Soccer
Favorite athlete: Carli Lloyd
Favorite team: U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: My teammate tripped over a foam roller and fell right in front of our new coach.
Music on mobile device: Khalid (and just about everything)
Future plans: Become a scientist and travel
Words to live by: “Everything happens for a reason.”
One goal before turning 30: Visit at least three continents.
One thing people don’t know about me: I love to ski and do yoga.
By Ed Morrone
In athletics, especially at the high school level, most kids seek out positions sure to shower them with statistical glory.
Sarah Boehm is not most kids.
Sure, like most soccer players, Boehm started out as a forward. The thrilling rush of depositing the ball into the back of the net is an irresistible feeling, after all, but Boehm still found herself drifting backward on the field, trading in the possibility of scoring for a daily war in the trenches on the back line, the last line of defense between the goalie and the opposing offense.
“I started at forward like a lot of kids do,” said Boehm, a senior center back for the Hatboro-Horsham High girls’ soccer team. “I went through that rush of scoring goals, but I ended up trying every position, even goalie for a little while.
“Eventually, one of my coaches tried me at back, first outside and then in the middle, and for whatever reason I just loved it. There’s so much strategy in playing the position, and there’s a certain satisfaction in sprinting all the way back to prevent someone from shooting, or get it to one of your teammates who ends up scoring a goal. Defense isn’t a glorified position, but there is a personal satisfaction that comes with it.”
Boehm started playing soccer for her neighborhood club, Horsham, at the tender age of 4. She was a proponent of trying as many sports as possible, including softball and basketball, but soccer was the one that really stuck. She loved playing for Horsham but ultimately sought fiercer competition and ended up playing for Montgomery United in Lansdale.
“It was there I really began to love soccer more, because it was the perfect balance of strong competition and having fun, and not just one or the other,” Boehm said. “From there I started getting more competitive with it and started thinking about playing in high school.”
Although she started her first career game on varsity as a freshman, Boehm alternated between there and JV in each of her first two years of high school. She was a captain of the JV team her sophomore year and became a full-time varsity player as a junior. Although still blocked from the starting lineup by some seniors, Boehm began to play more and more as the year went on under head coach Ike Onyeador.
Boehm’s senior year, where she was a full-time starter on the back line, was unsurprisingly her favorite. But it wasn’t just because of the simple fact that she was playing more; rather, she gleaned an appreciation for how hard she needed to work on a daily basis, both in-season and during the offseason, in order to stay in the starting lineup.
“By far this season was my favorite of all because I put in so much work,” she said. “I put in work all four years because I really do love it, but you’ve got to work even harder to earn and keep a starting position. I wasn’t going to complain that other people were ahead of me. I understood.
“Freshman year I came into the preseason not prepared at all, and it was awful. Ever since, I’ve tried to put in more and more work each offseason. I played a lot for my club team and really tried to improve my game. The more you improve, the more fun you have. It’s allowed me to get more prepared for preseason and games and to take more of a leadership position on the field.”
While Boehm wasn’t a captain for the Hatters, she was viewed as a crucial leader and a key cog to the team’s success given her position of quarterback of the defense. Onyeador, her head coach for her last three high school seasons, couldn’t have imagined life without her.
“She does so many things in terms of helping a program succeed,” Onyeador said. “She’s a role model, the picture of how we want our student-athletes to carry themselves. She always shows up, always does what’s asked of her, always represents us the right way and takes care of business, even when nobody’s watching. All the little things that don’t really get noticed or show up in a box score. And believe me, Sarah isn’t looking for notice. For her, she’s just doing her job.”
Boehm’s skillset and importance to the defense has become pretty irreplaceable, too.
“She has the versatility to play anywhere, in the center or on the outside,” Onyeador continued. “The qualities she brings to the position are instrumental to the system and style I like to play. She gives us stability in one-on-one coverage, she’s very composed and is great at starting the attack out of the back line.
“She’s very good in the air at winning headers both on the attack and defense. Add all of those factors up and you’ve got a solid soccer player, someone who is composed with the ball at her feet rather than just panicking and kicking the ball away. Sarah is instrumental to the way we play, because the majority of our scoring chances come from set pieces, and she’s a player who draws attention. She wins balls in the air and gave us a chance to win games.”
The Hatters went 9-9 overall in 2017, including an impressive 9-5 mark in the SOL American Conference. Although they failed to qualify for the district playoffs, both Boehm and Onyeador measured major progress for the program, which didn’t advance to the postseason during Boehm’s time at the school.
In the past, Boehm said, the team had a habit of falling into a “pattern of losing,” where they would get down early in games and have to constantly play catch-up, which became demoralizing. The team would only be able to snap out of it if they had a subpar opponent on the schedule; however, this season, the Hatters found themselves far more competitive.
“We started to work together more, and we stayed positive even if the other team scored first,” Boehm said. “As a result, we beat some of the better teams in our league, which didn’t usually happen. We came back and won some close games, which I think really bonded the girls once we saw we were capable of doing it. This season was just a really good experience.”
One game in particular stands out, and probably will find a home in Boehm’s grey matter for the rest of her days. It was a home game against Quakertown on Oct. 6, which just so happened to be Boehm’s 18th birthday. The Hatters hadn’t beaten Quakertown - one of the program’s biggest rivals - in years, and Boehm was down to her last chance at revenge.
With her team trailing 1-0, Boehm backed up Onyeador’s claims as to how valuable she is in the air, as she crept into the box on a corner kick and headed a perfect ball into the back of the net, tying the game. The Hatters would go on to win, and Boehm’s goal, the first of her varsity career according to Onyeador, served as the catalyst in finally toppling Quakertown.
“If we gave up goals first, we were usually a team that found it difficult to come back and win games,” the head coach said. “That goal by Sarah motivated us and showed us we can pull out a win in a game where we fell behind. She helped change that perception to a certain degree this season. We started fighting back and finding ways to win.
“To have Sarah be a part of that and score a goal that big against our biggest rival, her first varsity goal, it was just tremendous to see the excitement on her face afterward.”
Added Boehm: “That was the best moment of my season by far. I’ll always remember it so vividly, probably because it happened to be my birthday. My whole goal was to beat Quakertown this season because we had been so close. And it’s one thing to execute a play like that in practice … but to do it in a game? That was a perfect ending.”
Boehm said that she was upset and disappointed that the Hatters couldn’t get over the hump and into the postseason, a natural feeling for any born competitor. But at the same time, she felt proud, proud of her team for producing a strong season regardless, and proud of herself for ascending into a starter and team leader role after putting in so much time and effort to make her senior season memorable.
Boehm called the ending to her high school career “bittersweet.” While expected and inevitable, the end always seems to come quicker in high school, and it washed over Boehm like a splash of freezing cold water. Soccer’s been a part of nearly her entire life, and while she thinks she’ll play club or intermural soccer in college, Boehm said she’s done playing competitively.
“Most of the schools I’m looking at are Division I, and balancing academics and soccer, especially at that level, is really difficult,” she said. “The one downside of playing is that it takes up so much of my time. I’ve been able to do it in high school, but it’s been very stressful. In college, I want to focus more on my academics and what I’m going to be doing with my life, with a little soccer still mixed in on the side.”
Boehm knows that she wants to gravitate toward the sciences in college, although which specific program she’ll choose to major in is still undecided. Northeastern University in Boston is her top choice, mainly due to its flexible study abroad program (traveling is a major interest of Boehm’s, too, as she loves learning about and being exposed to new cultures and hopes to visit three continents by her 30th birthday, with Europe already crossed off her list). She’s also got applications out to Johns Hopkins, George Washington, Northwestern, Boston University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Boehm’s head coach knows that whatever she decides to do after high school, she will do it exceptionally.
“In soccer, she’s not a flashy player, not somebody who is going to go out and score six goals,” Onyeador said. “But she’ll get into the program, she’ll learn the system and ultimately give you the stability and consistency you need to have to be successful. She becomes a valuable member of the team, and it’s going to be the same in anything else she does beyond soccer. She’s willing to step in to any situation and pay her dues, and she’ll keep rising and having success until one day she’s running the company.
“Her personality is one that wants to learn, to get better. She’s willing to work her way up, and there’s plenty of players — and people — willing to do that no questions asked, and it’s why I think it’s important to highlight people like Sarah every now and then because they serve as a model of what everyone else should try to emulate. She’s the type of person who will handle any issue that comes her way and will come out on the other side better for it.”
And though she is mature beyond her years, Boehm, like any young student-athlete, is able to view life through the prism of the sport she plays. Any real-life challenges that come her way, Boehm feels she’s prepared to tackle them head on, mainly because being a soccer player taught her what it’s like to function as a member of a team and hold herself accountable for her own actions.
“It’s taught me how to work as part of a group, and whatever team you’re on is your support system,” she said. “It’s also taught me that like life, there are going to be ups and downs. It’s not easy by any means, but it’s shown me that I have to work hard for what I want. It’s benefitted me in the long run, because now I can go off to college and the real world and apply that hardworking ability to school and ultimately, a career.”
