(Photo: Steve Rodriguez/ ASU Athletics)
Arizona State’s Cali Farquharson, Kaitlyn Pavlovich, and Jasmine Roth were named to the Capital One Academic All-District 8 first team on Tuesday.
The honor recognizes the student athletes’ performance on the field and in the classroom.
Senior defenders Roth and Pavlovich are both members of Barrett, the Honors College. The Sun Devil defenders have been roommates for all four year.
Pavlovich gave credit to the study routine that Arizona State helped her to acquire.
“They do a good job with us freshman year of making us do mandatory study hall,” Pavlovich said. “We had to get eight hours a week, so after doing that freshman year, you kind of get the system down.”
Roth said she came prepared to juggle school and sports.
“When I grew up, I guess I played multiple sports at a time so coming into college I just had to focus on one sport so I pretty much had time management down since I was young,” Roth said.
Roth and Pavlovich have been the key to a rock solid defense. They are key components to a defense that is allowing 1.11 goals per game, Arizona State’s lowest since 2007.
Pavlovich has also proven to be a bit prolific scorer as of late. The senior defender has headed in two goals in the past couple of weeks including the game-tying goal against Utah in the 87th minute, in what would become Arizona State’s ninth victory of the season.
She credits head coach Kevin Boyd helping her work on her heading technique.
“In practice last week we were working on it and just my heading ability. I think it finally all came together this weekend,” Pavlovich said. “Last week in practice we worked on heading it straight in the ground. I drilled it into my head. I have to change gears when I’m going up for corners.”
Roth, a biochemistry major, has the highest grade point average in the Academic All-District first team with a perfect 4.0. Both Roth and Pavlovich are in the Academic All-District team for the second time, having also been selected for last year’s team.
Boyd said he values the academic side of his players.
“[I value the academic side] as much as I value the athletic side. We really emphasize both concepts. We stay on top of them, besides the normal things like grade checks,” Boyd said. “We follow up when we get the grade checks and they know it enough that if a class isn’t going well, they come find us and tell us what’s going on beforehand, so they know how important it is to us as well.”
Sophomore forward Cali Farquharson talked about practice scheduling and how the coaches plan practice around the players’ schedules.
“We had to work around it because on Thursday practice some of the girls had class in the morning,” Farquharson said.
Farquharson, an elementary education major, noticed some of the similarities between the sport she plays and the subject she studies.
“Probably just doing the little things for both. Just getting all your stuff done. In soccer you have to try to be clinical like every time, so it’s kind of the same thing with elementary education majors,” Farquharson said.
Speaking of being clinical, Farquharson scored the game-winning goal against Utah in the 102nd minute of play. This is Farquharson’s 10th goal, and fourth game-winning goal of the season.
“Honestly, I just focus on one game at a time and one half at a time and try to do as much as I could,” Farquharson said.
