Senior defender Casey Hoffman has many nicknames. Head Coach Diane Drake calls her the Cal Ripken of the Georgetown women’s soccer team because she started every game of her collegiate career and missed only one practice in four years. Drake also teasingly calls her Mute, for her quiet, uncomplaining leadership style. And the whole team calls her Smiley, because, says Hoffman, “my role is to make the best of things and to always be positive.”
“Casey smiles all the time, especially when things get really bad,” said Drake, chuckling. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a negative thing come out of her mouth. And she’s always so put together. She’s like Miss America; I don’t think she does anything poorly.”
In addition to her persistently optimistic attitude, Hoffman has contributed an unflappable defensive performance at the left back position for the Hoyas.
“Casey has always been probably the fittest person on the team?she’s like a gazelle when she runs,” said Drake. “On top of that, she reads the game very well defensively.”
At San Ramon Valley High School in California, she helped lead her team to the Section Championship as a junior and to national top-10 rankings in 1998 and 1999. She was also a member of the Northern California Olympic Development Program, along with Georgetown teammate senior forward Karin Ostrander. Playing in college was always her ultimate goal.
“Ever since I was little I wanted to play Division I college soccer,” said Hoffman. “Georgetown was my first choice. I wanted to come to the East Coast and try something different. My brother went here, and I came to visit and fell in love with it.”
Hoffman was never recruited at Georgetown, however, because when she applied, the Hoyas did not even have a head coach.
“When Coach Drake came on I called her and she invited me to the pre-season,” Hoffman recalls. “The pre-season was like my try-outs. I remember being so nervous; I wanted to start but I didn’t know what to expect. Once I began starting, of course, I didn’t want to stop.”
She didn’t. Hoffman has started in every game since she arrived at Georgetown, 76 in all.
“A record like Casey’s is incredibly rare, because everybody’s going to have an injury at some point or they’re just not going to be playing well,” said Drake. “We don’t sub our defenders very much, but for someone to never have a moment where they need to come out … Nothing gets to her.”
Hoffman says she owes her perfect record in part to her “quiet stubborness.”
“When I want something, I definitely just won’t stop,” she said. “I’ve been playing soccer my entire life, and that’s why it’s so weird now to feel like I’m done.”
This fall, the Hoyas plowed through a challenging schedule to an all-time best season record of 11-7. In their second Big East Championship appearance, the team lost 1-0 to then-No. 9 Connecticut, leaving them to hope for one of 29 at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament. On Monday, the team gathered to watch the selection show and found out they did not get a bid.
“Coach Drake warned us on Sunday, so we sort of expected it, but it didn’t seem real until we saw it,” said Hoffman. “It was really sad and frustrating, because we thought we deserved it. We had our best record ever, and teams like Notre Dame made it with the same record as us even though we beat them during the season.”
Georgetown defeated four of the 10 teams on its schedule who made the NCAA tournament, including James Madison, American University, Furman and arch-rival Notre Dame. Drake pointed to upsets in other conferences as a major factor in Georgetown being left out of the draw.
“Every time I checked the scores, I saw teams like Ohio State, who would never have made it at-large, get in on automatic bids,” she said. “It was tough to watch, but for the team I think it wasn’t shock as much as it was the end of their last bit of hope. It was hard for the seniors to realize that they’d never play again, but we talked a lot about how far they’ve come.”
When Hoffman arrived in fall 1999, along with Ostrander, midfielder Maureen McCartney and defender Liza Yannuzzi, the team was coming off a dismal 4-9-2 season, and, according to Hoffman, “wasn’t very goal-oriented.” The four first-years, led by the new coach Drake, decided the Hoyas needed to change their expectations.
“We decided we needed a whole new attitude,” said Hoffman. “We thought that we could be a competitive team and have a national ranking. We were motivated.”
“Casey has been an inspiration because of her example on the field and her never-say-its-over attitude,” Drake said. “She may be quiet, but when she does speak people listen and respect what she says. She and the other seniors built this team from the bottom up.”
The Hoyas made their first appearance in the Big East Championship during Hoffman’s first year, and the team has improved its record and ranking every year since. The consistent improvement makes this year’s NCAA tournament rejection even more disapointing.
“It put a damper on the season because this was our major goal,” said Hoffman. “It would have made my four years; it would have been so great to come in as the first class to make the Big East Championship and leave as the first class to make the NCAA Championship.”
In the end, however, Hoffman has a characteristically optimistic perspective on the end to her prolific career.
“Maybe we put too much emphasis on our final goal, because the process of getting there really was perfect,” she said. “What I’ll remember most about my four years is the stuff off the field?we really had a special team.”
