather than following another man's vision.”
One goal before turning 30: Receive a doctorate degree in some area of bioengineering and travel as much as I can
One thing people don’t know about me: I am a dual citizen (a citizen of the US and Great Britain)
By GORDON GLANTZ
The campus of McGill University, set against the foot of Mount Royal in the heart of Montreal, is considered among the most picturesque in the world.
When Quakertown senior soccer standout Victoria “Just Call Me Vic” Sturgess, saw the campus for the first time while in Montreal for the Women’s World Cup in 2015, she pretty much made up her mind. She was awestruck.
McGill, established in 1821, is a place she had to be.
For most, it would just be a pipedream. McGill, in addition to its overwhelming presence, ranks among the top institutions of higher learning on the planet and has just about 3,500 students enrolled there from a worldwide pool.
But the daughter of Mike and Annie Sturgess is not like most aspiring student-athletes. Tied for first in her senior class at Quakertown, she had what it took to make it happen.
After making contact with McGill women’s soccer coach Jose-Luis Valdes, wheels were set in the motion for what she hopes will be the journey of her life.
The incoming bioengineering major firmly believes she needed to keep soccer in her life to continue to achieve the balance that got her this far, and recently saw her named the Lehigh Valley Soccer Scholar Athlete out of a pool of more than 100 high schools.
“As for winning that award, I felt honored and proud,” she said. “There were a lot of other high achieving and accomplished players that were nominated, so I was very surprised that they chose me.”
Sturgess has been successful juggling school and soccer – while also trying to work around nagging injuries to run track – and not doing so would be more of a culture shock than attending school out of the country.
“I definitely feel like that,” she said, pointing toward “multiple all-nighters” as part of her study schedule. “I feel like if I didn’t have soccer, my academic grades would actually suffer.”
The timing could not have been any more perfect, as McGill only recently added bioengineering as a graduate program – it was strictly a graduate-only course of study before – putting her in historic company.
“I will be in just the third round going through that major,” she said.
Beyond McGill, Sturgess realizes she will need to continue her education. This is where her status as a dual citizen of the US and the UK will come in handy.
“I’d love to go for my doctorate,” she said. “I eventually want to live in London. I have a lot of family over there, and I have always thought of it as my home.
“I just received (dual citizenship) as of a few weeks ago. I could have applied sooner, but my dad wanted me to wait.”
Traditionally Speaking
In addition to its academics – producing 12 Nobel laureates, 142 Rhodes Scholars, three astronauts, three Canadian prime ministers, four foreign leaders and three Pulitzer Prize winners (there are also alums with hardware from the Academy and Grammy awards) – the school boasts a rich athletic tradition that includes 28 Olympic Medalists.
The list of laudable McGill alumni – which also includes the likes of William Shatner, Leonard Cohen and Burt Bacharach – are credited with codifying formal rules for football (not to be confused with soccer) and basketball (Dr. James Naismith).
In 1874, McGill and Harvard played what are credited as the first games somewhat resembling modern football. While McGill won 17 of 30 meetings with Harvard, it reportedly fell, 3-0, in the first game.
A year later, McGill’s James Creighton created rules for ice hockey and took the game indoors for the first time and captained one of the nine-man teams (with many other McGill students) that faced off while playing with a wooden puck (instead of a lacrosse ball). Decades later, Frank Patrick (Class of 1908) wrote much of the NHL rulebook.
As for soccer, the tradition has run the gamut. The women’s program, in the five years under Valdes, is 32-28-12.
“They’re relatively strong,” she said. “They have had their ups and downs, like any program, but they do compete and have talented players.”
The Total Package
What McGill will be getting in Sturgess, as one of the few American-born players on the roster, is an athlete dedicated to the craft of the sport she has loved ever since seeing a game at age six with her British-born dad, who indoctrinated her into being a Chelsea F.C. fanatic when they watched their favorite team battle A.C. Milan.
“Vic worked very hard at becoming an outstanding player,” said Quakertown soccer coach Mike Koch, who has coached Sturgess from her youth days at Deep Run all the way through to high school. “She committed herself to train technically, tactically and trained hard physically to become a top athlete. She has perseverance and will power, and that has allowed her to battle through any ups and downs. She has always put team first.”
Sturgess began playing soccer when she was around six
“I was playing U8 by the time I was 7,” she said.
Love at first sight, like when she first saw McGill?
“Just a bit,” she said, laughing.
Sturgess spent most of her early career playing more of a defensive role, which she believes aided her into her transition as a striker at the high school level (although she still play other positions, as needed, particularly in her junior year).
“It allowed her to develop as a student of the game,” said Koch. “She is very wily and crafty as a forward, and some of that is a result of understanding how a defender plays.”
Sturgess sees it the same way as Koch, who she thanked – along with his brother, Jim Koch, and the late John Cardacin -- for their support and guidance.
“I’m not the highest scoring forward, because that’s not what I was trained to be,” she said. “I always got more assists than goals. I was more about getting the ball to my teammates.”
The accolades still came in for Sturgess, who listed scoring the game-tying goal to force overtime in an eventual loss in district playoffs as a career-capping highlight.
She was selected first-team All-League in the SOL American Conference, second-team by the Intelligencer and National MVP of the 2015 United States Youth Soccer President's Cup.
Playing her soccer at a high level has been a year-round commitment. In addition to playing for Quakertown, there was the Deep Run Strikers and now Warrington F.C.
That means an early summer of tournaments before preseason practice for the fall school season, which is followed by more outdoor training until Mother Nature signals a move inside for an indoor league through the winter before back outdoors in the spring to prepare for the tournament season.
“I’m not sure when I get a break,” said Sturgess, who still makes time to run track for the Quakers.
The Finish Line
The end of her scholastic career will see a fervent attempt to be a district qualifier in the 800 in track, while also competing in the 400.
“I first ran track back in seventh grade,” she said. “It’s been difficult to balance with soccer. I’ve missed meets along the way, but I saw I could do this as a way to stay in shape, and I developed a like for running.”
The major issue keeping Sturgess from postseason success hasn’t been lack of speed as much as it has been a lack of fully recovering from soccer.
“Nothing major,” she said of injuries ranging from a shoulder separation to a back contusion to ankle sprains and knee strains.
As for work outside the lines, Sturgess does what she can when she can.
“Most of my volunteering, I will do for soccer,” she said, adding that she is a member of the National Honor Society at school and works with Calculus students in the Math Tutoring lab.
While her brother, seventh-grader Andy Sturgess, “follows in my footsteps” with soccer, mom is not quite as much of a soccer devotee as the rest of the family.
“She has always been really supportive, though,” said Sturgess. “She always does whatever she can.”
That support was certainly needed when her Quakertown career came to an end after achieving a generational milestone of a home playoffs game in districts, only to lose in heartbreaking fashion.
“It felt surreal,” she said. “I didn’t really sink until like a week later, when we didn’t have practice and I wasn’t seeing my teammates as much anymore.”
It also meant her longtime mentor and coach, Koch, was not going to coach her anymore.
“There has always been, like, that weird sort of consistency there,” she said. “I have known him since I was six, and he has become like a part of the family – like an awkward family uncle.
“He always knew how to get the best out of me.”
And now her best moves on to one of the best colleges in the world.
